Abstract:
In education, parents’ engagement in schooling and management is emerging as a “best
practice” thought necessary to achieve universal primary enrolment while improving the
quality and relevance of teaching and learning. In the context of global movements such as
Education for all (EFA) that aims to ensure that all children have access to free quality
primary education by 2015. Low-income countries are under increasing international and
domestic pressure to meet these goals. The objective of this study was to investigate the role
of parents’ involvement in students’ academic engagement in primary schools of Nekemte
City.
Descriptive research design was used in this study. The study used mixed approach in which
both quantitative and qualitative research methods were adopted. This approach was
selected as it is used to generate rich data from multiple sources. Out of total respondents
145 (43.02%) are teachers and 192 (57%) are students. Similarly, out of the total of 337
respondents females make up 43.92 percent, which is close to males but less. Regarding the
age structure, the majority of teachers (58 percentages) age category is less than 40 years.
Teachers and parents poorly established close relations in support of children’s academic
welfare (M=2.18, SD=0.53) and most parents were not provide their children with academic
support both at home and school (M=1.69, SD=0.58). However, respondents indicated that
parents were actively involved themselves in availing educational materials to their children
with mean values of 3.69 and standard deviation of 0.46. The statistical t-test also signifies
above analysis. Thus, whether teachers and students view differ on the parental involvement
in school matters, t-test was computed that the null hypothesis says there is no difference
between their views at 95% confidence interval. The result (t-test = 9.78, df =335, p = .00)
showed there was statistically significant difference, between the teachers and students view
with respect to parental involvement. This study indicated that there were low levels of
parental involvement in school communication concerning school matters. It was
recommended that parental assistance to their children was the only step we can take to
reduce the difference in academic performance between primary school students who
received parental support from students who completely did not receive it.
