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Next Gen Literacies

Monolingual school websites as barriers to parent engagement

By December 15, 2021187 Comments5 min read8,083 views

(Image credit: Markus Spiske via Unsplash)

Parental engagement is a critical aspect of student achievement

When we think about student achievement, we typically think about student qualities: how smart a student is, how hard-working, or how personable. What we tend to overlook is the role parents play in their children’s school success. However, parental engagement is critical to student outcomes: parents choose a school or program for their child, they socialize their children into ways of interacting with institutions and their representatives, and they lobby for the needs of their children.

Obviously, different parents have different levels of capacity to engage with their children’s education. As a rule of thumb, middle-class parents are good at engaging with schools and this can secure significant advantages for their children. By contrast, working-class parents often face barriers to engaging with their children’s education.

Language as a barrier to parent engagement

The role of class in parent engagement is well-known, thanks to the work of US sociologists such as Shirley Brice-Heath, Annette Lareau, or Jessica Calarco.

But what about language proficiency?

For children, limited proficiency in the language of the school is a leading cause of educational disadvantage. Children who face the double burden of having to learn new content while learning a new language are bound to struggle, particularly when their double burden is not recognized, and they are compared to peers who are fully proficient in the language and ‘only’ need to learn new content.

Parents who are learners of the school language face the same challenge: being an engaged parent if you are struggling with the language of the school is extra difficult.

Given what we know about the advantages of parental engagement, language thus becomes a social justice issue: parent exclusion from full and equitable participation in their child’s schooling may negatively impact their child’s educational achievement, and have lifelong consequences for their social advancement.

How do schools bridge the language barrier?

Parents with limited proficiency in the language of the school constitute a substantial group in many societies. In some schools they make up the majority of parents.

Can a parent with low literacy in English readily find the enrollment form in their language?

What do schools do to level the playing field for these parents and their children?

That’s what my colleagues Ana Sofia Bruzon, Hanna Torsh, and I wanted to find in a recent research project investigating how enrollment information is communicated to new parents on the websites of some of Sydney’s most linguistically diverse primary schools. The findings of our research have just been published in Language and Education – the article is open access so feel free to click through to the journal!

Schools present themselves as monolingual

One of our key findings is that the school websites and their enrollment information is resolutely monolingual. Languages other than English simply do not seem to exist and they are absent from the websites. Other languages are simply not there – neither for communicative purposes (there is no information available in another language) nor for symbolic purposes (there are no phatic words such as greetings in another language).

We had selected only schools with above-average enrollment of children from non-English-speaking backgrounds. In some of the schools in our sample, the percentage of non-English-speaking backgrounds was as high as 98%. Even so, there is no linguistic trace of this diversity on the school websites.

We argue that this absence of languages other than English shuts out parents with limited proficiency in English from the moment of enrollment; in other words, even from before their child actually starts school.

Translated materials follow a monolingual information architecture

Most of the websites we examined provided the Google Translate plug-in and all had links to translated forms available on the Department of Education website.

This certainly demonstrates an effort to include parents with limited proficiency in English.

Unfortunately, a not-negligible level of English language proficiency is needed to access those translations: you need to know to watch out for English words such as “language,” “translation” or “translated version;” you need to know the name of your language in English and in the Latin alphabet; and you need to be familiar with the conventional sort order of the Latin alphabet.

All of this requires a level of English literacy that renders the translated documents inaccessible for those who need them most.

How can enrollment information be made more linguistically inclusive?

Based on our study we suggest that more attention needs to be paid to linguistically inclusive design.

Specifically, schools should provide a central hub for information in each of the school’s most frequently used languages. This is highly practical as different schools cater to different clusters of languages and 3-5 languages in addition to English will cover the vast majority of languages used in a school’s catchment area.

Such a hub page could explain what further language-specific resources are available and how they can be accessed.

Placing a link to such language-specific pages on the home page and in the flow-through navigation bars in the language-specific name (and script, if applicable) would also add a multilingual dimension to the overall website that makes visible the fact of a school’s linguistic diversity.

In short, such hub pages in languages other than English would address both the information gap and the recognition gap. And it would allow parents with limited proficiency in English to get a foot in the door from day 1 of their child’s schooling.

Read the full research article

Piller, I., Bruzon, A. S., & Torsh, H. (2021). Monolingual school websites as barriers to parent engagement. Language and Education, 1-18. doi:10.1080/09500782.2021.2010744 (open access)

Ingrid Piller

Author Ingrid Piller

Dr Ingrid Piller, FAHA, is Distinguished Professor of Applied Linguistics at Macquarie University, Sydney, Australia. Her research expertise is in bilingual education, intercultural communication, language learning, and multilingualism in the context of migration and globalization.

More posts by Ingrid Piller

Join the discussion 187 Comments

  • Ally says:

    When moving to new country and starting life in a new language, with different customs it can be extremely intimidating and challenging even for the most confident and educated people. Those with lower literacy levels, lower language abilities in their new country’s language or those lacking technology skills could be severely challenged. I believe when navigating school websites and administrative processes it’s important to find safe empathetic community based personalized options for people to be able find resources and get support. People need to talk to empathic understanding cooperative people. Unfortunately, a lot of these services have been cut to save costs and handed over to already over stressed teachers or administrators or outsourced to technology. Schools generally have the percentage of different languages spoken in their school from the children’s’ enrolment forms. From this information a community coordinator could help organize different parent’s support groups, where the parents of each language group share information and support each other. The school’s community coordinator can assist in providing each group with translations of important information and updates of important dates and new activities. They can provide ideas and support to assist parents to communicate with each other and with the school such as with the Chinese parents WeChat groups. For example, there could be a WhatsApp group, email list and newsletter for each different major language groups. Those parents who have some English proficiency could volunteer to share information and assist in facilitating the group to help others access the information in a timely manner. Schools could work with local community organisations to support parents to utilize community language and computer classes so they can learn to navigate in the new language and to use technology. Community grass roots support groups could form a bridge between parents who may feel isolated and intimidated to interact more effectively and confidently with those working in their children’s schools as well as other parents.

    • Thanks, Ally, for all these great suggestions! You are right to point to resource constraints but also show that grassroots efforts do not even have to be extremely costly. Ultimately, the question is whether we value education and inclusion more or less than, say, submarines …

  • Abdulla Zubayr Nafea says:

    In my previous comment, I discussed two approaches (home visits and translation services) that my school used to do to engage with the parents. I believe those approaches were very effective in this particular context. However, I want to share a few more approaches that I believe can be effective in engaging with parents. As Bangladesh is a densely populated area, our teachers have to deal with a huge number of students in one class. Furthermore, it becomes problematic to deal with each and every parent personally through home visits. However, if the school can arrange some kind of workshop every month with the parents where the school will provide different types of training sessions and knowledge about the responsibilities of the parents in their children’s study. These sessions can also focus on basic language skills and can be extended to cover digital literacy to enhance communication through emails, text messages, and school websites. Parents’ conferences can be another effective approach. Conducting meetings with parents on a monthly basis will allow the school to keep the lines of communication open and the key is to ensure parents are informed about their child’s progress and understand how to support their learning at home.

    • Thanks, Abdulla, for sharing this idea. Training sessions for parents sound like an effective way to improve home-school connections, particularly in under-resourced contexts, as you suggest. Do you know what percentage of parents make the effort to attend regularly?

  • Muhammad Umair Ashraf says:

    Hello, I appreciate your insightful article that addresses a universal issue affecting every country, city, and society. Within our communities, there exist diverse groups of parents with varying levels of resources and capabilities when it comes to providing quality education for their children. While some parents possess a strong literacy background and are able to enroll their children in reputable schools, others may not have the same capacity. In such situations, it becomes the responsibility of schools to navigate the students’ progress and effectively communicate with parents about their child’s educational journey. Schools play a crucial role in ensuring that parents with low literacy levels are not left behind. It’s the responsibility of schools to offer resources and support to such parents. This might include adult literacy programs, workshops, or informational sessions designed to enhance parents’ understanding of the educational system and their child’s specific needs. In our country, schools and colleges organize Parent-Teacher Meetings (PTMs) after each exam, fostering collaboration between educators and parents to ensure they work together harmoniously, consult, and set a unified course for the students. By actively engaging parents in their child’s education, schools can bridge the gap and provide the necessary tools for parents to become effective partners in their child’s learning journey. parents with low literacy levels who want to engage in their children’s studies should be applauded for their dedication. The responsibility of schools is to ensure that these parents have the necessary resources and support to become active participants in their child’s education. By fostering a strong home-school partnership, we can create a more inclusive and supportive educational environment that benefits all students.

    • Thanks, Umair! Parent-teacher meetings can be quite daunting for low-literacy parents, for whom schools are alien environments and who feel uncomfortable or embarrassed in the presence of teachers. You are right that home-school partnerships are vital to support students’ education!

