Abstract

Existing researches widely recognise the significance of parental participation in children’s schooling. Many of these distinguish barriers of involving migrant parents as a crucial factor in children’s education. Previous studies suggest that in UK, teachers, schools and education policy have explicit expectations of parents to participate and implicitly consider them as a homogenous group. However, Bangladeshi migrant parents living in UK, whose own educational experiences are different from their children’s, are likely to have a very different set of assumptions about schooling and their own participation.

 This study focused on identifying factors that might bar migrant parents’ participation in their children’s schooling. By adopting a qualitative approach this study looks into parent’s socio-economic and educational background, their experience as a migrant parent of school going children and their views about participation with their child’s school activity. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with Bangladeshi migrant parents living in the London Borough of Newham. Using those data the paper analyses the barriers that Bangladeshi parents experience in participating in school activities.

Findings of the study suggest that parents’ educational background influence their views and their ways of participating in children’s education. A number of factors are found to be inhibiting their participation in children’s schooling. These include language barrier, lack of knowledge about the UK education system, socio-economic status of the migrants, and student-parent relationships. The study suggests some areas of improvement to ensure an inclusive schooling experience for the migrant children. In addition, future research possibilities are mentioned.

Keywords: Home-school partnership, Barriers, Immigrant, Parenting, Inclusion