Media

Education Seminar Series (10) by the Faculty of Education, HKU
“Parents and Schools Partnership for Children”

22 Mar 2014

Today, another Knowledge Exchange Forum on parent education was held in the Centennial Campus of The University of Hong Kong. Educators, school leaders, parent education practitioners, committee members of Parent-Teacher Associations and parents attended the event.  Due to oversubscription, another venue was opened for participants to follow the speakers via video conferencing facilities.  The Dean of the Faculty of Education Professor Stephen Andrews delivered the welcome speech. 

The forum pondered on the question of in-school parent education.  It raised the issue of whether schools have the duty of facilitating parents in fulfilling their roles as primary educators through parent education and discussed ways of moving forward. The event featured multiple perspectives on in-school parent education.

From the academic perspective, Dr. Pang Ming Fai, Associate Dean and Associate Professor, and Dr. Luis Go of the Faculty of Education expounded on their research findings on parental learning and emphasized the need for regarding parents as learners and schools as learners with the parents and for regarding parents as partners in learning and partners in educating the children. For school children to learn better, educators need to help the parents to learn better. Schools and parents should become learning partners in order to facilitate parental learning and consequently student learning. 

From the school leaders’ perspective, Mr. Edmund Lim, a school principal of a Singaporean primary school and Mrs. Gloria Chan, school principal of Kau Yan School emphasized the necessity of commitment among the top leadership in the schools for parent education to take off and to take root in school.  Mr. Eric Chan, an IMC school manager of Tak Sun Secondary School, talked about the necessary support at the board level, while Ms. Christina Ho, a parent education facilitator and Ms. Tanny Lai, an in-school parent education coordinator, highlighted the need to balance the requirements of different stakeholders in order to move ahead with the programs.  Finally, Mrs. Catherine Sze, a PTA chairlady and Mrs. Lydia Ip, a parent, presented their perspectives as beneficiary and supporters of in-school parent education program. 

Parent education can no longer be ignored by schools.  In order for the schools to form the child properly the collaboration of their parents is essential, otherwise the efforts of the teachers and school leaders in educating the children will be seriously undermined.  However, for parents to work with the schools effectively, they need to fulfill their roles as primary educators of their children.  With the dramatic sociological and technological changes of the last decades, it seems that parents are now unaware and ignorant of the need for appropriate parent education. In order for schools to fulfill their mission of educating their students, it is becoming more obvious that they need to help the parents of their pupils to be better parents.  It was proposed in this forum that this could be achieved more effectively through in-school parent education. 

Schools turned out to be the best venues for parent education.  Schools provide natural and continuous contact with parents thus enabling monitoring of progress in parental learning.  Moreover, they are inherently filters for reducing learners’ diversity among parent learners, and the reduced diversity among the learners is a critical ingredient for deep and reflexive parental learning.  The parents themselves are rich resources for parental learning.  Therefore, it remains for the schools to devise curriculum and strategies on how to harness these resources and for the government to consider policies to support and sustain systematic in-school parent education.

For further information, please contact Ms. Queenie Wong, Senior Manager (Development & Communication), Faculty of Education, at 2219-4270 or qlpwong@hku.hk. To get the press release, please visit http://web.edu.hku.hk/media.php

Photo of the Seminar Speakers

(Names from Left to Right)

Ms Queenie Wong, Senior Manager (Development and Communications)

Mrs Lydia Ip Lau Wing Shun, Parent, Kau Yan School

Mrs Catherine Sze Lam Lai Kwan, PTA Chairlady, Tak Sun Secondary School

Ms Christina Ho Po Po, Parent Education Facilitator, Tak Sun Secondary School

Mr Eric Chan Sze Yuen, IMC School Manager, Tak Sun Secondary School

Professor Stephen Andrews, Dean of Education

Mr Edmund Lim, School Principal, Huamin Primary School, Singapore

Dr Pang Ming Fai, Associate Dean (Cross-border/International Engagement)

Mrs Gloria Chan Leung Suk Ching, School Principal, Kau Yan School

MrsTannyYiu Lai Tan Man, Assistant Principal, Kau Yan School

Dr Ida Mok, Associate Dean (Local Engagement)

Dr Luis Go, Project Manager