Parental Involvement in School Ground and Facilities Improvement

Abstract

INTRODUCTION

Parents should be actively involved in their children's education at all times. Schools benefit significantly through the effect of successful parental involvement and engagement. In general, parental involvement is regarded as the interaction and assistance which parents provide to their children and to their children's school in order to somewhat enhance on benefit their children's success in the classroom. It is supported by Epstein (1992) when he suggested that parental involvement encompasses six forms and one of these is pertaining to such activities as parents' volunteer work at school. In the Philippine educational system, there is a struggle in having active parental involvement in school. This is because of misconceptions of parents regarding parental involvement in school. This research aimed to describe parents' participation in improving the school facilities and infrastructure which are necessary in the achievement of learning process. As one of the school's stakeholders, parents are expected to be on hands in ensuring the quality of education their children are receiving at school.In this study, it is aimed to determine the contribution of the parents in improving the school facilities and ground.

METHODS

The data collection was done by using in-depth interview, observation, and documentation of the school activities which parents are involved. The interview gathered information about the parents' insights on their participation to school activities. The observation captured the activities and tasks that parents had accomplished. And, the documentation showed the photos of the improvements and the structures built for the improvement of the school ground and facilities, and the attendance sheets of the parent-participants

RESULTS

The parental involvement on the school improvement accomplished the rehabilitation of canteen (March 2018); painting of walls (June 2018); construction of school gate and development of school garden (November 2018); benches (December 2018); and construction of gate and student's pathways and improvement of administration office (January 2019). Parents' involvement in the development of the learning environment of the students has been based on their understanding that parents should be actively participated in providing facilities to support the school. However, only 25% of the parents were actively participating in school development

DISCUSSIONS

The results of this study have agreed to the findings of some researches that parents should provide supporting equipment and efforts to support students' learning activities. It denied the parents' misconception that school is just for students onlyand that they are not accountable to any school-related activities, which in particular is the development of learning environment