Parental Involvement in Early Childhood Care Education: a Study

This research aims at providing solutions to the parental involvement in early childhood care education centres in Orissa. It will serve as an eye opener to parents and the society in helping to modify or re-adjust their mode of parental involvement towards achieving a better future for themselves and their children notwithstanding their busy schedules and in some cases, inadequacy of resources. A survey approach was used through self- administered questionnaires, and analysis was done using Analysis of Variance (ANOVA) to test the hypotheses. Based on the findings of this work, parental involvement, that is emotional care and support has a very big influence on early childhood education, particularly the academic performance of the child. More so, it was observed that the extent of parental educational attainment has a significant influence on the age which the child is being sent to school. This implies that the extent or level of the parental educational attainment and exposure determines the age at which the child is being enrolled to school. It was also discovered that, the residential setting of the parents has nothing to do with the educational performance of the child. On the whole, parental involvement is very essential in early childhood education and this helps to broaden the child’s horizon, enhance social relationships, and promote a sense of self-esteem and self-efficacy.