  • Panda Girl says:

    Frankly speaking, my initial response to this article is thinking that it is mainly the responsibility of the parent to know how to translate the enrollment or website information into a language that they understand. First of all, they migrated into a new country. It is only fair that they learn the country’s language well enough to navigate basic things as to knowing how to translate it into their native tongue given that translation tools are now easily accessible.
    That isn’t very inclusive of me to say though, is it? It is probably because I viewed it through the eyes of an overworked and underpaid early childhood educator (which I actually am), and the truth is, there is just not enough time (or staff) to do all the work needed to be done on a regular day and everyone is spread too thin to have any extra energy to address the issues about the lack of inclusivity. In the classroom itself, similar to what’s in mentioned in this article, the abilities of the learners in their first language is not being recognised. Most educators are aware of this lack of recognition but choose to ignore it because there isn’t exactly a rubric provided as to how to measure or assess the abilities of the learners in their first language.
    Regarding communicating with parents who don’t speak the language fluently, my vision would be posting a comment box outside the classroom. Information about the box must be posted in ALL the languages that the parents of a certain class speaks. Parents should also be informed by a pamphlet beside the box that they can write in their native language and the written document will be assessed or translated by government funded translators that come to school at least once a month or are called upon when their services are needed. Better yet, translators should be present at a scheduled parent-teacher conference so there can be a chance for equal opportunities for involvement.

    • Thanks, Panda Girl! I appreciate your frank perspective and it is clear that inclusion comes with costs. For too long, education has been under-resourced and inclusion has just been tacked onto the workload of already overstretched teachers. There are many great ideas how to break down language barriers, as all the comments here demonstrate, but, for sure, the fundamental problem is proper resourcing of education.

    • Sonintsetseg says:

      Thank you, Panda Girl.
      You have highlighted the challenging parts of being an educator in a foreign country. Although I haven’t had the opportunity to work at overseas education institutions and gain experience, I do understand that the responsibilities of teaching and working with international students, as well as their parents, are significant. Moreover, putting a comment box outside of the classroom and providing a government-funded translator for at least one month can be a huge improvement for each party. I personally believe that teachers always take the blame in good and bad ways. Therefore, I think this small progress will take the burden off the teachers and caretakers’ shoulders. Hence, both sides interact in a more efficient way and focus on their students’ educational achievements.

  • Siyao says:

    Dear Ingrid,

    Thank you very much for your article. It is unrealistic for parents to master a new language in a short time, so the school can develop its own app and select an administrator for each class to assist teachers in forming and managing parent groups, mainly responsible for teaching parents how to set the app to their native language and monitor their children’s learning. Teachers and administrators post important information about the class in the class group, and the app will automatically translate English into the language parents need. They can ask the administrator questions in their language at any time if they have any problems, and the system will automatically convert them into English. This allows parents to easily get help without having to go to school.

    Secondly, the school can publish a YouTube video on the homepage of the official website to introduce how to use Google Chrome to translate English web pages into native languages. Because YouTube videos have subtitle translation functions, parents who are familiar with computers only need to know how to operate them. Even if they do not understand English, they can follow the video. Administrators can post this information in the class group. If the school’s official website only provides web pages in a few commonly used languages, I think it may be exclusive to parents who do not speak these languages.

    Finally, schools can count the nationalities of students’ parents and recruit translator volunteers from different countries. They need to be trained by the school and master the basic information of the school to provide good language translation work for parents who are not proficient in electronic devices and go to school.

    • Thanks, Siyao! These are all great suggestions! How well they work depends, inter alia, on the language group. In our “parenting during COVID” study we found, for instance, that Chinese parents were very well organized on WeChat and able to draw on a wide range of resources that were not available to parents from other LOTE backgrounds. In fact, many of the Chinese parents we interviewed felt that the lockdown had been an advantage for their children because the parents could monitor their learning more closely and also connect them with extracurricular virtual classes through the medium of Chinese …

  • Saraf Anjum says:

    Thank you for this interesting article and shedding light on a topic that just goes mostly unnoticed. It made me realize that this is true not just in case of low language proficiency. Our parents do not have the confidence to engage with their children, teachers or other parents if they have low proficiency in any other subject. I remember my parents helping me and my brother study as kids, but suddenly we were left on our own and later we got tutors because our parents could no longer keep up with the syllabus. They would just urge us to study hard but not get involved in other ways. My parents did not have high levels of education and I think other parents would act the same way in these situations. We were children learning new things and had zero idea of how left out our parents felt.

    An institution dedicated towards students cannot help the parents learn brand new things from scratch (with its limited resources and overworked staff). However, it can take steps such as hiring multilingual staffs and choosing representatives among parents with high language proficiency to help other parents keep in touch with the school and their child.

    • Thanks, Saraf! You raise an important point that harks back to our reading of “What no bedtime story means” – most, if not all, parents want the best for their children but their capacities to support them differ widely. The advice to “study hard” that is given by lower-educated parents may be less useful than the negotiation strategies middle-class children teach their parents (e.g., how to seek an extension or advocate for themselves in other ways).

      Calarco, J. M. (2018). Negotiating Opportunities: How the Middle Class Secures Advantages in School. New York: Oxford University Press.

  • Dory says:

    This was a much-needed read. The article helped me to understand and realize many important factors that the schools should achieve for parents with low levels of proficiency or literacy as it is very important for these parents to feel included in the education system just as much as the other parents who have high proficiency or are more literate.
    Schools should actively take steps to engage parents more effectively in visiting the school and meet with the teachers, staff and other administrative members. This will help build a good connection between the parents and the school. The parents will also feel more comfortable in this way. Schools can hire bilingual stuff members during parents-teacher meeting to address the important issues and school policies. Teachers can do their part by ensuring that they provide clear and concise information to parents while communicating. Furthermore, schools can help arrange courses, workshops or training programs for parents who are not proficient enough in the school language. This will help the parents guide their children at home in their studies. Moreover, the teachers could be trained in a way that will be able to help parents and students with diverse backgrounds which will eventually result in a welcoming atmosphere for everyone. A platform for feedback can be opened too, which will help the parents raise their concerns.
    When I used to teach in Bangladesh as a teacher, I often heard parents complain that they don’t know about the important notices or the report card discussion dates. I later understood that they couldn’t operate the school website well because of the language barrier and relied on their children’s words completely. This situation resulted in parents missing many meetings because their children didn’t want them to see their report cards.

    • Thanks, Dory! What you describe – children interpreting for parents – is probably not usual in many parts of the world, but, as you say, can be highly problematic. It’s not only that children can’t be trusted to translate correctly (on the contrary, one US study found that children were very honest with problematic information, like low grades, but more bashful relaying praise), but that they miss out on crucial support if they are the one’s bearing the burden to explain how schooling works to parents (given that children’s perspective will always necessarily partial, limited, and immature).

      Orellana, M. F. (2009). Translating childhoods: Immigrant youth, language, and culture. New Brunswick, NJ, and London: Rutgers University Press.

  • Thi Thu Ha Pham says:

    In my opinion, language schools should proactively involve parents with limited proficiency. Establishing specific areas for several languages on school websites, prominently shown on the homepage, could improve inclusivity. Such language-specific hubs would be invaluable resources, alleviating the challenges created by a lack of a common language. In addition to language-specific hubs, providing easily intelligible and accessible content, possibly in different formats, could help bridge the literacy divide for parents. Prioritising clarity and simplicity in communication materials ensures that important information reaches all parents, regardless of literacy level. This dual approach recognizes the complexities of the challenges that parents confront, strengthening the commitment to inclusivity in educational practices.

  • Jung Ung HWANG says:

    As a student studying for a Master of Interpreting and Translation and TESOL, this topic was familiar to me. At Macquarie University, there is a category for ‘education’ in our interpreting classes. The education category is one of the most important ones, especially in Australia, because, as mentioned in the article, there are so many instances where language barriers actually limit parents’ access to information about their children’s education.

    Regarding the solution that schools can do, I once went to Eastwood Public School to do an educational interpreting practicum. They have a lot of Chinese and Korean students, so they have educational conferences for Chinese and Korean parents. Of course, the speakers are school officials, but they also bring in interpreters for each language to ensure the parents get the information they need.

    When I went to school in Korea, there were no foreign students or parents, so I never saw or heard of anything like this. However, my mother told me that nowadays, due to the increasing number of foreign workers in Korea, each school holds seminars for parents. It is time to make more efforts to eliminate language inequality.

    • Great to hear you did your interpreting practicum in a public school. Would love to hear more about your experience! 🙂

      • Jung Ung Hwang says:

        Last year I took the Practicum unit of Interpreting. As the name suggests, like the TESOL Practicum Unit, I had to complete the required number of hours by going to a placement organised by the school or by doing my own interpreting and translation work and submitting a reference letter of completion.

        The most memorable part of the unit was interpreting for education. I visited Eastwood Public School, which has a very large Chinese and Korean population, and I was told that the parents were very interested in the students’ grades and school life.

        Community groups organise these interpretation services for each language. As I had no knowledge of the Australian education system, I visited a few parent conferences beforehand to try to understand what was being said. It was an excellent opportunity to learn about the Australian school system and gain some interpreting experience.

