Professional Documents
Culture Documents
2(EFMP3732)
14 /09/2015
The school as a community: parents and
teachers and their responsibilities and
roles.
• Parents are very important stakeholders (partners) in
the community.
• They have specific interest and duties in a school
within their community such as:
Parents duties(1)
• Ensure that their children reap the maximum benefit from
education by offering security, support, caring for the
physical needs, supervising and exercising control over
educational activities at home; e.g. children doing
homework.
• Seeing that their children attend school regularly and make
effort to enroll them in the school and transport them to
school.
• Ensure that they contribute positively to education; e.g.
motivating their children and paying school fees on time if
required.
• Not to frustrate the teachers’ education efforts or interrupt
the teacher unnecessarily when he/she is teaching.
• Exercise control over the life-views put forward in the
school through critical evaluation of educational content,
methodology and activities.
Parents duties(2)
• Accept part of the management of the school; e.g.
formulating local policies, vision, mission, school
atmosphere and the appointment of teachers.
• Provide specialized services to school in the form of
coaching sport, medical services, building school buildings
and constructing sport equipment
• Acknowledge and further the teacher’s professional status.
• Support and amplify the education provided by the school
by providing additional teaching and learning experiences.
• Collaborate with teachers with regard to all activities,
especially with regard to authority, discipline and respect.
Parents duties(3)
• Support the teacher’s request for the better
conditions of service and to further the
teacher’s interests. Teachers expect the
following behaviour from parents:
– Support – moral, intellectual and financial.
– Guidance- Indicate what they want as parents
expect from teachers.
– Respect-personal, professional and academic.
– Involvement- work together as adults, educators
and friends.
Teachers are sometimes not an original and
integrated part of the community in which they
work, but take on some responsibilities
towards the particular community in which the
school is situated at which they teach.
Therefore, teachers need to:
• Act in loco parentis during school hours and see to the children’s safety
and welfare
• Keep the parents fully informed about the children’s progress and
correct improper education through remedial teaching and learning.
• Seek the wholehearted cooperation of the parents of the children under
his/her care. Stumbling blocks must be identified and removed,
sympathy for the expectations of the parents for their children must be
shown, consultation, goodwill, mutual trust, loyalty and understanding
of parents’ problem.
• Official and non-official measures must be put in place for discussions
and meetings, e.g. parents’ evenings, teacher-parent associations,
school board meetings, and informal get-togethers.
Parents also have specific expectations
from teachers:
• Loyalty to and respect for them as parents.
• Courtesy, friendliness and good manners.
• Respect for their children.
• Respect for school and private property.
• Cleanliness and neatness- a teacher should be a good role model to
learners.
• Appropriate social behaviour- sound moral behaviour and
temperance.
• Teaching of the hidden curriculum, dealing with non-syllabus
matters that are important to healthy and positive community life.
• Good planning, administration and class preparation and
subsequently appropriate learner-centred education.
The vulnerable character of the present-
day family
• Vulnerability refers to being in danger of threats like
physical, sexual and emotional abuse, poverty,
malnutrition and no chance of getting access to
education, preventative health or medical care.
• This usually refers to children under the age of 18
whose mother, father or both parents or primary
care giver has died, and/or is in need of care and
protection.
• Unfortunately in our modern times factors such as
economic activities remove and isolate the nuclear
family from the extended family.
• It starts to function as a separate unit, thereby
becoming very vulnerable.
The present day family(1)
• Economically vulnerable: In times of need (unemployment,
retrenchment, illness, death of the father), the family is dependent
upon itself.
• Socially vulnerable: The smaller, isolated family loses stability as
family members are heavily dependent on each other, and when
they experience problems they do not have relatives to turn to.