4. HSC intervention

2. Schools welcomed parents to participate in school activities. But at the same time, they realized the need to train their staff to establish good relationship with the parents.
3. For parental involvement in school administration, schools have been reported to have established Parent-Teacher-Associations (PTA) and informed parents on school administration only.
4. Principals have rarely made use of community services to facilitate school education.

1. Schools enrolling students of middle class showed the highest effectiveness in motivating parents to take voluntary duties in school. Those schools with a majority of upper class or the lower class, tended to have much fewer parent volunteers in school activities.
2. Schools enrolling relatively more new-immigrant-students had fewer parent-volunteers. It appears that new-immigrant-parents may have difficulties in participating in school activities.
3. The establishment of PTA and the implementation of decentralization of school administration have facilitated the use of parent-volunteers in school.
4. Female principals were found to be more enthusiastic in motivating parents to participate in school activities than their counterparts,

4.2.1 Teachers’ zone of acceptance for parental involvement at home and in school

1. For parental involvement in school governance, most of the teachers would prefer parents not to get involved in or make any decisions on school administration. They mostly preferred schools to inform or consult parents on school affairs. On 'staffing' and 'school management committee meetings, over half of the teachers thought parents should not be involved. On school policies, such as curriculum development, about half of them preferred schools to ‘inform’ parents only. For homework policy and arrangement of extracurricular activities, teachers preferred schools to ‘consult’ parents. Lastly, only on parent affairs and setting up PTA, teachers would accept parents to ‘make decisions’.
2. In exploring teachers’ perception of parental involvement in children learning, overall speaking, teachers thought most of the parents could not ‘always’ take responsibilities of their children’s education. About 85 percent of teachers thought parent never or seldom participate in school governance. About 60 percent of the teachers thought parents never and seldom volunteer in school activities. Only about 10 percent of the teachers thought the parents in their school often help their child at home and in school.
3. In examining teachers’ request for parental assistance in their children’s (children) education, we found that regarding home-based parental involvement, teachers had ‘always’ suggested parents to supervise their children’s learning and homework, to provide ideal learning environment and good learning experience to their children. On school-based parental involvement, teachers generally only asked parents to keep contact with school.

4.2.2 Teachers’ attitude and practice in six types of involvement

1. Based on Epstein’s six types of parental involvement, the study has found that teachers perceived ‘parenting’ as the most important, followed by ‘home-school communication’. In the actual situations, ‘home-school communication’ was the most frequent activity, followed by ‘parenting’.
2. The most often used channels by the teachers to contact parents were meetings-in-person, student handbooks and telephone calls.
3. The cause of teachers to contact parents was problem-oriented, especially when the students had academic and behavioral problems.

4.3.1 Correlation between family SES and Parental Involvement

1. The analysis shows that parents’ SES is highly correlated with the first form of home-based involvement. In another word, the higher SES of parents, the more active they are in helping children learn at home and in communicating with their children at home. Besides, families' income and parents' education are also related to home-based involvement. On the contrary, parents of high SES tends to have less ‘home disciplines’ or ‘homework supervision’. Or even, their involvement has negative correlation with the above two forms of home-based involvement.

　

2. As far as school-based involvement is concerned, parents of high SES are more likely to participate in ‘parenting education’ and ‘home-school communication’, in addition, they are also more willing to make donations to school. However, ‘parent volunteering’ at school is related to parents’ education, yet has little to do with their occupations. It appears that, parent of high educational level are relatively more active in ‘school volunteering’.

4.3.2 Correlation between family SES and family resources

1. The result of the survey shows that ‘expensive consumption’ is highly related to family SES and income. The ‘expensive consumption’ refers to not only expensive consumer goods, such as family car(s), personal computer(s) and so on, but also expenses on hiring private tutor to teach children music (including musical instrument) or instruct children’s homework. ‘Expensive consumption’ may also enable parents to take children to travel abroad (excluding traveling in the Mainland China).
2. ‘Cultural capital’ (i.e. joining a music class or other interest class in a group setting, having literatures or storybooks) is also correlated to family SES, though not as strong as that between ‘expensive consumption’ and SES.
3. ‘Learning space for children’ (including a private desk or a private room for school children) is even less correlated to SES. However, both ‘magazines and books’ and ‘popular consumption’ have a stronger correlation with SES than ‘learning space’.
4. In brief, parents from higher SES tend to have higher level of ‘expensive consumption’ and ‘cultural capital’ (consumption). They more likely provide a quiet place for their children to study and a greater variety (more different types) of magazines and books for them as well. But they are less likely to adopt ‘popular consumption’ such as engaging their children in a (go to) tutor group or going (go) to China during holiday. Surprisingly, electronic dictionary, English and Chinese dictionaries have no correlation with SES. Perhaps because general school children all have this type of reference books in Hong Kong.

