ABSTRACT
Parents have assumed some importance in our analysis so far in that within the teacher’s perspectives the home is seen as having a crucial role in influencing if not determining the educability of the pupils with whom the school has to deal. Such a view receives official endorsement by social scientists who have explored the social roots of differential achievement. Amongst educational researchers it is widely accepted that factors to do with the home explain much of the differences in pupils’ achievement and that, amongst home variables, parents’ attitudes assume a crucial significance (Floud et al., 1956; Douglas, 1964; Wiseman, 1964; HMSO, 1967 (Plowden); Goodacre, 1968). They function through their role in influencing the child’s motivation and interest in school work, in facilitating the child’s initiation into the school culture and in generally supplementing and giving support to the activities of teachers within the school. It follows from such a perspective that those committed to reforming education would be particularly interested in trying to bring about improved home-school co-operation. In so doing, hopefully, parents not presently contributing to their children’s education can become more enlightened and thus better able to provide the kind of supportive environment their children need (Young and McGeeney, 1968).