        However, it’s interesting to note that the school provides interpreter services for parents who have difficulty understanding the school system due to language barriers. Still, even though this is written in English, I don’t think many parents are aware of this service.

        • Thanks, Jung Ung! Sounds like a great experience! You are right about low uptake – uptake of interpreting services in schools is surprisingly low, although it’s funded by the Department of Education, and free to parents and schools.

  • Saya says:

    I can easily imagine this scenario with my parents. If my parents were in a similar situation, they might struggle to understand the content on the school website. Even if a translated version is available, finding the settings to change the language or access the translation can be a time-consuming task. Once parents successfully enroll their children in the school, they realize that all the necessary communication with teachers happens in English. This means they have to read letters in English and assist their children with their homework in English. It’s crucial for school staff to understand these situations and make a sincere effort to assist these parents. However, it’s also true that schools can’t provide help for every language; language limitations may occur. Therefore, parents need to put in the effort to learn English and communicate with school teachers without hesitation.

    • Thanks, Saya, for pointing to the complexity of the problem. Enrollment information is just the first step – and a comparatively easy one – for parents’ involvement in their children’s education. Providing homework support, engaging with schools, negotiating accommodations, interacting when problems come up, etc. all becomes ever more challenging as children progress through the school system …

  • An Ng says:

    Thank you for sharing this article. Parental involvement is one of the important factors in a child’s educational development. Therefore, breaking the language barrier between immigrant parents and schooling is significant. A recommendation that I think would be useful for this issue from an online discussion with the news organization EducationWeek in the US is to use a phone app that allows teachers and administrators to send messages in English that will translate into the parents’ language. When the parents respond, the messages are translated back into English. Or perhaps, AI can also be integrated into the school’s website as a chatbot. Whenever a parent has any questions about school, they can go directly onto the school website to ask for inquiries. These questions can be in their desired language, AI will identify and give answers in the same language. The questions can be about some common things related to school for AI to generate fast answers. However, if there are any questions that require personalized answers that AI can not provide, those will be forwarded to the school office to get support. Beyond the language barrier, parents with low proficiency in school language need to feel equal to any other parent in the school community. Therefore, schools can create space for parents from similar backgrounds to communicate with each other about their concerns and get to know every family through online or in-person meetings with the help of a professional translator.

    • Thanks, An! I’m personally not particularly optimistic about the potential of automated translation and chatbots to break down barriers for minoritized parents. For one thing, the vast majority of large language models are trained on English and some of the languages where there is the greatest need (e.g., small under-resourced non-standardized languages) are simply not available in the so-called “AI” world. Even if there is availability, the use of chatbots requires not negligible levels of (computer) literacy, and the quality of the information they provide is low.

  • Logan says:

    Thank you for your insightful article. When I went to the hospital for an X-ray required for my visa. I was so impressed by the multilingual. Signs were multilingual and free interpreter service was also available. But in the education field, there is a long way to go, as the example of the homepage mentioned in this article. I believe multilingual information is as vital in Education as it is in medical service. If the parents avoid important information because of language barriers, their kids can miss out on valuable experiences. Homepage and school letter are the first steps for parents to get involved in school. Teachers and office staff cannot do everything. For the movement to happen, a wave from the top such as the education office’s campaign for multilingual information on the homepage and school letter would be powerful. Furthermore, if the education office provides financial aid requested by the school in this regard would be helpful. As the Australian government does well in medical services, it needs to pay more attention to educational settings.

  • Abdulla Zubayr Nafea says:

    Thanks for sharing this amazing article. I can share my own experience working in a primary school in Bangladesh. As I worked in a primary school located in a remote area of Bangladesh, most of the parents of the students were illiterate. So the school authority took some initiatives to communicate with the parents which I think is very effective in this context. First of all, the teachers used to visit student’s homes and directly talk to their parents. I think home visits by teachers or school staff can be invaluable. They allow for personalized interaction, where parents can ask questions and share concerns in their comfortable environment. Another thing that they used to do was translate every important document where necessary. Though Bengali is the dominant language in Bangladesh, most of the sector uses English as their official language. So, Providing information in Bengali languages spoken by parents can help them understand their child’s progress and also participate in school activities. I believe incorporating these strategies can help schools create an inclusive and welcoming environment, ensuring that all parents, regardless of their language proficiency or literacy levels, are engaged partners in their child’s education.

    • Thanks, Abdulla, for sharing your experience! Home visits are a great way to remove some of the barriers between home and school. Too often they seem like completely different – and for some parents very daunting – worlds …

  • Abed says:

    I think in Australia the government facilitated access to their websites and documents more than other countries. I am not a parent, but I can recall obtaining my license at NSW service. The first thing they asked me that if I needed help with the language. I have also had a trouble with the law and went to court, nothing too serious thankfully, and I have been always asked if I need an interpreter or a “solicitor” which I have never heard of before and realized later that they were referring to a lawyer. I have also noticed the using of Latin alphabet in government websites to refer to other languages which require ones at least to have the minimum amount of literacy to recognize their own language, which is a very easy problem to avoid. But Australia is doing way better than other countries to make sure that everyone is included, more than the US themselves! strangely enough.

  • Durian says:

    I remember my mother being involved and participating at my primary school to get more of an idea of the Australian education system and allow her to understand the particular school system as well as to help her children understand more about multiculturalism. Even with little English she tried to be connected to the school by involving in the parent committee. Therefore, I believe that the school’s website should reflect its multicultural nature by offering information in multiple languages, ensuring that no parent is hindered from accessing crucial information due to language barriers. This inclusivity fosters a more just and equitable school society, where everyone can enjoy the same opportunities. I have heard from a Viet friend who is working at a school that her school provides Vietnamese Bulletin as the majority of her students are Viet. This adds more to her job but it provides information to parents and guardians which is something that is crucial as parents have the right to know what is happening and be involved in the school as much as they can.

    • Thanks, Durian! Bilingual newsletters in schools with specific language concentrations are really helpful. And good on your mum for involving herself! Many migrant parents we have talked to in our research felt too shy/embarrassed because of their English to volunteer or even chat to other parents during drop-off and pick-up times 🙁

  • Aaron says:

    Thank you for providing such an enlightening essay and comments from many different points of view.  The task of developing and maintaining a bilingual website is undoubtedly daunting. Because critical information in one language may not be immediately available in others owing to staff members limitations in the other languages, regular updates and accuracy in many languages need painstaking attention and resources.

    Having parent representatives who are fluent in both English and other widely spoken languages might help to bridge communication barriers. These representatives might help to create better communication channels, ensuring that critical information reaches all parents properly and on time.

    Furthermore, non-English-speaking parents may find it easier to use a website with an intuitive, user-friendly design that encourages them to pick a preferred language from the start. With the development of publicly accessible AI, this could be included for assisting in their preferred langauge to help with answering questions. This, however, needs a concerted effort to constantly maintain and update all language versions, assuring equitable access to current and correct information while AI may not be ready to deliver the desired results at this time and date.

    Schools might also explore collaborating or partnering with community groups to gather linguistic talent to assist with translation and interpretation activities. This community connection might improve the content’s relevancy and responsiveness, making it more accessible and beneficial to all parents and establishing a more inclusive educational environment.

    • Thanks, Aaron! You raise an important point about static and dynamic content. For static content, you translate the information once and that’s it. Dynamic content, on the other hand, needs continuous updating and translators/interpreters in all the languages needed are often not readily available on an ongoing basis. Machine translation and multilingual chatbots raise a lot of related problems – a conversation we can maybe continue in next week’s writing task.

  • Jaehoon Kim says:

    I could understand how hard it would be for those parents who are struggling with the school language and literacy skills to care for their children overseas when I read this interesting article.
    As some commenters said, I also agree with and want to suggest the use of national communities for other language users. Of course, parents themselves should make an effort to understand and overcome the barriers, utilising whatever they can, but they definitely would need someone else’s feedback and accurate information for double checking. Thus, I would like to suggest that schools should revitalise or construct relationships or partnerships with those communities to support the parents.

    Through collaboration between schools and local communities, not only prompt actions such as the provision of translation services and knowledge, but also the education in the school language and literacy skills can be implemented so these parents can surmount language barriers.

    Thank you for your article!

    • Thanks, Jaehoon! One thing we discovered in our “parenting during covid” research was that Korean parents sometimes simply tagged along to the WeChat groups of Chinese parents and found those community groups more useful than the information provided by the schools themselves …

  • Brownie says:

    I have some ideas and hope that they are useful

    Instead of using alphabet letters or English words for translation, some websites use the national flags or use other languages. For example, to present the translation for Vietnamese, they use “Tiếng Việt” instead of “Vietnamese”.

    I think it can be a good idea for the Australian schools to hire the international students to work as a part-time job or volunteer to support the parents. First, the schools can provide some English courses which can be relating to the school context for parents and ask international student to support. Second, the students can work as a language broker who can translate to the parents both in speaking communication and writing texts such as SMS or online documents.