1. Family Resources

As we have mentioned previously, ‘expensive consumption’ refers to family car(s), family PC, and the like. Children from families with such consumer products seem to perform well in English scores. However, their scores in Chinese and Mathematics have no obvious correlation with ‘expensive consumption’. Children of ‘expensive consumption’ have higher academic scores in English and higher scores in general self-esteem. Yet such students have lower scores in Chinese and Mathematics self-esteems than those possessing no expensive consumer products.

‘Cultural capital’ refers to families having encyclopedia, children magazines, etc. They also tend to send their children to music class or other interest class in a group setting. Such family investment has a positive correlation with their children’s scores in Chinese, English and Mathematics, especially with their English score. Other factors, such as general self-esteem, Chinese self-esteem and English self-esteem are all in strong correlation with ‘cultural capital'; with Mathematics self-esteem as the only exception showing no correlation with it. In general, parental investment on ‘cultural capital’ can best improve children’s language level and self-esteem.

A favorable ‘learning space’ has a strong correlation with student academic scores in Chinese, English and Mathematics. Children from families with a ‘learning space’ for them have quite positive general self-esteem, Chinese self-esteem and English self-esteem. However, ‘learning space’ is not really related to their Mathematics self-esteem.

Although ‘magazines and books’ are correlated with English scores, general self-esteem and Chinese self-esteem, the correlation is not very strong. It is worthy of noting that dictionaries have no strong correlation at all with other academic scores and their related self-esteems. Whereas ‘popular consumption’ (including attending tutor groups and traveling to Mainland China) even has negative correlation with a student’s academic scores in Chinese, English and Mathematics. The finding indicates once more the important impact of cultural capital and books on a student’s language development. Attention should be paid to the fact that participate in-group tutoring does not do much in improving a student’s academic performance.

In sum, with limited family resources, parents should make a wise investment in order to promote children’s learning experiences. This research shows that as the most important family resources, ‘cultural capital’ (encyclopedia, magazines for children, and so on) and extracurricular readings have a great effect both on a student’s academic performance and self-esteem. ‘Learning space’, if not as important as ‘cultural capital’, also has a strong impact particularly on a student’s Chinese performance and self-esteem. Comparatively speaking, neither ‘expensive consumption’ (for instance, PC and hiring a private tutor) nor ‘popular consumption’, (such as attending group tutoring or traveling to the Mainland China) is able to support children’s learning experiences. Parents may take the effect of private tutoring into consideration: tutoring providing solutions or conducted in question-answer style only is in no way to solve a student’s academic problems, let alone increasing his/her thirst for knowledge.

2) Parental involvement

On the other hand, according to the correlation analysis, ‘home communication’ has strong correlation with a student’s English and Chinese scores. It is also correlated with a student’s general self-esteem, Chinese self-esteem and English self-esteem. ‘Home disciplines have no correlation with Chinese or English scores. It even has negative correlation with Mathematics scores. However, ‘home disciplines’ is correlated with a student’s Chinese self-esteem and English self-esteem. That is to say, when parents set up a schedule including learning time for children, children can have a sense of security. They may even feel that under such situation they are able to enjoy a strong Chinese performance, though their Chinese scores are not affected. ‘Homework supervision is not much correlated with a student’s academic scores in Chinese or Mathematics. Neither is it much correlated with a student’s general self-esteem, Chinese self-esteem or Mathematics one. However, ‘homework supervision’ has negative correlation with both English scores and self-esteem.

As far as school-based ‘parental involvement’ is concerned, ‘home-school communication’ has positive correlation with a student’s academic scores and self-esteem both in multiple subjects. On such account, ‘home-school communication’ deserves further promotion on school side. ‘Parental donation’ has positive correlation with a student’s academic scores both in Chinese and Mathematics. Such parental involvement has a positive effect on a school child’s general self-esteem and Chinese self-esteem. ‘School volunteering’ has negative correlation with a student’s academic scores in Chinese, English and Mathematics, yet it gives him/her even higher general self-esteem and English self-esteem than other factors.

