Immigrant Parents' Voices on Children's Right to Education in South African Schools: Connecting the Disconnected

Authors

  • RN Nylon Marishane Department of Education Management and Policy Studies, Faculty of Education, University of Pretoria, South Africa

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.36941/jesr-2021-0129

Keywords:

immigrant learners, duty of care, quality education, integration, parent engagement

Abstract

This paper focuses on the school's protection of the right to education for immigrant learners as perceived by their parents.  With its approach to the subject from the human rights-based educational perspective, this paper sought to examine immigrant parents' views on their children's right to education against their background as vulnerable and marginalised school community members. The assumption on which the study presented in this paper is based is that meaningful discussion on the right to education for immigrant learners cannot be disconnected from the challenges their parents face in educating them. Immigrant parents have their views and experiences relating to children's educational rights, which are seldom studied. Guided by this view, a qualitative approach was followed to gather data through semi-structured individual interviews held with parents of immigrant learners from four purposively selected South African township schools. The results show that immigrant parents experience enormous challenges in the education of their children in South African schools. While some of the challenges are transferred from them to their children because of non-citizenship, they attribute most of the challenges to people who teach their children, namely, teachers.   

 

Received: 2 August 2021 / Accepted: 3 October 2021 / Published: 5 November 2021

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Published

2021-11-05

How to Cite

Immigrant Parents’ Voices on Children’s Right to Education in South African Schools: Connecting the Disconnected. (2021). Journal of Educational and Social Research, 11(6), 68. https://doi.org/10.36941/jesr-2021-0129