    • Thanks, Brownie! I like your idea to involve international students – could be helpful to families and valuable local experience for international students. I’m wondering whether the internship programs along these lines exist?

      • Brownie says:

        I found some interpreter services and announcements for hiring interpreters in public schools, but I’m not sure about internship. I will search for further information. Thank you for your response.

  • Mazhar says:

    Thank you for the article. The article is interesting as it through light on topic which is not discussed frequently. To engage more effectively with parents who have low levels of proficiency in the school language and low literacy skills, schools need to adopt a multifaceted approach. First, they should prioritize clear and concise communication, utilizing visual aids, graphics, and simplified language in all written materials. Regular parent-teacher conferences, conducted with interpreters when necessary, can provide a direct line of communication. When I was in school, we were having parent teacher meeting after three months for better communication between parents and teachers. In essence, the key is to offer a range of resources and support, ensuring that every parent, regardless of language or literacy skills, feels valued and involved in their child’s educational journey.

  • Arghavan says:

    Thank you for sharing this article with us. The school is representing itself on the website. If it is a multicultural one, the website could reflect that. This way no parent is impeded from gaining information about the school because of lack of proficiency in the school language. This will indeed bring the school society closer to a just one where all can have the same opportunities. I believe one effective measure for schools to take in order to engage non-literate parents with school is to arrange in-person meetings and use the language of comfort. This can be difficult for schools to have staff matching with the language diversity of the institute.
    Going back to the website, it can potentially launch asking the language the user would prefer to avoid confusing them with searching the translate icon.
    In the end, a dominant language will bring privilege to the people who use it and it might not be a bad idea for those schools to have/refer classes and help the literacy of those parents as well.

    • Thanks, Arghavan, for these reflections! It’s undoubtedly a complex problem that must be approached from many angles. Adult language education is a major part of it, for sure, but adults can be slow language learners and sometimes you just can’t wait till they have learned sufficient English (or whatever the dominant language may be) … In those cases, the provision of translation and interpreting services is indispensable.
      Australia does provide free interpreting services for parents who do not speak English (well) but uptake of these services is unfortunately very low in schools.

    • Arghavan says:

      I surfed through Auckland Farsi School in NZ for my presentation and this made me analyse how mono-lingual friendly is the website for the parents.
      Very much to my surprise, the website only provides information In English. There is nowhere on the website that you could change this language option. Simply by this choice, parents who are not very skilled in English would be deprived of gaining helpful information from the website. If they are persistent enough, they will visit the school in person and attempt to find a Farsi-speaking staff to help her/him out. They will clearly struggle later on with school communication and every interaction that is required in English and English only. This might be a filtering option for the school as well… more let’s say sophisticated families will enroll and those who can’t benefit from the dominant language will be pushed to the side even though this school is designed to be a bi-lingual school welcoming all.

      • Interesting example, Arghavan! My guess is that it’s a community school that doesn’t have a whole lot of resources and some random volunteer built their website 😉

  • Robert says:

    Thank you for sharing this article. In my opinion, a good attempt to engage more effectively with parents would be if schools appointed one parent representative who is proficient in English for each of the most dominant foreign languages spoken by the school’s students. This person would then be the spokesperson and mediator for any communication between the school and the parents, both face to face and online. This solution could prove difficult to be implemented but depending on the extent to which it could be carried out, another addition could be to appoint translators and interpreters of the respective languages to further improve the communication. It could prove a costly measure, but it is an area that should be fully supported by the government. The government has the means and money to improve this situation which would be very beneficial for the education and well-being of school children. As this generation will shape our future economy, all efforts should be made to maximize their chances for the best education possible.

  • Luna says:

    Thank you for raising this issue. I had the chance to be a part of a school, in Australia. What struck me was that most of the schools communications were in English. While it is understandable since its an institution the school does make an effort to acknowledge and appreciate the languages spoken by students who are learning English as an additional language or dialect (EALD). They do this by displaying flags representing their countries.
    During a visit I observed a situation where some Asian parents faced challenges communicating with the school staff due to their proficiency in English. They were relying on Google Translate to interact with them.
    This experience got me thinking about how schools could benefit from providing information in languages for parents. Not would this support those with English skills but it would also be a significant step towards fostering inclusivity, for everyone involved.

    • Thanks, Luna, for sharing! You are right to point out that everyone would benefit from a more linguistically inclusive approach. Relying on Google Translate may be fine in contexts where there is not much at stake, but education is not one them …

  • Iris says:

    This article shares a situation which my family has been going through for years until today. My mother is a middle-class woman whose English literacy is not at intermediate level. She works all her best to give me and my brother chances to student in international environments. Despite her dedication, there is a language barrier whenever she visits our university website. Since our school only has English language, my mom could only search for further information about our school from other agents’ websites. Some websites such as Google Chrome or Microsoft Edge suggest auto-translating tools but as it is mostly derived from Google Translate, much information has been mistranslated. The language barrier also has effects on how non-English fluent parents help children on study abroad journey. That’s the reason why travelling and study abroad agencies from non-English speaking countries serve as a help. On the other hand, there are also chances for scammers to make benefits from English illiteracy parents. Though governments are working hard to deal with those criminals, it is a need for parents and international students to be aware of what information they are reaching. Now that explains how necessary Facebook social groups and comments from people around the world can give a hand in saving people from scrammers.

    • Thanks, Iris, for sharing and drawing our attention to yet another side of this problem. Parents who are excluded from official communication channels are more vulnerable to misinformation and even scammers, as you say.
      Respect to your mother for her dedication and perseverance in the face of all these difficulties. Hope you’ll make her proud 🙂

  • Nurunnahar says:

    Thank you for sharing this article which was worthy to read. I have worked in an English Medium School in Bangladesh and I could relate this article with my experience. In my school whenever there used to be any Parents-Teachers meeting, the teachers had to conduct the meeting in English. Most of the parents want to be a part of their child’s school life, but I have noticed that during those meetings many parents either couldn’t understand properly or used to struggle to explain their thoughts or their children’s problems properly because of their language barriers. Even many parents came to me and asked me if I could talk to the authority and seek permission to conduct the meeting in “Bangla” , so that they could express their ideas and the issues their children facing in school more flexibly. Then I have informed the issue to the higher authorities and they suggested that the school will organise more events where parents would be invited and there they can join different committees and these committees would help parents to overcome the problems they were facing. I think it is very important to take feedback from parents, so schools should give priority to parents voice to help the students more effectively.

    • Thanks, Nurunnahar, for sharing your experience! I can see why an EMI school in Bangladesh would impose an English-Only policy on student-teacher interactions, but why this policy should be extended to include teacher-parent interaction is difficult to grasp. What is the rationale behind that policy?

      • Nurunnahar says:

        I think they try to establish a point here that the institution follows International Standard, because most of the parents send their children to English Medium Schools to learn English language more effectively. If they conduct the meetings in English it creates credibility of the institution may be.

        • I think you are right – the choice of English is symbolic (to index international standards, credibility etc.) Unfortunately, symbolism seems to be in conflict with actual communication here …

  • Hao says:

    When I was looking for a part-time job, I saw a recruitment post hiring a receptionist who is fluent in English and Vietnamese because their customers are mostly Australian-Vietnamese. Therefore, besides “placing a link to such language-specific pages on the home page,” principals should hire staff who can speak at least 2 languages (English and one of the most spoken languages in schools) to assist parents and students when they visit schools officially. Also, I think that we can create a hotline in which parents use their own languages to request anything (first) and after taking their request, we will get back to them by phone or email using their languages.

    • Thanks, Hao! These are great ideas. To be fair, bilingual support staff and community liaison officers exist in many schools, and there is a government-funded interpreting service.

      • Hao says:

        I went to the State Library of NSW today and I saw they have something called visual aids or audio transcriptions. I think schools can try to use them when making announcements. For example, they can replace a text with a graphic, so even if their parents don’t understand, they can guess the content based on the image.

        • Thanks, Hao! Great observation! I think it’s for the hearing impaired and might not be so suitable for language learners, but such a good example of what institutions can do to increase accessibility.

  • Yulan says:

    In contrast to this article about public schools in Australia, I would like to use the example of a public school in Beijing, China, versus a private school. In Beijing, there is no such thing as a parent being unable to participate in their child’s learning due to their own education background. In the case of public schools, Beijing’s public schools only accept students of their own nationality and check the educational background of their parents. For private schools, the requirements for enrolling a child are more stringent. The private school will conduct a written language test and interview with the child’s parents before interviewing the child’s language proficiency, and only if the parents pass the test will the child be eligible to have an interview. For private schools that teach neither English nor Chinese, such as German, this one will also require the educational background of the parents. They will require that one parent has studied in Germany and has a master’s degree, or that one of their bachelor’s and master’s degrees is in German. The purpose of these requirements can make sure that the parents can be participated in the daily school life of their children.