It is really hard to interpret such an interesting finding. One possible explanation is that: when parents act as an instructor in an interest class or volunteer in library work, school children may feel that their parents are accepted by school and making contributions to it. Therefore, students may have even higher self-esteem. But why such kind of parental involvement has negative correlation with a student’s academic scores? One of the explanations could be that a child’s poor academic performance mobilizes his/her parents to get involved more actively in school campus with the aim of identifying their child’s academic problems and looking for solutions to improving his/her academic performance. Volunteering enables parents to collaborate more actively with teachers in tackling their children’s academic problems. In a long run, this involvement might improve their children's learning. Further longitudinal studies are needed to exploration this hypothesis of the impact of volunteering on solving students' learning problems.

4.4 Effect of HSC intervention in Four Pilot schools

The research team has set out and indeed has fulfilled four major goals:

4.4.1 Assisting the schools to launch and further enhance their ‘Home School Collaboration’ program:

1) Staff development seminars and consultation have helped the school members widen and deepen their knowledge and perspective on ‘Home School Collaboration’.

2. In terms of communication with parents, schools do not just maintain daily information sharing and logistics, but also try to orient parents into the school culture. Various forms of contact and communication have been used to suit the different needs of the parents. For instance, Parent networking was organized and parent support groups were formed.
3. More in-depth parent education programs took place. Apart from isolated one-time-shot talks, the schools have introduced a ‘parent education course’ which emphasizes on accumulating knowledge and deepening understanding in parenting.
4. Parent participation in students’ learning has increased, by the form of helping to prepare teaching aids, escort students in outings, listen to students reading, as well as in story telling and tutorial classes.
5. A parent center was set up in each of the schools for parents to drop in. Sharing of art hobbies, concerns, smart household tricks, and discussion on ways to contribute to the school were the common activities in the Parent Center. In the parent center, ‘Home School Collaboration’ is no longer limited to home and school, but among ‘homes’.

1. To cope with the ‘extra’ work and shift to the role paradigm relating to developing ‘Home School Collaboration’, teachers found it very taxing. They used to have hardly any time and energy to steer around their daily pressing work.
2. The contribution of the home-school coordinator who helped out during the research period is much appreciated. If ‘Home School Collaboration’ is going to be promoted significantly in schools, the creation of such a post and the training of a specialist in the field are deemed a necessity.
3. Schools need professional support in preparing the staff members to fulfil (take up) the task of enhancing ‘Home School Collaboration’. Teacher education curriculum has very little room to touch on this topic.
4. Schools can use a “Support Team” which can cater to the needs of the school at the initial stage of launching or developing ‘Home School Collaboration’ program in school. This team can phase out when the school will gradually integrate ‘Home School Collaboration’ into their routine.
5. Four "parent support groups" were formed in each of the Primary 1 class. A lot of manpower had been spent in introducing the idea to parents and linking them to their group liaison person. As many other teachers follow the example of the liaison worker in setting up voluntarily (to form) parent support groups in their own classes, it speaks for itself how teachers recognized the significance of these groups. However, not surprisingly, the feedback was that teachers had (have) to spent a lot of efforts to kick off these groups.

On the whole, the field experience has proven to be valuable and has shed (throw) light on issues concerning the development of ‘Home School Collaboration’ in primary schools.

2. The research also indicates that even if primary school teachers attach great importance to parenting education, in practice, what is done in schools is far from being satisfactory. Since school administrators may have realized that school is an ideal location for parenting education, school may first identify parents’ main concern and need, then provide site, in order to eventually offer tailor-made courses on parenting education. School may coordinate its social worker, voluntary organizations and other resources in the same district to jointly sponsor such courses. The government had allocated a fund of HK$ 50 million for promoting parent education and parental participation in educational affairs. The Education Department in particular has set up the Steering Committee on Parent Education, aiming to discuss policies on parent education and resource allocations. Schools that may have worked out their own unique blueprint for parent educations are eligible to apply for grant from the Steering Committee.
3. Most of the parent teacher associations (PTA) in Hong Kong usually build up contact with parents by sponsoring activities of entertaining nature first. To our great delight, we noticed that the current home-school communication is experiencing the transition from the problem approach to a more positive one. The research shows that positive home-school communication provides parents the opportunity to know the daily operations of school, which further increases parents’ satisfaction towards the general school situation. In the meanwhile, such positive approach also helps to enhance students’ self-esteem and improve their academic performance.
4. On classroom level, teachers may organize parent network in order to improve their communication with parents. Such network will become a sound basis for implementing various parent activities. According to our experiences with four pilot schools, a class master may divide his/her class into a few groups while inviting one parent to work as a coordinator in each individual group. This coordinator acts as a bridge for communications. Other parents may then present their opinions through this parent coordinator. In some European countries, such as France, Germany and Spain, a parent class council is set up in each school. While in Denmark, the National Parent Association is making an effort in mobilizing schools all over the country to adopt such a model to elect a most representative PTA

