Ranjit Podder :The edu-culture throughout the world is changing day by day and the operatives involved in education sector have to be flexible welcoming the changes. Change is the only constant in nature. Robert Brooke has said that teachers teach to change the world. However, if we want to make real difference, we need to change ourselves, the changes will automatically happen. If we start changing, the difference will be visible after some years because changes in education are not visible immediately. In order to reap a better harvest from our educational institutions, teachers’ mindset should be changed and they should be welcoming to students and parents because they need collaborationwith the parents or care givers for better education of the children. Although the said teamworkis much sought by the education administration in Bangladesh, this cooperation is almost absent from most of the institutions. Why is it important to make an effective partnership between the educational institutions and the parents? Both the teachers and the parents work for the intellectual and humanistic growth of the children. Students stay at the institutions for around six hours a day and the rest of the time they stay at home with parents and others. Unless home learning environment and edu-culture is known to the teachers, how will they deal with the students properly? Teacher-parent meetings have never been a pleasant occasion in Bangladesh. In most cases, teachers do not want to speak with the parents freely and frankly; they want to maintain a kind of distance. On the other hand, if invited to schools, usually the parents do not feel honoured; sometimes they hesitate to meet the teachers. Of course teachers’ attitudes towards the parents are not welcoming in most cases; in most cases they suffer from superiority complexes although some of them suffer from opposite complexities.. This situation should be settled for better educational and emotional growth of the students. Parents should be made aware that the benefits of students’ better education will go to them. So, major responsibility to improve students’ quality and virtues goes to the parents. Without their full cooperation, it is quite difficult or sometimes impossible to better educate the children. In order to do that, schools should be welcoming and the parents should be trained about how to take care of their children as well as their education.Institution-parent partnership could be developed by holding meetings in which schools will inform the parents of the progress of their wards. Of course, teachers will have to start with telling about the good sides of their children and then they can give some advice about how to deal with the students at home. On the other hand, teachers can know from the parents about the students’ home behaviours and learning styles. Through the sharing of experiences, both schools and parents together can contribute to the overall growth of the children. Of course, teachers will have to receive and analyze the parents’ criticismpositively. Instead of face to face meeting, schools can communicate with guardians through land and mobile phones, letters, emails, facebook, and website. Teachers can share with parents the results and other performances in each subject, other skills the students have, what was taught in last 2/3 months, how they can take care of their children to build on the weak areas, and so on. Telling parents what schools intend to do in next five/six months, how parents can contribute to execute the school plans, how to handle young children, how to take care of students’ education, and how to behave with the kids and the teens can bring a positive change in the education sector.Additionally, institutions should try to know the expectations of the guardians as quality depends more on the fulfilling the demand of the clientele groups. Of course, it will not be possible to meet every demand but they can sort out and prioritize some for execution. Unless there is a good connection between the clientele groups and the service providers, quality cannot be expected. Schools will have to work hard to give some more than the parents and students expect. How can this be done? Notre Dame College, in our time, used to organize some extra English classes for those who failed or cut a sorry figure in English in the promotion test from first to second year but the college authority did not charge any money for that extra coaching. The Ministry of Education took an initiative to form Parents Teacher Association (PTA) in order to improve the edu-culture of the secondary level institutions of the country. Secondary Education Quality and Access Enhancement Project (SEQAEP) prepared a booklet containing guidelines about how PTA would be formed and how it would function. It is not known how much the initiative has been successful. Probably the initiative of forming a PTA withered in the bud or just flickering at present. Why did a good initiative dieso early? Is there any scope to revive it? The cooperation should be established as students remain in our educational institutions for around six hours a day and the rest of the time is spent with parents and others at home. How is it possible to do desired good to a learner only in five/six hours a day when they spend around 18 hours with parents? Alternatively, if a student becomes successful in life, who will be directly benefitted, teachers or parents? Of course the answer is ‘parents’. So, parents’ involvement, their consent in the students’ development is essential.However, educational institutions will have to come forward to enhance partnership if they want to take their institutions to a height in terms of physical development of the schools and the intellectual growth of the students. Teachers are responsible for better education of our children and we believe that they are aware of the benefits of the cooperation. As the more conscious part of the society, teachers will have to come forward for the partnership. We hope that our education administrators, institutions, and others concerned would come forward to increase the parent-teacher cooperation to reap the highest benefits from the educational institutions.(The writer is an Associate Professor currently posted at Govt. Teachers’ Training College in Dhaka. He can be reached at email: [email protected])