    • Thanks, Yulan! Wow – I’d never heard of parents having to take admission tests for their child to enter a school! This approach may work for some elite private school, but it’s hardly a model for universal education …
      I was also struck by your point about public schools in Beijing only enrolling students with certain qualifications. I was curious about migrant students in Beijing and looked up some of the literature; seems they really may not be allowed into public schools, with all the negative consequences you’d expect.
      Thanks for bringing up such an interesting comparative case!

      Goodburn, C. (2009). Learning from migrant education: A case study of the schooling of rural migrant children in Beijing. International Journal of Educational Development, 29(5), 495-504. doi:https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijedudev.2009.04.005
      Koo, A., Ming, H., & Tsang, B. (2014). The Doubly Disadvantaged: How Return Migrant Students Fail to Access and Deploy Capitals for Academic Success in Rural Schools. Sociology, 48(4), 795-811. doi:10.1177/0038038513512729
      Mu, G. M., & Jia, N. (2016). Rural dispositions of floating children within the field of Beijing schools: can disadvantaged rural habitus turn into recognised cultural capital? British Journal of Sociology of Education, 37(3), 408-426. doi:10.1080/01425692.2014.939264
      Nyland, B., Nyland, C., Gao, Y., Ng, J., & Zeng, X. (2016). The Si Huan Playgroup: an initiative to provide non-formal early childhood education experiences to children of migrants in Beijing. Asia Pacific Journal of Education, 36(3), 319-331. doi:10.1080/02188791.2014.934783

  • Chloe Ng says:

    Thank you for sharing this problem, which might be usually neglected in a multicultural context. When talking about how to improve the quality of education, people usually mention the solutions related to students. However, it is also essential to carefully consider the engagement of parents in their children’s educational context. Obviously, the parents with low levels of literacy and language proficiency have suffered numerous disadvantages in their efforts to engage in their children’s education. As far as I observe, this problem could be alleviated by setting up the small communities within the schools where parents speaking the same languages are connected. It can be said that these sub-communities offer parents with low levels of literacy or language proficiency more chances to interact with other parents. By that way, those parents can share with each other the worth-noticing information at schools, which assures that no one is left behind. As far as I know, the Vietnamese parents in Sydney have built a strong community where they keep each other updated with schools’ news and also organise the activities where Vietnamese children can also interact with their peers.
    Another possible solution that I come up with is the support in a more effective way from schools through their official websites. Rather than using the tags such as “language”, “translation” or “translated version” which require monolingual parents to at least understand what those keywords mean, schools can use the picture of national flags as signals for the languages. Obviously, even when people don’t know the name of their languages in the Latin alphabet, they can still recognise their languages by looking at their national flags. When those parents can gain access to the translated version, schools also need to consider what should be presented on the websites. Not only does it need to include translated versions of school curriculum, announcements, materials, but the website also needs to provide a discussion forum or weekly/ monthly surveys so that the parents can have immediate support from schools and other parents when any problems arise.

    • Thanks, Chloe! The flag symbols may seem like an easy way to get around the language identification problem, but it’s not without its problems, either. For instance, some languages are spoken in more than one country (e.g., on global websites, English is sometimes associated with the British and sometimes with the UK flag; hardly ever with the Australian flag); some languages don’t have a state and so choosing a flag may be difficult or controversial (e.g., which flag would you use for Kurdish?); some states are officially multilingual (e.g., which of South Africa’s languages would be represented by the the SA flag?); and some diasporic communities are divided over which flag best represents them (e.g., controversies over the use of the Vietnamese flag, which come up regularly in the US and even in Australia). Where such issues are heavily politicized, schools obviously need to be careful not to import those controversies into the school context …

      • Chloe Ng says:

        Thanks, Ingrid, for sharing your opinion. To be honest, I didn’t consider the conflicts in using flags and the fact that there are more than one language spoken within a country. This issue seems to be more complex than I thought 🙂 Maybe showing the names of their languages in their alphabets could be easier for them to recognise the link to access the language-option page.

  • Sonintsetseg says:

    In the early 2000s, there were none of the websites or social media to communicate with students’ parents in our community. Therefore, the only way to spread information and announcements was verbally through word of mouth.
    As far as I remember, I had little interest in the Russian language subject when I was in primary school. It was a compulsory subject, and we also had the opportunity to choose English. However, in 7th grade, our classmates chose both languages simultaneously. When it came to the parents and teachers’ conferences of foreign languages, my aunt (she was the only one who could speak Russian in my family) only visited the Russian teacher’s room to enquire about my academic performance. My teacher was a native Russian speaker. On the other side, my parents rarely contacted my English teacher, who was a Mongolian. Perhaps they never worried about my English.
    In this case, I personally think parents and legal guardians truly care and focus on their children’s educational performance when they have the confidence and desire to speak in other languages, even in their native tongue.

    • Thanks, Sonintsetseg, for sharing! You are drawing our attention to another important aspect of this problem: parents who lack confidence communicating with the school may avoid parent-teacher conferences and school conferences. Often that won’t be a problem – as in your example with studying English – but it in other cases, it may mean that parents lose out on valuable feedback and children on interventions and support …

  • Justin says:

    I would consider the role of communication between schools, students, and parents comparatively vital as that between health professionals, patients and family members. Just as clinical communication being a required skill for health practitioners, teachers need to learn how to talk and engage with parents as an essential part of their pre-service education, which must include the component of linguistic diversity and communication, as suggested in your article. This is to avoid over-reliance on multilingual NESB staffs on the part of English-speaking educators. In addition, if translation and interpreting are being undermined and made hardly accessible in professional settings such as education, at least an effort to facilitate intercultural communication should be made by the school and all its staff.

    Also, I think it would be a nice idea for the school to provide more educational materials in other languages. This may be far-fetched, but I’d love to see contemporary textbooks used in other countries present in school or public libraries in Australia. Some mapping work needs to be done, but at least parents could make use of those resources to get more involved in their children’s learning. And who knows, children could even become biliterate when using both sources!

    • Thanks, Justin! These are brilliant ideas, both to make home-school communication part of teacher training and to use textbooks in other languages. Some educationally minded migrant parents do that, of course, but, as far as I know, it’s just individual initiatives rather than systematic efforts on the part of schools/the education department.

      • Justin says:

        I’m intrigued by the fact that the word ‘literacy’ has no definite equivalent in my first language. The closest in meaning we get in Vietnamese is “knowing the words” (occasionally “knowing to read and write”), but ‘literacy’ is a multifaceted concept, in which reading and writing are at the core of its practice. We may take pride in calling ourselves ‘literate’ after few years of formal education, but overlook the fact that we can easily become illiterate when entering a new space (e.g., going to a country that speaks a different language), or not keeping up with changes over time (e.g., new knowledge and technology). Literacy, then, is not a stable ability that has no expiry date.

        Reflecting on my previous example, I’ve found an alternative view to literacy (not saying that it replaced my previous view). Literacy, in the sense of “knowing to read and write”, refers to an individual’s ability, but the process towards acquiring literacy is closely attached to social practices. A student does not become literate without engaging with their school, teachers, peers, parents, and other social agents. Then, it is important to facilitate this engagement so that one’s literacy can go beyond “knowing how to read and write”.

        • Thank you for these interesting reflections! German, by the way, doesn’t have a direct translation, either (there are a couple of words with similar meanings but the English word is increasingly used as a loanword in educational circles).

  • Helena says:

    What an interesting and useful article! To be honest, in my country, Vietnam, if a student can go to a bilingual school, it means they have a high living standard and their parents have to be rich to pay for their education. In this situation, parents have a chance to practice English a lot so they can understand basic words and structures in English. I think immigrant parents will have more problems using English because people usually live in their communities, such as Vietnamese in Sydney, who usually live in Cabramatta and Parramatta so they tend to use Vietnamese while communicating with others. I think using Google Translate for parents is a good idea but they can try to use a flag as a symbol for the country, not just simply the name. Therefore, even when people can not read English, they will know exactly which language is for them so they can choose to translate and communicate.

  • Ashiqur Rahman says:

    Thank you for the article! This article sheds light on a topic not often discussed. Many parents want to be involved in their child’s school life but face linguistic hurdles. Schools, particularly in regions with high linguistic diversity, need to truly understand the value of inclusivity. It’s not just about adding a ‘Translate’ button. Many parents, who genuinely want to engage, find themselves stonewalled because of language barriers. The suggestion of a central hub with frequently used languages is practical and, honestly, necessary. It’s about more than just making information available—it’s about making parents feel seen and heard. Implementing such a change would send a message: “We see you, we respect you, and we want you to be a part of our community.” Simple gestures, like having a link in the native script on the homepage, can make a world of difference. As a community, we should aim for every parent to feel valued from the first day their child enters school.

  • J i F says:

    School websites are, in fact, the first point of contact between the school and the non-English parents. As a LOTE at home, when I was searching for an information on the childcare system and admission procedures for my kid, I found that most information is in English. However, some childcare centres in my area (MQ park) have Chinese or Korean page as they are the target groups of these centres. So, this approach can be adapted to the approach of each school depending on the diversity of the students.

