The question of the popularity and effectiveness of institutions run by non-governmental organizations (NGOs) as compared to public institutions is a matter of considerable debate throughout the world. The effectiveness of schools operated by NGOs, such as churches, religious organizations and foundations, is often explained by the fact that these institutions select and attract higher- status children, who were given better home education (Gibbons et al., 2006), and that school staff develop closer relationships with parents, creating a sense of community around the school (Coleman et al., 1987; Morris, 2010). As might be expected, the quality ranking of the public and the private sector varies from country to country or even from region to region, depending, among other things, on the traditions of the education system, the division of tasks, the regional and local social environment, and the social status of religious parents. 

Families have a great influence on students' educational achievement and the greatest challenge for the education system is to compensate for the resulting disadvantages. The education policy aimed at reducing social inequalities in the school system emphasizes the importance of parental involvement in the children's academic life and education (Epstein, 2010). For this reason, research has been carried out on different ways of parental involvement and its impact on academic performance (Hamlin et al., 2016). Overseas research suggests that the institutional sector can have an impact on the attitude of schools towards parents. In the cross-sector research of parental involvement, the church sector, as the second-largest school provider in America, has received special attention (Hamlin et al., 2016). In the case of religious institutions, it can be assumed that choosing a school based on the parent-school value similarity promotes parental involvement (Coleman et al., 1987). Investigating ways of creating opportunities, early research on church-run schools pointed out specific patterns of engagement with parents (Greeley, 1982; Coleman et al., 1982, 1987; Morgan et al., 1999). Studies have shown that involving parents of low-status students in school activities created a community around the school, which greatly facilitates the cooperation between teachers and parents for the sake of academic success and in order to mitigate the risks that hinder progress (truancy, indiscipline, etc.). Little research was carried out on the details and methods of maintaining relationship with parents, or on how this is perceived by individual actors. In the past, traditional framing of parental involvement dominated, envisioning parents as supporters of school fundraising initiatives and events (Hamlin et al., 2016). Epstein (2010) extended previous models of parental involvement by developing a framework of six major types of involvement. The dimensions of parenting, communication, volunteering, learning at home, decision making, and collaborating with the community have contributed greatly to the advancement of research on parental involvement, as it draws attention to the role of teachers and schools. According to Epstein's approach, the phenomenon receives relatively little attention in schools maintained by NGOs. In a systematic literature review forthcoming in the International Journal of Educational Development, we have presented that not all of Epstein's dimensions are fully implemented in schools run by NGO, however, significant differences can be observed between education systems.

Our analysis, based on Epstein's typology, investigated whether we can speak of a different relationship with parents in NGO-run compared to that in the public sector. Our hypothesis was that we would find a special parent-school partnership in NGO-run schools, different from that in the public sector.

The database for our qualitative research consists of a corpus of semi-structured interviews with 45 primary and secondary school teachers, averaging 68 minutes in length, conducted in the autumn of 2021, based on a self-developed interview outlined within the framework of the research project Developing Teachers’ Skills for Parental Engagement, conducted by the MTA-DE-Parent-Teacher Cooperation Research Group. The research was carried out in the most disadvantaged region of Hungary, which has a high proportion of schools with disadvantaged and highly disadvantaged students. The population consisted of primary and secondary school teachers from all sectors. When providing the sample, we first created groups of schools based on their geographic location, stage of education, the social background-adjusted educational achievement of students, as well as the intensity of parental involvement as reported by the school principal. From the resulting expert sub-sample, interviewers used convenience sampling to select the schools and the teachers interviewed. The interviews investigate teachers' views on parental involvement along 10 dimensions. The interview outline covers the following topics: the teachers, the school, the settlement and the parents, the views on the role of parents, on parental involvement, the parent-school relationship, patterns and fault lines in the relationship, good practices implemented by the school, the parent-teacher relationship and its impact, as well as suggestions related to maintaining relationship. The present research focuses on the correlation between parental involvement and individual institutional sectors. The audio files were converted into text and subjected to text analysis using ATLAS.ti. Each section of the text corpus was assigned a thematic code. The coding was done using a hybrid procedure, i.e., both deductive and inductive coding was used. In deductive coding, the dimensions that provided the subsequent main codes were identified prior to the analysis, while in inductive coding, we identified the individual representations of the interview transcripts that provided the subsequent sub-codes. To increase reliability, the main codes generated during deductive coding were double-coded. Epstein's six types of parental involvement formed the main codes, while eight additional dimensions were identified during inductive coding. A total of 1381 citations were assigned to the 14 codes.

Although it is common to survey teachers in school-parent research, this is mostly done quantitatively, focusing on one or a small number of institutions. In a European context, there is hardly any cross-sector research on the parent-school partnerships and the impact of the pandemic has received scant attention. A novelty of our research is that we investigate partnership in both primary and secondary schools, comparing teachers’ perceptions in the public and NGO sector. A further result is that we can investigate this issue on a dynamically expanding NGO sector/school base. Our analysis shows more of a similarity between the two school-maintaining sectors in terms of parent-school relations, as in the examined area the majority are disadvantaged parents, with whom teachers find it difficult to maintain contact. This is due to the teachers' lack of socio-cultural openness and their lack of skills in dealing with parents. Our results show that the older NGO-run schools with an established culture and the culture of new NGO-run schools that are currently taking shape have different impact on the parent interaction. NGO-run schools with elaborate structures perform strongly in terms of the Epstein’s volunteering dimension. Parental advocacy is weak and formal in both sectors, however, there are individual forms of parental involvement. The latter are partly achieved mainly at primary level, at secondary level there is no demand for cooperation from either teachers or parents in any sector. The practical result of our research is that it has drawn attention to the fact that the parent-school partnership is an area in need of improvement in the examined schools and in teacher training.

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