International Day of Families 2017
The
International Day of Families is held on 15 May every year. This year the
United Nations has decided to focus on parents as the primary educators of
their children. The message of the year does not only acknowledge parents as
educators and emphasise the crucial role parents play in the education of their
children, but also calls the attention of policy makers to the importance of
empowering parents as well as offering them conditions for balancing work and
family life. The European Parents’ Association has been advocating exactly for
this for more than 30 years and this was also why we fostered the establishment
of the International Parents Network, a global network of people – parents and
non-parents alike – who wish to act for parents and with parents to ensure
parents’ rights for the best interest of the child. Parent activist all over
the world warmly welcome the official message of the UN highlighting the “vital role of
parents in safeguarding good quality education starting with early childhood
and extending throughout their children’s and grandchildren’s lifespan”.
Parents as
primary educators mean two subsequent and interlinked things. Parents are the
first educators of their children, and thus should be able to offer them a good
start in life. A good start in life is crucial for well-being, and is also
crucial not only for physical, but also for social, emotional and cognitive
development in later ages. A good start is best provided by parents in
the framework of the home and the family – in this the UN message
echoes the recent early childhood policy paper of the European Parents’
Association. Part of this good start is the education and
care provided by parents. There is also solid research evidence on parents
having the largest impact on the learning outcomes of their children as well as
their attitude towards learning – this is the other element of being a primary
educator. It is also scientifically proven that taking ownership of their own
learning is probably the only way for children to become apt lifelong learners.
Thus, it is clear from research that those drafting the UNCRC were right in
their approach of putting all responsibilities to parents as well as
recognising children as full-fledged rights holders with special needs to
ensure their rights.
The primary
demand of parents’ associations has been for decades that parents
must be given freedom to make decisions for their children, governments must
provide adequately for empowering the parents for these decisions, and that
their decisions should not be restricted by any financial constraints or
legislative measures. It is important that governments and the EU understand
diversity and adapt systems to that. It needs high level commitment to
provisions and also the systematic application of the principle of
subsidiarity. It should also be a principle to give space for the voice of
children in a balanced way to ensure parents’ rights at the same time.
The UN
Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC) has been ratified by all member
states of the European Union, and all countries of the world except the USA. It
clearly regulates the rights, duties and responsibilities of parents with
regards to the education of their children, and also gives the legal basis for
child participation. The ‘best interest of the child’ should be the guiding
principle when regulating, organising or carrying out anything related to
children from child care and education to the empowerment of parents and
teacher training.
To support
parents in their decision making for their children and in their job as primary
educators, governments and the European Union should support the sharing of
information and knowledge on good parenting, offer financial provisions for
parents’ training, especially peer training, rather than training provided by
others. It should start during pregnancy, when parental training should be as
wide-spread as medical preparatory classes. It is important to ensure training
and information relevant to the age of children to get the most important
messages reach parents.
It is also
crucial for government to understand that the well-being of children is
strongly linked to the well-being of parents, and balancing work and family
life is crucial for this. Policies and measures that are aiming at reconciling
work and family life should be at the heart of government and international
policies. Parents’ access to work is an important part of the solution of
getting children out of poverty and social exclusion, but jobs alone are
not enough. It is also very important to have a rights-based
approach to reconciliation as a whole and measures taken
allowing real free choice.
It is
crucial to invest in training, employment schemes and parenting
support programmes that can raise not only parents’ qualifications and
employability but also help build their parenting skills, their confidence and
overall well-being and improve children’s outcomes. Support for families should
be approached in such a way that it recognises children as social actors
outside of the family. Children have rights on their own and they cannot always
be identified with those of their parents. However, all support is to be
provided for parents enabling them to carry out their rights, duties and
responsibilities in supporting their children in exercising their rights.
Rights base
for parental involvement in formal education
The UNCRC
very clearly gives all responsibility for the upbringing of children to the
parents – or guardians if there are no parents. It means that as long as the
court does not deprive parents of their right to custody, all rights and duties
related to this, including the education of their children is with the parents
and the parents only. Institutions, like schools, are only supporting parents
in this task. This support is also an obligation for states to provide the
necessary support to parents, partly, but not solely by setting up institutions
like schools or offering financial support to families.
This has
many implications and here I list only a few of them:
- Regardless
of what national legislation says about it, it is the parents’ decision if and
when they send their children to school, to participate at formal education
- If
they decide to do so, their duties and responsibilities do not end with
choosing a school and do not stop at the school door
- Parents
have the right to know all aspects of school life and thus either opt out of
school if they don’t like what they get or, in an ideal case, to have the
institutional framework for changing those elements from curriculum and
teachers to the arrangement of the school day/year
- It
is necessary to set up communication channels and representative bodies for the
parents to be able to participate in decision making on group and class level
as well as on school level
- It
is beneficial if there is a bottom up representative of parents on national
level that ensures that the parents’ voice is heard on legislative levels and
also acts as a child rights watchdog
- It
is a must to empower and train parents for all these duties
- Schools
and professional educators – hand-in-hand with other professionals working with
families from the birth of the child – have a role in this training and
empowerment process
- Parents
are to be acknowledged as the primary educators of their children by
professionals, and thus treated as respected peers, even if with a slightly
different role, by teachers and other professionals
Background:
The European
Parents’ Association
(EPA) gathers the parents’ associations in Europe which together represent more
than 150 million parents. EPA works in partnership both to represent and give
to parents a powerful voice in the development of education policies and
decisions at European level. In the field of education, EPA aims to promote the
active participation of parents and the recognition of their central place as
the primary responsible of the education of their children.
The main objectives
of EPA are:
- to promote and advocate for the active involvement of parents as primary educators at all stages of the education of their children,
- to support parents' associations and individual parents for stakeholder involvement in different European countries by offering opportunities for training, cooperation and exchanging information,
- to support the highest possible quality of education for all children in Europe especially by active involvement in EU-level policy development and assessment,
- to disseminate relevant European information among its members.
Contact:
Eszter Salamon, President president [at] euparents.eu
The International Parents Network was established as a sister
organisation of EPA on 1 May 2016 with the ambition to establish a global forum
and global lobby group for parents and on issues for parents. Our aim is to
start an online discussion, a sharing of knowledge, relevant research and
experiences, as well as trying to trigger further research and lobby together
for policy change.
The network
covers the following topics:
-
supporting
parents to become the best educators of their children
-
post-PISA:
increasing parental involvement in formal education for thinking and acting
together for education suitable for 21st century children
-
fighting
illiteracy, promoting reading
-
equal
opportunities for girls and women, education of girls and mothers
-
supporting
parents in becoming the main advocates of the rights of the child
-
the
right to mother tongue and mother culture, even for migrants
-
digital
literacy and living in the digital age
-
empowerment
for active citizenship and participation
-
fighting
xenophobia, hate speech, exclusion, supporting inclusion for a peaceful future
Contact:
InternationalParentsNetwork [at] gmail.com
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