    Perspectively, schools wouldn’t invest in the website translation of all languages. Yet, schools could engage with the non-English parents by starting with the top 3 numbers of LOTE speakers at school. Also, if that school catchment has linguistically diverse communities, they can approach to the specific ethnic communities and ask for a volunteer to translate between the ethnic languages and English. I believe that migrants within the same ethnic community will certainly support each other and will not leave someone behind or to be lost in translation in order to find the right school for their children.

    • Thanks, JiF! Informal language assistance provided by volunteers is clearly one of the glues that keeps our society working. But over-reliance on volunteers also has its dangers, for instance, the volunteers may themselves not know all that much about the Australian school system or their information may be outdated or parents may be embarrassed to ask difficult questions … free interpreting is, in fact, available at schools in NSW, but the service is underutilized and many people don’t even know about it.

  • Anonymous says:

    After reading this article it brings back memories of my aunt and her family’s journey when they moved to the USA. Language barriers posed a significant challenge for them when dealing with their children’s school.
    Nowadays Similar situations are occurring in Bangladeshi English medium schools as well. Most of the English medium schools use only the English language for their parent-teacher meetings. Having worked as a teacher in an English medium school in my home country, I observed that many parents couldn’t express their thoughts and their children’s problems in the meeting due to their limited English proficiency. They would often approach me after the meetings to share their children’s issues.
    Later, when I informed the higher authorities about this challenge, they took an initiative such as providing English courses for the parents. This turned out to be a highly beneficial move. I believe that if school authorities adopt similar initiatives, it could greatly help parents overcome language barriers.

    • Thanks for sharing your experience! For EMI schools in Bangladesh, wouldn’t it be easier to offer home-school communications in Bangla, instead of requiring parents to learn English? (the latter is useful, no doubt, but also much more effort …)

  • Melisa Nguyen says:

    Nowadays, it is no longer strange for parents to send their children to big cities or new countries to develop their education. In Australia, for example, the Cabramatta region, the language used at home is Vietnamese which accounts for nearly 41% by 2021 (Australian Bureau of Statistics, 2021). And the number of parents who cannot communicate in English is quite large. Some solutions that schools can overcome language barriers to engage parents with low literacy/ proficiency in school language include:

    As for the first solution, schools can directly translate and use some majority languages that parents speak on their website so that parents can easily understand and choose their own language. However, this method takes a lot of effort to translate and implement. The second way is that schools can organize training sessions on how to use the translation tool for parents. This method is quite effective when teachers and parents can meet face-to-face and discuss student’s performances. Schools can also consider using interpreters during training sessions if teachers cannot speak that language. In Vietnam, there are 54 ethnicities and most of them have their own languages. All students have to learn lessons in Vietnamese in school, so the education ministry wants to teach Vietnamese to parents of other ethnic, and those parents can help the children at home and communicate with teachers.

    The Vietnamese Ministry of Education has achieved this aim through discussions with parents during child pick-up and drop-off times and parent meetings. Schools also compile documents and foster and train the Vietnamese language for ethnic minority parents to build a Vietnamese environment at home and in the community. (Quang Tri Online, 2022)

    The language barrier with students’ parents is a painful problem, but it can be resolved through efforts and solutions from the school and the willingness of parents to cooperate.

    Reference:
    Cabramatta west. (2021). Australian Bureau of Statistics. https://www.abs.gov.au/census/find-census-data/quickstats/2021/SAL10739

    Baoquangtri.vn. (2022, July 29). Don’t let Ngu Tro Thanh Rao’s language be harmful to ethnic minority students. Quang Tri Newspaper. https://baoquangtri.vn/van-de-binh-luan/khong-de-ngon-ngu-tro-thanh-rao-can-doi-voi-hoc-sinh-dan-toc-thieu-so/169266. htm

    • Thanks, Melisa! Migrant parents certainly need to make an effort to learn English; no doubt about that. The problem is that adults tend to be relatively slow language learners; and the thing about machine translation is that the quality remains way too low to address difficult topics in parent-school interaction …

    • Jaehoon Kim says:

      Hi, Melissa. Thank you for your informative comment. Sometimes I wish there was only one language on this planet. I can understand how frustrated many immigrating parents are to care for their children or live on those strange lands. Looking at strong Vietnamese communities in Cabramatta as you mentioned, I was thinking many Vietnamese parents in Australia can benefit from their communities such as language support and information acquisition for their lives including children’s school. In other words, those parents who have the low levels of school language and literacy skills don’t have to have the fear of communication in Australia. However, I have realised there could be disadvantages due to too much use of mother tongue in Australia in which English is dominating while reading your comment. It also make me ponder the balance between them.

  • Larissa says:

    It can be daunting for parents to become involved in their child’s school system for the first time when the school language is their first language, so I can only imagine how much more difficult this must be when parents have low levels of language proficiency. At TAFE, we have a lot of parents / grandparents attending the courses, and these lessons are so beneficial as they can help them with understanding notes from the school, discussions with teachers and even informal chats at the school gates. I remember one parent wanting to chat to fellow mums at soccer games, so she found any soccer/sport terms useful! Following on from Lynn’s comment about multilingual teachers, I wonder if these teachers could also assist to form informal specific language groups that meet regularly to discuss school matters in their first language. This could assist parents with low literacy levels as matters could be discussed verbally, and parents could form friendships too. It’s always so much nicer when you have at least one person you can ask about anything you’re not sure of or just discuss things with.

    • Thanks, Larissa! Great story about the soccer terms – sports can be really hard to figure out when you are struggling not only with the language but also with the specific rules … to this day, cricket seems like an impenetrable mystery to me although I “know” the vocabs ;-(
      I agree that f2f communication is often more inclusive, but if the onus is placed on multilingual staff to facilitate those conversations, they also need to be properly resourced (in terms of workload, remuneration loading, etc.).

      • Larissa says:

        I absolutely agree! A lot (too much) is placed on teachers today, so they need to be properly resourced and supported if they take on extra roles.

  • Japanda says:

    I looked at several websites of public high schools in Japan where some students speak languages other than Japanese as a first language. Not surprisingly, they are exclusively written in Japanese. Also, the Prefectural Office holds some events for migrants and their children about admission to high schools, but school websites do not upload any information about them. I would argue that schools have monolingual mindset, which excludes migrants and reinforces a delusion that they only have Japanese domestic students.

    Schools need to make efforts so that migrated parents can participate in school more. Even though it might be unrealistic for schools to employ interpreters because of financial reasons, they can use languages other than Japanese at least for symbolic purposes to show inclusion, for example. They should also put a link to the events for migrants on school websites. It might be a good idea to place an icon of a national flag next to the link. Most importantly, teachers should have time to discuss the issues so that they can raise awareness. The Japanese government announced that the number of foreign residents in Japan reached a high of over 3.22 million yesterday. It must be a great time for schools to think about how to deal with the issue.

  • Blueberry Yogurt says:

    Having read this article, it reminds me of a film called ‘CODA’ directed by Sian Heder in 2021. This coming-of-age movie is a remake of the 2014 French-Belgian film La Famille Bélier. ‘CODA’ stands for ‘a Child Of Deaf Adults’. Ruby Rossi, the main character, is the only one in the family who is not deaf. Her dad and brother are fishermen, and she helps them fish on the family-owned fishing boat. She plays a role as a bridge that connects her family to other hearing people. She is an interpreter, an assistant, a spokesperson, and she even has to accompany her father to a urology clinic. When she first started school, she got made fun of because she talked funny. She is in high school now but, still gets embarrassed. In the scene where her parents come to her school with loud music in their rusty truck, her parents are not aware how loudly the music is turned on. She gets easily bullied as she stinks from fishing. It is something she wants to do for her family but also, it is mandatory to have at least one on the boat who can hear and immediately respond to the coast guard. She wakes up at 3 in the morning and gets on the boat.
    Sounds familiar? Don’t you think having parents with poor language proficiency is like having deaf parents? They are easily excluded and overlooked from the school curricula. Don’t we agree that education should be accessible to everyone regardless of gender, race, religion, economic background, and disability and so on. We need to strive more on finding the way not to exclude anyone especially when it comes to education.

  • Mamduha Hossain Sharita says:

    This article reminds me of my cousin who lives in the USA and she was not good at English. Before her son started to go to school she didn’t face that much problem there. But when her son started to go to school she was facing problems in communicating with the teachers and also she was not understanding the process. For this reason, she enrolled herself in an English-speaking center to learn English.
    I agree with the article that to overcome these problems schools should use their website properly for those people who have literacy problems. I think they should train their staff and teachers to be patient, understanding, and supportive towards those parents who have language limitations. Also, keep parents up to date about their children’s progression in very simple and clear language. Also, they can arrange workshops for parents where they will talk about school curriculums and the ways parents can support their children’s learning at home. In these workshops, they can use simple language, or they can use visual aids like pictures, and charts so that these can be more easier for those parents who have language limitations.

    • Thanks, Mamduha! These are all great suggestions, but we shouldn’t forget, either, that school staff and teachers are often already quite overworked anyways, and may not have the capacity and resources to undertake these initiatives without systematic government support … hope your cousin has learned English well and is now able to support your nephew’s education!

