Organization: School the World
Country: Guatemala, Honduras
Education level: Early Childhood, Primary, Lower Secondary
Organization type: Nongovernmental organization
Family involvement: Strengthening Home Learning and Caregiving, Building Parent Knowledge and Advocacy Skills
Overview
Founded in 2009, School the World aims to cultivate parents’ role as the first educators in their child’s life. The program uses children’s natural love of learning to combat failing school systems, improve learning outcomes, and disrupt generational poverty (School the World, n.d.c). The First Educators project is one component of this larger strategy. It aims to make students more effective learners by empowering parents to increase their understanding of their role in education and their capacity to engage (School the World, n.d.a). In the First Educators project, parents participate in semimonthly empowerment trainings, where they learn about their rights as a parent, the educational rights of their child, the responsibilities of their teachers, and basic information about the performance of the education system in their community and country.
The initial focus of these trainings is to show parents how they can help their children learn, typically through simple actions like asking their child about their day. Trainers then encourage parents to focus on improving the educational inputs they have control over. For example, parents are asked to ensure their child arrives at school on time and expect that the teacher will be on time as well. The First Educators approach also encourages parents to hold teachers, schools, and governments accountable for delivering quality education. Parents receive resources to guide advocacy efforts for educational change in areas that may initially seem beyond their reach as parents. They are encouraged, for instance, to advocate for policy changes regarding instructional time or curriculum content.
The First Educators program is guided by the belief that empowering parents with knowledge and making clear their importance in the education process can lead to dramatic improvements in education quality. To date, more than 6,800 parents have participated in trainings across more than 100 communities and schools in rural Guatemala and Honduras (K. Curran, personal communication, April 21, 2021). Because these empowerment trainings for parents were implemented in conjunction with a number of other interventions, it is difficult to parse the direct impact of the trainings alone. However, an analysis of the Fair Education program as a whole showed the program created greater adherence to school schedules, a decline in dropout rates, a stronger belief among parents that they are responsible for their child’s education, and an increase in the percentage of students who received homework help from their parents (K. Curran, personal communication, April 21, 2021; School the World, n.d.b).
Resources
References
School the World. (n.d.a). Community schools. https://schooltheworld.org/community-schools-2/
School the World. (n.d.b). Impact report [PowerPoint slides].
School the World. (n.d.c). Meet our team. https://schooltheworld.org/meet-our-team/