Welcoming Diversity: Parent-School Participation in Mauritian Preschools across Socio-Economic Backgrounds
Keywords:
Diversity, Private and Public Preschools, Socio-Economic Backgrounds, Parent School Participation, MauritiusAbstract
This study aimed at exploring how Parent School Participation was enhanced in preschools of Mauritius for quality education. The research objective was to compare how far private and public preschools from different socio-economic backgrounds in Mauritius provided the preconditions for preschools to be a welcoming place for promoting parent school participation to address diversity as an objective of Sustainable Development Goal 10 set by United Nations. The method was qualitative observation with interviews of teachers and observations of physical facilities to explore the preconditions for encouraging parents’ participation in preschools. The sample consisted of six purposively selected preschools: three private preschools and three public preschools selected through stratified purposive sampling method from three socioeconomic backgrounds namely; the high, the middle and the low socioeconomic ones and one teacher conveniently selected in each preschool. The results revealed what the pre-schools were doing to attract parents by addressing to their welcome by teachers and preschool amenities that would facilitate parental participation. The private preschool of high socioeconomic background provided remarkable preconditions but the middle socioeconomic background had a lesser attractive one and that of the low socioeconomic background was even less attractive. However, the public preschools did not exhibit preconditions to welcome parent as they were getting children from the Ministry.
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