  • Yeon says:

    Thank you for the insightful and engaging blog post. It reminded me of my own experience during the enrollment for my daughter. While I managed to find a brief introduction of the Temporary Resident Program in my native language on the website, it fell short of providing a comprehensive understanding of how the program works. I found myself confused with the required documents and the steps to obtain them. At the time, I believed that it would be beneficial if the school provided a flow chart or a pictogram illustrating the entire enrollment process for foreign students. Additionally, to encourage involvement from new family, the school could consider involving experienced parents. When my daughter began school, I received invaluable assistance from parents whose children were in higher grades. Introducing parents who share the same language or have children in the same class could be remarkable help for new students and their families. Practical support from fellow parents can aid newcomers in adapting to the school environment.

    • Thanks, Yeon, for sharing your experience! You are so right that enrollment and visa restrictions often overlap to make the process even more complicated for NESB parents. I supported a friend to enroll their child as a temporary resident in Year 4 in a public school earlier this year, and although I know the system (and language) well, I was shocked how complicated it was … you are so right to say that a flowchart (even in English only) would be super-helpful; there is a gap between the role of the school and that of the Department in TRP enrollment that is really difficult to navigate …

    • Arghavan says:

      Thanks Yeon for sharing your experience! A great point to consider is parental support as you mentioned. In a class, sometimes students are best to help each other so why not with parents too? We just have to consider getting the parents to that point. It can be challenging for a parent even to let them know which language she/he would like support in. However, any steps towards a more linguistically inclusive environment surely would be beneficial to both parents and students.

  • Dream maker says:

    Addressing the needs of language minority parents has always been challenging not only in Australia but also in my country. When facing such a challenge, my school has to squeeze resources out of pocket such as finance, time, and human resources from the already over-loaded teaching team. It is also daunting for English teachers to be responsible for all the document translation as well as being the translators for all kinds of activities.

    While Australia could potentially resolve some of its translation-related issues, ensuring that parents, particularly those with low literacy levels, can enroll their children in school and access information through a multilingual-friendly web interface, the question of how parents can support their children’s learning remains pertinent. To address this, many schools in my country have sought the solution from parent volunteering, which has proven to be beneficial.

    Beyond providing additional resources, parent volunteers both give (by contributing their time and skills) and receive (by learning from one another) simultaneously. Language-proficient parents can offer assistance or mentorship to those who are less fluent. For instance, the ‘reading parent’ program provides a language-rich environment for disadvantaged children by offering individual guided reading sessions. This approach fosters a sense of community and mutual support among parents and, most importantly, alleviates the workload of frontline teachers.

    • Thanks, Dream maker, for sharing this important initiative! You are so right that the current practice often places extra – and of unacknowledged – burdens on multilingual staff. I love the idea of parent volunteer groups. In Australian school, parents are expected to volunteer a lot (in the school canteen, with reading support, in the uniform shop, with grounds maintenance, during excursions etc.) but parents from non-English-speaking backgrounds are often left out and are widely perceived as reluctant to help out. Organizing them to provide language support would therefore be beneficial in more than one way.

    • Chloe Ng says:

      Thanks, Dream maker, for suggesting your interesting ideas. I totally agree with you that it is not practical to put the extra work of translation on teachers, who are usually overworked 🙂 Calling for parents’ help is an excellent idea, to be honest. It goes without saying that as a normal person, we always want to support and strengthen our own community. This is more obvious when applied in educational contexts where parents always hope that every child can have equal access to education. Therefore, asking for the help of language-proficient parents of various languages is a possible solution for this issue. By that way, not only the parents with low levels of literacy or language proficiency can integrate into their children’s educational context but people from the same countries can connect and build their community so that their children can have more opportunities to interact with their peers and maintain their heritage language. Some people mentioned the provision of training and education to parents with low levels of literacy and language proficiency. However, this program might require a long procedure while parents need to engage in their children’s education from the beginning. Therefore, I hold a strong belief that this is one of the most effective ways to alleviate not only the compounded disadvantages migrant children confront but also the pressure that low-literate parents suffer.

      • Thanks, Chloe! I totally agree that parent volunteer groups are a great way forward! I would just caution that we shouldn’t idealize national/ethnic/linguistic communities, either. It’s not unusual for communities to be marked by distrust, jealousies, and conflicts; and some community members prefer to keep their distance from other community members …

  • China says:

    In my opinion, there are two ways to provide better educational opportunities for children whose parents have low levels of proficiency/ literacy. The first way is providing information in many languages. Then, the parents can understand the information in detail. However, as mentioned in the article, the parents need to know the name of language in English and in the Latin alphabet. To solve this problem, the name of the language should be written in the language (not in English). For example, Japanese should be shown as 日本語. Consequently, the parents would be able to find their language and access the translated version easier. The second way is hiring multilingual staffs. Some parents with low level English proficiency are struggling with talking about the concern with the school staffs. That’s because it is hard to talk what they think in the second language. This situation may limit the educational opportunities. The parents and a school can collaborate each other if there are multilingual staffs. Then, I think multilingual staffs are needed to provide the equal education for every student.

    • Thanks, China! You are absolutely right. Websites, texts, and translated documents only go so far; to really engage parents who are not familiar with the school system, multilingual staff is needed to help them communicate!

    • Luna says:

      I fully agree with your suggestions, for improving opportunities for children whose parents face language or literacy challenges. I completely agree with your point about using the script to write the language such as promoting the use of mother languages. This would make it easier for parents to access translated materials simplifying and making it more user friendly.
      Furthermore your recommendation to hire staff members is the great idea. Effective parent school collaboration relies on communication not in sharing information but in addressing any concerns that parents may have. Having a staff can greatly enhance communication. Ensure that no child is disadvantaged due to language barriers at home.
      Both of your arguments align closely with my research findings and personal experiences. They provide steps that schools can take to create an inclusive and equitable learning environment, for all students.

  • Daisy says:

    Thank You Ingrid for this Blog. It’s a really interesting topic to discuss. I would like to share my personal information about my family. My Father and Mother both are literate and graduates of B. Com Finance. Even though they are graduates they are weak in language, especially in English. My father somehow managed to understand English and tried to speak with lots of errors but my mother didn’t even make a step to learn it she understands English but never ever talked in English. This is not only my case most of the parents in Kerala, India are having this same problem. So, I studied in an international school. So, most of the teachers were from different countries. Whenever there was any parent meeting it stressed out my parents not because of my low grades. But because of their poor communication skill. Engaging parents with low language proficiency and literacy levels is crucial for inclusive education. So, our school management decided to employ other multilingual teachers who speak the local languages of each region and it worked. This made my parents understand my school and topics. They even helped me by teaching me the subjects which were difficult for me. Also, the school management started a WhatsApp group for the parents in which they share the study materials in the local language. Which helped my parents to help me with the homework and tough subjects like Mathematics. So, by appointing a multilingual teacher and by using technology most of the problems have been solved there. But, now I was thinking about my parents coming to Australia for my graduation with poor English making me stressed.

    • Thanks, Daisy, for sharing! This is such hopeful story – where there’s a will, there’s a way 🙂 … I’m sure your graduation will go really well and your parents will enjoy and be so proud of you!

  • Undraa says:

    Thank you so much for bringing such a crucial topic up as numerous immigrants are encountering the same challenge.
    I have heard that sometimes relationship between parents and school ends with enrollment and onboarding due to the parents’ low level of school language proficiency and its implication on children’s school performance is quite negative.
    One way to navigate language barrier can be providing professional interpreters in parents and teacher conference if possible or utilize emerging technologies like mobile applications with translating features. Furthermore, educators should be mindful and accept both students as well as their parents as who they are and where they from and show genuine interest in their culture and tradition. At least, educators need to have a willingness to communicate with parents and they can grade their talk such as avoid jargon, idioms and difficult expressions and use clear, concise and positive language.
    Some parents ask their children to help as an interpreter when interacting with educators. Even though sometimes children can be a good bridge between school and parents, obviously, it is not the best solution as they should discuss academic struggles and some sensitive topic without involving the children.

    • Thanks, Undraa, for these reflections! In NSW there is actually free interpreting provided in 150 languages for parents who don’t speak English (well) for the purposes below. Unfortunately, this is not widely known among schools and parents, and/or they are reluctant to engage interpreters …

      Costs for interpreter services are generally met by the department for:

      • meetings about school enrolment, subject choice, student progress reports, attendance, welfare or behaviour issues
      • interviews with a year adviser, school counsellor, principal or Department of Education staff
      • P&C meetings, parent-teacher interviews, careers education, subject selection evenings and so on
      • parents, carers and community members to ring the school or local Department of Education office to ask for or provide information or advice, to give feedback, raise a concern or make a complaint.
  • Thuybebong says:

    Thank you for your thought-provoking article. I totally agree that low levels of proficiency in the school language can be an enormous barrier that some parents have to overcome to support their children’ studying.
    Although I am from a relatively “monolingual” country, where Vietnamese seems to dominate the school system, language and literacy are still considered great problems to quite a few parents.
    Firstly, in areas occupied by minorities who speak other languages rather than Vietnamese, interpreters are of great importance for communication between schools and families. Regional languages are learned by teachers. Where school teachers cannot cover all the languages and communicate with parents, the authority and military are mobilized as interpreters and language facilitators. A language hub, which is applicable here in Australia, is not quite possible in these areas due to the absence of the locals’ written language.
    Secondly, low literacy can also hinder school-family communication in some areas of Viet Nam. I was born and bred in a low-literacy family, and reading school reports full of words and numbers can be pretty confronting to many of my beloved people. Teachers try to be helpful by explaining these reports by simplifying these reports and increasing the use of verbal forms. I hope that it can work well for them.

