REGIONAL EDUCATION LEARNING INITIATIVE AFRICA (RELI-AFRICA) PARENTAL EMPOWERMENT AND ENGAGEMENT BASELINE REPORT

The Regional Education Learning Initiative (RELI) is a member-driven initiative working to ensure inclusive learning for all children in East Africa. The long-term goal of RELI is to empower its members to become effective and influential organizations guided by creation of a knowledge hub, policy/advocacy and transforming organizations as the three strategic pillars. Parental Empowerment and Engagement is one of the themes that RELI members collaborate on to improve collaboration among parents, schools and communities to improve learning outcomes for children. The members are co-creating a relevant framework to guide the design, implementation and evaluation of PE&E initiatives in Uganda, Tanzania and Kenya. Through a desk review process and a qualitative synthesis of 21 PE&E initiatives across RELI members, members of the PE&E Special Interest Group (SIG) have a draft framework that will be validated through pilots in four regions across the 3 countries.

The framework will be piloted across the region with 4 partner organizations that are already championing parental engagement in partner schools and communities. The organizations include; Uganda Society for Disabled Children (USDC), Foundation for Inclusive Community Help (FICH), Pastoral Women’s Council (PWC), and Grassroots Nest for Innovations and Change (GRIC). The purpose of the pilot is to test the PE&E framework, to Identify what works/doesn’t work, to adapt partner interventions and strengthen parent engagement in the learning of children. This baseline survey preceded the pilot with an aim of establishing the status of parental empowerment and engagement against the four pillars of the draft framework namely, communication, collaboration, capacity sharing and leveraging resources. The following learning questions were adopted for the study;

Communication
• What are the mechanisms used by schools to share and seek information from parents and schools?
• To what extent are the communication channels inclusive and how do they integrate feedback from parents?

Capacity sharing and leveraging resources
• How are parents resourced to support home based learning?
• How are teachers resourced to support learning at home?

Collaboration
• What are the mechanisms of collaboration between the parents and schools and how have they worked?
• To what extent do parents and community members feel welcomed to participate in decision making processes at school
• How has the school collaborated with community organizations and businesses in their ecosystem to support school activities?

The study adopted a mixed methods approach that included qualitative and quantitative methods. Data was conducted in a total of 12 schools. Two surveys were administered for learners and parents to get their insights on the different learning questions. A total of 317 learners (51% boys and 49% girls) and 307 parents (45% male and 55% female) participated in the surveys. Key Informant Interviews (12) were conducted for head teachers. Focus Group Discussions (18) were conducted for parents. In depth interviews were conducted with 34 teachers. Following the data collection and analysis process, validation meetings were organized for partner organizations to present the findings, draw key messages and lessons.

The survey findings revealed that all the partner schools affiliated to USDC, FICH, GRIC and PWC had specific strategies for resourcing parents to support home-based learning. Over 75% of the parents irrespective of their education status supported learning of children at home in different ways from providing a conducive environment for children to learn to supporting in homework for those that had some education. There was deliberate effort by schools through teachers to follow up learning of children with special needs through scheduled home visits.

Strategies for support to teachers were mainly tailored to monitoring and quality assurance to ensure they perform their tasks and facilitating their engagement with parents. However, there was limited focus on deliberate capacity development initiatives for the teachers to improve their engagement with parents.

There was collaboration between parents and schools through participation in school events; academic, cocurricular and school development activities. Over 60% of parents reported that they had participated in the events. However, participation of parents in joint conversations with teacher and learners was very low (less than 30%). Poor relations between parents and teachers in some schools also hindered participation and locked out some parents from following up on key learning activities.

Majority of the learners felt that their parents/guardians care about them and were happy with the way they are treated. However, over 15% of learners – mainly those with special needs did not feel that their parents/guardians cared for them and 13% were not happy about how their parents or guardians treated them.

Overall, all the partner schools had multiple communication channels that they used to reach out to parents. The use of verbal communication through learners was the most dominant method used across the schools. Majority (70%) of parents reported that they were able to share feedback with the schools. However, the primary channels that parents use to provide feedback are associated with school events that happen once or twice a term. This implies that parents are missing out on providing schools with feedback on verbal communication, yet it stands out as the dominant method used by the schools.

The schools harnessed diverse community resources that contributed to well-being of the children (health & nutrition, sports, spiritual wellbeing, practical skills - agriculture), improvement in school infrastructure and contributed to teacher welfare. Parents continue to be main contributors and drivers of school development activities. Over 65% of parents confirmed that they had volunteered to participate in school development activities such as; building of staff houses, repairing the school water supply facilities and building of the school toilet and fence among others. Schools were intentional about parental involvement in development activities and worked through SMCs or BoM to get parents’ support. However, there was no evidence of deliberate strategies for mapping other resources in the community to support the schools.

Recommendations

    • There is need to acknowledge and build on parents’ efforts to support learning at home irrespective of their education status. This could be achieved through mapping strategies on how

parents from different backgrounds can support learning of children at home and communicating them using different channels; parent workshops, school, and local community channels.
• Develop capacity of parents to understand holistic learning for children beyond literacy and numeracy through facilitating parent workshops and sharing resource material on how they can
engage learners in acquiring social emotional and life skills.
• Facilitate sessions with School Administrators and teachers to build consensus on interventions to support learning outside school and equip teachers with the capacity and materials to promote the interventions.
• Develop strategy for seeking feedback from parents and learners on their relationship with the teachers. This could be through integrating parent – teacher sessions during the parents’ general meetings.
• Broaden the channels for receiving feedback from parents beyond formal meetings organized by schools. Parent representatives at class level provide an opportunity. Their role could be
strengthened to initiate targeted conversations with parents to receive feedback on school communication.
• Develop resource material and facilitate co-creation sessions with school administrators, SMCs/BOM, and parents to map resources in the school ecosystem, identify how the resources
can add value to learning beyond the school and develop action plans to harness them.
• Support Parent Support Groups (PSGs) to map learning and development needs for learners with different types of disability and orient parents on how they can take care of them.