Parents’ Perceptions of School Support During COVID-19: What Satisfies Parents?

Abstract

During the COVID-19 pandemic lockdown, face-to-face schooling could not be performed continuously, and alternative ways of learning had to be organized. Parents had to act as their children’s home schooling tutors while working from home, and schools had to deal with various alternatives to distance education. Since parents are by all means both important school users and partners, their perceptions of schools can be considered a central indicator for assessing school quality. In this respect, during school lockdown, parents’ school satisfaction may reflect schools’ ability to adjust and react to fast social changes with almost no time for preparation. To date, there is nearly no knowledge about school satisfaction or school support during this challenging situation. Using data from the COVID-19 survey of the German National Educational Panel Study, we identified central predictors of parents’ perceptions of school support during the national lockdown in Germany in spring 2020. All students (N = 1,587; Mage = 14.20; SD = 0.36; 53% girls) and their parents (Mage = 47.36; SD = 4.99; 91% women) have participated in the longitudinal survey for at least 8 years. The results of the structural equation model indicate that the perceived support and abilities of teachers have been especially relevant for parents’ school satisfaction during the time of the school lockdown. In contrast, factors relating to parents’ and children’s backgrounds seem to be less important.

Learning in Troubled Times: Parents’ Perspectives on Emergency Remote Teaching and Learning

“…Parents were concerned with their children's learning [22,36] and distrustful of the educational institutions' capacity to address the situation with competence [36]. The perceived support and abilities of teachers were acknowledged, through a longitudinal study, to be the main predictors of parents' school satisfaction during the lockdown period [24].…”

“…We also consider a contextualized analysis to be valuable, given the fact that not only the pandemic affected different parts of the world at different times and intensities, but also that national and local educational responses to schools' closings were not universal. This is also an underexplored point of view in international studies [21][22][23][24]. Additionally, there is a lack of research concerning online learning in the early years [25][26][27].…”

Parental experiences during remote education in Paraguay: a comparison between the beginning and the end of 2020

“…They also had to deal with the motivational aspect in relation to their children (Garbe et al, 2020;Mak, 2021) or with the distractions that arose and were easily incorporated by the children, mainly the younger ones. In addition, considering the academic activities proposed, almost half of the parents agreed that they were very difficult to understand, either because they had almost total ignorance about the subject matter or simply because they did not have enough guidance to carry them out (Haller & Novita, 2021). The findings also show that mothers were the main responsible for following up their children's process in almost all cases of remote education at home, as suggested by other research (Aladsani, 2021;Bunga et al, 2021;Lau et al, 2021).…”

Adolescent Resilience during the COVID-19 Pandemic: A Review of the Impact of the Pandemic on Developmental Milestones

“…A study conducted in Germany by Haller and Novita (2021) found that parent perceptions of school support and educator abilities during distance education were especially relevant for parents’ levels of school satisfaction. Parents reported higher satisfaction when distance learning was implemented effectively, and if educators’ technical capabilities and the school’s technical infrastructures were up-to-par [ 126 ].…”