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5. The Education Department is promoting school-based management by delegating power to principals, teachers and parents respectively. More specifically, principals may gradually open up school governance referring to the perceptions of both teachers and parents. In school affairs directly related to children learning experience, such as offering new courses, classes allocation, languages used in teaching, and so on, principals should explain to and consult parents and teachers in advance. In order to involve parents in making policies on school affairs, effort must be made in catering more than ever to the needs of different students. Such an effort will facilitate a school’s overall development and ensure students’ healthy development.

6. The four pilot schools shared common features: (in that) they are all subsidized schools working with roughly the same amount of resource and similar mode of operation. However the results are not alike. It is too presumptuous to establish a conclusion trying to explain for the different outcomes. However it is not (far) wrong at all in suggesting a few possibilities for further investigation: 1) how strong the school principal believes in home-school collaboration and 2) the availability and the readiness to deploy school resources.

2. On the other hand, the research also indicates that the higher SES of parents, the more willing they are in participating in school volunteering. Therefore, they are able to help other parents who are less privileged in coping with student academic problems. Furthermore, they are even able to explain to other parents new school policies or practices. As parents are in a better position to understand and to get involved in both the internal and external affairs of the school, their involvement will eventually help to improve students’ academic performance and their self-esteem.
3. It is worthwhile to note that families of expensive consumption (such as cars or computers) do not necessarily nurture students of both good academic performance and high self-esteem. This findings echoes well with the findings in the US and Canada, which further proves that cultural capital plays a very important role in improving students’ academic performance and enhancing their self-esteem. On this account, parents should get their children involved more often in cultural activities. In addition, limited resources should be spent on literatures and storybooks. They may also take their children to visit public libraries and arrange them to participate in field trip so as to further enlarge students’ vision.

1. The Government has to make a greater commitment in creating “a reading space” and improving cultural life of the citizens. This research notes that cultural capital has a great impact on students’ academic improvement and the construction of their positive self-esteem. Therefore, there is an urgent need for the Government to review whether the existing public libraries, community facilities or recreational activities can fully satisfy the need of both students and their parents. First of all, more public libraries should be set up within different communities so that all children may have access to borrow books. In each residential community, a small-sized library should be set up so that parents will easily take their children to read over there. Some large shopping malls may reserve a reading corner for parents and children during their shopping break.
2. Parent centers should be set up at the different school districts. As a place attracting parents to come over, a parent center offers parent education programs, provides educational resources for parents, and holds recreational activities and serves as a learning center for parents and community members. For instance, the parent center can establish reading club, which can enrich their parenting experiences through reading and communicating with one other. Such a district-based center caters better to the interest and needs of both children and parents. This center can also provide training for the home school coordinators of the school-based parent center and support the school-based HSC programs by exchanging experience.
3. Building up “a parent support network” is an ideal starting point, if we should say. In order to create a space for parents to get involved in school, coordination is needed in meeting the teaching need of teachers at the same time. By way of building up “parent support network”, it helps construct a culture of mutual support among parents and functions as a bridge between school and parents. “A parent support network” also serves as a vital foundation for a school to promote parenting education, parent volunteering and parental involvement in school administration and various other school activities.
4. The Government should systematically sum up local experiences in Hong Kong, promote successful models, stipulate policies ensuring parents of different backgrounds from all the schools to participate in parent education, and adopt a comprehensive home-school collaboration models. Such effort should aim to enhance the mutual support between home and school so that both parties should jointly take the responsibility of nurturing and educating the young generation.
5. Finally, as employers, government and enterprises must make a commitment in providing more flexible working hours or even paid leave for the parent employees so that parents from different social classes will be able to get involved more completely in child education. For instance, in the past few years, the government of the USA is very active in contacting and praising enterprises that offer support for their employees. Also in the US, some non-governmental forces even initiated the nation-wide “Appleseed movement” to advocate that all parties should be involved, be it families, schools or enterprises, to keep up with the above commitment for the sake of children. Parents are encouraged to give an apple to their employers to remind them that parents are entitled to more flexible working hours in order to educate their children. The apple gift also serves to remind school to adopt a more open attitude towards parental involvement