Parents should be at the pinnacle of their children’s education

The concept of parents being at the pinnacle of their children’s education has been talked about the world over by all people concerned about the plight of lack of vibrant academic success. Several studies have earmarked the significance of a parent’s behaviour on their children’s academic stimulation, their consistency and responsiveness to their cognitive and social development. This explains the constant demand by education policy makers and administrators to pay more attention on the aspect of parent’s involvements in their children learning and its significance to their cognitive development thus academic achievement Away from a range of the often opposing literature on the role of parents in the effective learning of their children, there are considerable values which lie at the heart of effective parental engagement to their child’s effective learning and development. These values clearly define the position of each parent to the proper education and learning of his or her child and once they are not fully utilized, it can easily affect both the academic performance of the child and his or her cognitive growth and development. These underlying values include academic socialisation, parent role construction as well as parenting style. With the academic socialisation virtue, parents here exhibit certain behaviors that portray the constructive impact on learning and its academic outcomes. Under this, parents are expected to engage their children and arouse their desire for education, they must be able to show them the value that is attached to education and learning and discuss learning strategies with children. Parents must be able to connect school work to current phenomena as well as other topics of life to raise their children education aspirations. Once well executed by the parents, it will not only raise the children’s aspirations for education but will also act as a catalyst for stimulating home learning environment and thus making the whole learning process friendly and building students cognitive muscle. This environment will therefore lay a ground for future critical graduates with the ability to solve complex problems and thus affirming their growing self-sufficiency as well as their academic abilities. It is also important to note that the extent to which parents participate in their children’s education and the results there after depends entirely on how they consider themselves as actors in their children’s education and their proper upbringing. It doesn’t matter how parents have actively participated in the teaching and learning of their children be it autonomously or they got engaged as a result of invitations from schools administration, what matters most is what comes along with it and that is it can in turn influence the nature and quality of their engagement for the betterment of their children effective learning and quality education It has also been noted over the years that parenting plays a significant role towards children’s cognitive growth and good academic performance. Once parents allows to having constructive discussion and exchanges with his or her child on a variety issues is conducive to a child’s emotional well-being for schooling years. Once parents take a lead in the whole process of teaching and learning, it creates the atmosphere of inclusive school management and thus taking decision to effect a good learning environment for their children cognitive growth and development. The writer is a PhD student of Comparative Education at Beijing Normal University pontiankbr@outlook.com