ABSTRACT
The Soviet Union reversed its family policy in the face of growing child neglect and juvenile crime in the 1940s and has favoured home-school links since the Second World War. At the primary school level the value of close co-operation between home and school is regarded as indisputable. Although the nature of the relationship varies across nations, subcultures, socio-economic strata, communities and schools, there has been an overall trend in all European countries since the 1970s to pay more attention to home education and matching home and school education. In the nineteenth century, schools were expected to educate the younger generation beyond parental competences, while parents were responsible for sending their children to school and for their moral upbringing. Sometimes parental participation leads to too many unnecessary conflicts amongst the participants, or too great cleavages exist between public expectations of and logistic support for co-operation.
