This study starts with the analysis of the national backgrounds of parental involvement and participation in thirteen European countries, to identify the openness of educational systems towards parents. Data were retrieved from reports of Eurydice, OECD and the European Social Survey, which contain information about legislation, rights and duties of parents and national policies of the different countries, and converted into indicators to calculate a comparative Index crossing two different dimensions: i) educational systems openness to parents´ involvement and participation level, and ii) trust and participation level, because the democratization of schools is based on parents’ volunteerism (Epstein, 2009). Results show that Portugal is one of the countries in which the educational system is more open to parents’ involvement and participation, although its population has one of the lowest levels of trust and participation. This could be interpreted that parents do not have appropriate forms of involvement and participation instruments at their disposal. To look closer to parental involvement and participation in Portugal, a multiple case study was conducted in six Portuguese schools through documents´ analysis and semi-directed interviews applied to deans, Parent-Teacher Associations’ presidents, teachers and parents. The school documents, interviews transcripts and observations notes were subjected to content analysis and then systematized into several categories to convert them into indicators to elaborate several multiple correspondence analysis with SPSS to identify different profiles of PTA’s and parents’ representatives and of teacher-parent relationships. Results confirmed Portugal’s position in the Index explained above. Most parents do not participate in schools and class councils because: i) they don´t know about the existence of Parents’ Representatives, ii) are unable to communicate with them, iii) they rather solve problems or give suggestions to teachers by themselves. In many schools, parents’ representatives seem to be a merely bureaucratic figure in schools. They do not real participate because many are just appointed by other parents to be the class or school representative but lack the motivation and/or the capacity to play that role. Key-words: parent participation, educational systems, compared analysis

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