Exploring Barriers to Parental Involvement in the Education of Children Living With Epilepsy

Introduction And Background

Parental involvement in their children’s education has been a matter of concern in different countries of the world. As a result, there has been consensus among many researchers that the role of parents is crucial in their children’s education (Jeynes, 2012; Ndwandwe, 2014). Recent educational reforms in South Africa have highlighted parental involvement as an important part of school improvement (Nakagawa, 2000; Mestry, 2006). However, parental involvement is not only a twenty-first century idea or concern. It is an old concept which has evolved over a long time. Throughout the world, parents have always been informally involved in the education of their children, by teaching norms and cultural standards for both family groups and larger society (Greenfield, 2009; Ndwandwe, 2014). According to Miksic (2015), the concept simply implies the ways in which parents can provide support in their children’s education, both in word and deed.

Internationally, the efforts to involve parents are also stressed by the introduction of American educational policies such as the “No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) of 2001”. One of the key goals of the NCLB was to advocate parents’ rights to be involved in their children’s educational matters. For instance, schools were mandated to update and provide parents with regular information about the child’s progress and performance at school. In addition, teachers in the school were also required by law to develop a parental involvement programme and written parental involvement policy that includes parents as partners in creating and evaluating the policy, and planning, evaluating and improving the various programmes for parents. Moreover, the policy mandated schools to provide parents with an understandable description and explanation of what the curriculum entails, which creates a flexible number of meetings with parents; and to effectively channel funds for transportation; to provide childcare; and to promote home visits which are key to successful parental involvement (Ndwandwe, 2014; Tekin, 2016). Again, the significant role of parental involvement was also mandated by the Education for All Handicapped Children Act of 1975, which was later reauthorised as the Individuals with Disabilities Act in 1990 Amendments of 1997, and with the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) of 2004 (Tekin, 2016). This policy emphasised that parents with children with special needs were required to monitor whether the individualised education programme (IEP) was utilised in line with their children’s state of standard of achievement. Therefore, these policies mandated families and parents to get involved in all aspects and decision-making processes that involve planning their children’s education.

As a result, since the establishment of a democratic South Africa in 1994, radical changes in education had been suggested, which involved the promotion of the idea of making parents partners in their children’s education, with policy implications, including guidelines for addressing disability as a barrier to parental involvement in children's education. A call to include a team that consists of various stakeholders, such as parents, teachers and other relevant professionals, was envisaged as needed to offer the necessary support to children living with a disability (Grant & Ray, 2010). While family engagement confers all benefits to learners, those with a disability often require greater parental involvement and advocacy than their peers without a disability. As a result, the role of parental involvement in their children’s education has been an area focus of studies by many scholars in education (Berger, 2008; Jeynes, 2007; Lemmer, 2007). This involvement of parents is highly enshrined in the South African School Act of 1996, which states that parents should take an active role in their children’s education (Republic of South Africa, 1996). Again, the South African Department of Education’s White Paper 6 (2001) policy (EWP 6) on inclusive education identifies lack of parent recognition and involvement as a barrier to child development in the education of children living with a disability.