The accelerated pace of life and heavy workloads have made it increasingly difficult to engage parents in parental involvement, and the lockdowns during COVID have also weakened this relationship (Brown et al. 2011, Wright, et al. 2022). It is a current research challenge to re-examine the factors that promote and hinder parental involvement. Researchers classified the factors affecting the quality of the family-school partnership into child-related, parent-related, and school-related types (Epstein, 2001, Magwa & Mugari, 2017). Perents influence students’ school performance in many ways, and the biggest challenge for the education system is to compensate for the resulting disadvantages. Education policies aimed at reducing social inequalities in the school system emphasize the importance of involving parents in their children’s school life and studies, and of developing family-school partnerships (Epstein 2001). Current research suggests that school policies, district leaders and principals’ support for family and community involvement can dominantly influence parents’ attitudes toward schools (Epstein, et al. 2011).

Significant differences can be observed in parental involvement by social background. Parental involvement is much higher for parents from favorable social backgrounds even today(Guo et al., 2018; Pribesh et al., 2020, Gibbs et al. 2021). A key reason for this lies in parents’ different communication, worldviews, and attitudes due to social differences and in the resulting teacher-parent distance. Unfavorable social status influences parenting through low educational attainment, lack of positive school experiences, lack of information, and insufficient confidence in the educational process (Morawska et al. 2009; Bæck 2010). Some explain the low intensity of parental involvement to economic disadvantage, low income, inflexible and longer working hours, the need to supplement income, and time constraints due to overtime (Dyson et al. 2007). It is the low SES families, for whom an effective Family-School-Community Partnership (FSCP) would be key to promoting their children's success in school. This raises the critical educational policy question of how to support parental involvement of low SES families. Epstein argues that the school policies that support FSCP can reduce the disadvantageous impact of low-SES families on PI. Research results do not clarify which school policies effectively involve low-status parents in different school cultures.

This research aims to reveal the types and effects of FSCP policies in Central and Eastern Europe. The main question of this research is: Which policies are successful in involving low-SES parents? Our research focuses on the most hard-to-reach, yet most significant actors: how parents of different SES perceive the schools' FSCP policies—hypotheses: (1) A more favorable SES results in a more active home-based and school-based PI. (2) Parental SES impacts parents’ perceptions of FSCP policies. (3) Parents’ perceptions of FSCP have a greater impact on home-based and school-based PI than individual student- and parent-related factors.

The research on which this presentation is based has been implemented by the MTA-DE-Parent-Teacher Cooperation Research Group and with the support provided by the Research Programme for Public Education Development of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences. The Parents from Three Countries (PARTS’22/23) survey was conducted among parents of upper primary and general secondary school students in three Central European countries, Hungary, Romania, and Ukraine (N = 1002). The target population was parents from both majority and minority ethnic groups. The sample was selected by stratified sampling for the county, the maintainer (public and church-run), and the type of school (upper primary school and general/vocational secondary). The questionnaire was adapted from internationally recognized parent questionnaires (Family Involvement Questionnaire, Parent and School Survey, Barriers to Parental Involvement), considering the specificities of Hungarian-speaking schools and their parents. The questions covered Epstein's 6 dimensions of PI from the parent's perspective. It also included key demographic indicators, school characteristics, and items measuring student characteristics (e.g. school achievement) of parents who completed the questionnaire. The adjusted instruments proved to be suitable for the particular educational context.

For the parents surveyed in the present study, differences in PI between parents of different SES can be identified—a more favorable SES results in a more active home-based and school-based PI. Parental SES has significant effect on FSCP policies perceptions. Among low-SES parents, three policies were reported to be perceived more often than among high-SES parents: parent community development, contact with school support staff (e.g., social worker, pedagogical assistant), and personal counseling they receive personally from the teacher in case of their child-rearing problems. At the same time, low-SES parents were hardly involved in decision-making, contact via social media networks, volunteering in school, and contact initiated by the school, while high-SES parents perceived them as more significant. In sum, low-SES parents perceive community development policies and individual support as more significant than high-SES parents. The last part of the analysis measured student, parent, and institutional characteristics as predictors of school based and home based PI using a logistic regression model. Even in this multivariate model, which includes many covariates, the SES indicator of parents remained significant as a determining predictor of PI. The perception of school policies however has a greater impact on PI than individual student- and parent-related factors. The main conclusion of the study is that FSCP policies could have an independent effect on PI, but different policies are effective in different parent groups. Based on these results, it could be recommended that schools develop demand-responsive community programs and offer personal consultation with teachers and school support staff, especially considering the characteristics of low-SES parents' perceptions presented here.

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