ABSTRACT
As previous chapters have indicated, parents have a crucial role to play in the education of their children. In the United Kingdom schools have sought to develop close links with homes to enable teachers and parents to work together for the benefit of children’s learning. A particular focus of many home-school partnerships has been the teaching of reading. However, the development of such partnerships has been less successful in minority language communities. Schools have found that cultural and linguistic differences have created barriers to collaboration. The effect has often been that schools are frustrated in their attempts to offer an equal education for all children, and many parents remain helpless in their attempts to support their children’s literacy learning. This chapter provides the perspectives of Asian parents in Birmingham, as Pakistani, North Indian and Bangladeshi mothers describe the strategies they use to support their children’s learning, and articulate their attitudes towards literacy education. The chapter describes recent initiatives of two Birmingham primary schools with large Asian populations which set out to develop home-school literacy links; parents were asked about their response to these projects. The chapter concludes with a number of recommendations for schools developing such initiatives in minority language communities.
