In Germany parental involvement in schools has become an important issue within the last years. This has several reasons: parents got more and more rights which they (want to) use, they organize themselves in local and national boards, take the role as actors and by doing so have got a political voice which can hardly be ignored by politicians. However, schools complain about silent parents who are not interested in such an active role. In this presentation we show the results from a quantitative study, carried out in 2014 in Germany and funded by JAKO-O. 3,000 parents, representative of all parents in Germany, were questioned in telephone-interviews about their education policy, their expectations for schools and their participation in formal and informal school-based activities. The data show that parents tend to be more involved in child-centred and informal forms of involvement, than in school-centred activities. The social and ethnic background has a significant effect on participation in school-boards. However, parental involvement in other activities are more influenced by teachers and parental concern with the well-being of their own child. Nearly 60% of all parents wanted to become more involved in school-based activities, especially those with a lower socio-economic or migrant background. Qualitative studies would be necessary to look closer to the processes of exclusion of parents and the barriers they experience that prevent their participation. In addition some results from an explorative study at a school in Hamburg will give further insight in such processes.

Paseka, A. (2014). Elternbeteiligung auf Klassen- und Schulebene. In: D. Killus, & K.-J. Tillmann (eds.): Eltern zwischen Erwartungen, Kritik und Engagement. Ein Trendbericht zu Schule und Bildungspolitik. Münster u.a.: Waxmann, 111-130. Killus, D., & Paseka, A. (2014). Elterliches Engagement für das schulische Lernen des eigenen Kindes. In: D. Killus, & K.-J. Tillmann (eds.). Eltern zwischen Erwartungen, Kritik und Engagement. Ein Trendbericht zu Schule und Bildungspolitik. Münster u.a.: Waxmann, 131-148.