    • Thanks, Thuybebong, for sharing! You are right to point to low-literacy families and their struggles, even if they are supposedly members of the majority language and culture. A lot of research on social reproduction shows that the mismatch between home and school cultures that these families face creates significant disadvantage and belies the ideology of the school system as meritocratic …

  • Natalie says:

    This article shed light on an area of linguistic diversity and communication barriers that I hadn’t really considered before, so thank you! As I try to think of other possible ways to manage this issue, I find that my biggest obstacle is working out how parents would know where to find accessible information in the first place. Having language hubs in a school is a great idea, which would be complemented well by community networks of parents from the same language background, who can support each other. Since online information may be inaccessible to lower literacy parents, or parents who struggle to navigate the school website, perhaps language communities could make themselves known on the first day of school. I assume lots of parents would be physically present at the school on this day, so if each major language group had a stall with signs in their language, it might encourage new parents to come and speak with them. The existing community could offer accessible written or verbal information to these parents and let them know where to access school information in their language. An arrangement like this would foster mutual parent support, and be an empathetic helping hand to new parents.

    • Thanks, Natalie, for this important suggestion to involve the community! Many public schools host a community language school on Saturdays and involving them and drawing on their resources might also be an option.

  • lily says:

    After reading this article, I considered this definitely is a common issue in todays globalized world. Indeed, it is very difficult for parents who have low levels of proficiency in school language and/or low levels of literacy to be effectively involved in their children’s school life. For this phenomenon, I feel that it is similar to a person who also cannot speak English fluently coming to an English-speaking country, and he/she prefer to make friends who speak his/her mother language, and cannot really experience the real culture of this English-speaking country, but they can still live well as they still have their group they can interact or sharing information.

    So parents who cannot speak the school language well can mimic this. Schools can set up organisations according to the mother tongue of the parents, and each organisation always have parents who are good at the school language, and they can help each other and share information with each other.

    • Thanks, Lily! I think your suggestion works better for some language groups than others. For instance, in a research project into parenting during Covid, we found that Chinese-speaking parents formed strong groups and supported each other and had access to many more resources than other LOTE groups in our study.

  • Lynn says:

    Thanks for your interesting blog. It makes me realise how important learning English is for parents, especially immigrants. As parents, we need a basic language proficiency to discuss and communicate with the teachers. I agree that hub pages in languages other than English, as mentioned above, would be an effective way to deal with the issue. However, parents might come up with different questions and concerns. So, I think schools should have a department with multilingual staff to assist them. They can translate the documents and even explain to parents in their languages if needed. This is also a good chance for us to apply 🙂 , to work on our experiences and use our knowledge and profession to help parents with limited proficiency in English.
    I am doing the practicum at Navitas Fairfield, and students there are in their 40s-50s. I had a chance to talk to them, and they also mentioned their children’s schooling. They wished to know English better to be able to discuss with the teachers about their children. However, they always want to keep their first language. So they never use English with their children. But do you think children can help their parents to improve their English? If yes, do the parents have to choose between losing their language for later generations and getting higher language proficiency?

    • Thanks for this question, Lynn! It’s a big question and our new book Life in a new language has a whole chapter devoted to it. In a nutshell: there is no doubt that English language learning is very important for migrants with limited proficiency. The problem with switching the home language is that children learn English so much faster than adults, and so the parents would only get a modest benefit in terms of English language learning but the kids will lose the home language; later down the track, you then get problem situations where adult children and their parents have difficulty communicating about complex or difficult topics because the children’s home language is not good enough for that and the parents’ English isn’t good enough, either …

      • Lynn says:

        Thanks for your reply!
        Yeah, I totally agree, as that happens in my husband’s family. My husband’s brother is not good at English and lets his wife do everything about his children’s schooling. In daily communication, dad and sons only talk to each other in simple words (you like it?, good?, go to bed,…). The problem here is that his children spoke Vietnamese quite well five years ago. But now they forget everything because the dad does not talk to them much, and the mom only speaks English with them. I asked the children if they wanted to learn Vietnamese, I could teach them. They said they were good enough. Even they refused their culture (Vietnamese) and home country (Vietnam). We are losing our culture, our identity, and our love. I am significantly aware of this, and I will never let it happen with my son, I have to say.

    • Laura says:

      Schools could organise an induction session at the beginning of each year where they could hand out information sheets translated in different languages. To make this information session more accessible to non-native English speakers, the school could seek assistance from bilingual or multilingual parents whose children are already enrolled in the school to provide interpreting services on the day. Or, parents could take this opportunity to come along with a friend or relative with a better proficiency and/or literacy level who could ask questions to the teachers or the school principal.
      In addition to this information-sharing gathering, the school would need to offer some language assistance to parents throughout the school year such as during parent-teacher meetings or whenever there is a need to discuss about students’ academic progress or behavioural issues for example.

  • benjaminfox says:

    This is an interesting article and it got me thinking about how frequently teachers communicate with parents and the effects on the child’s learning that missing avenue of teacher-parent communication might have. I wonder in Australia if schools in highly multilingual areas provide teachers with communication training and support for when they need to communicate with a parent who speaks a language that they do not. Even after some cursory browsing, I’m not certain if teachers in NSW schools even get cultural sensitivity training to effectively talk with parents. What kind of support can teachers expect when during a parent-teacher meetings, when they can’t communicate with those responsible for a child’s education? It seems as though this kind of article touches on an under-discussed but vital part of child-parent language learning and school community integration. I completely agree with your recommendations, services that provide curriculum or school-related information should be accessible to those whose L1 isn’t English.

    I did find some really good examples of public schools in Sydney that are providing multilingual information on their front pages. Liverpool public school has a long list of phone translation services on their website, and it is a good example for other areas and schools that need it as well – https://liverpool-p.schools.nsw.gov.au/

  • Hazel says:

    After reading this article, I reflected on my own situation. When I was in China, this kind of problem did not seem so serious, if it is children from different countries, studying in primary and secondary schools in China. Most of them send their children to international or bilingual schools. But if it‘s the other way around. Our children are going to study here, and that’s probably an inevitable problem. So it’s important for a school to have teachers from different countries. They can communicate well. Also, it would be nice if the school website could be set up in different languages. Parents have a better understanding of the school which I think obviously is good for the children.

    • Thanks, Hazel! You might enjoy this PhD thesis:
      Li, J. (2017). Social Reproduction and Migrant Education: A Critical Sociolinguistic Ethnography of Burmese Students’ Learning Experiences at a Border High School in China. (PhD). Macquarie University, Retrieved from https://www.languageonthemove.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/LI_Jia_Social_reproduction_and_migrant_education.pdf
      The thesis explores the schooling experiences of a group of international primary and secondary school students in China, who don’t attend international or bilingual schools, namely cross-border students from Myanmar studying in schools in Yunnan … their experiences, and that of their parents, also include substantial forms of exclusion and mainstreaming.

  • G. Silva says:

    This study’s framework is so helpful: CDA plus thematic analysis. It certainly helps strengthen the study I intend to conduct for my master’s and hopefully this paper too when I finish (and hopefully publish) it!

    I would love to see how this study helps NSW or some other place, by the way. I think those in position should really take this into consideration.

  • Shiyi.ke says:

    This article reminds me of my primary classmate, After graduation, she went to the U.S. to study further with her mum. At that time, I heard that many social problems of accompanying mothers are caused by language barriers, they cannot communicate well with the outside world. Some middle schools in the United States often have activities that require parents to participate or speak, but a considerable number of accompanying parents cannot integrate into the local parent group because they do not understand English.while the child’s language ability improves rapidly, and the gap between the children and parents will expand, and mothers’ anxiety is more likely to increase.

    • Thanks, Shiyi! No doubt that the burden on families who migrate so that children can learn English is immense.
      This article has more on such “geese families”, as they are called in S Korea:
      Piller, Ingrid, Takahashi, Kimie, & Watanabe, Yukinori. (2010). The Dark Side of TESOL: The hidden costs of the consumption of English. Cross-Cultural Studies, 20, 183-201.

    • benjaminfox says:

      I totally agree with this, I recall a lot of activities, especially in primary school where parents visit, and it is almost required for them to know English. There are school activities that are really common in Australia, like book week, sports carnivals, afterschool classes, where parents are expected to talk with teachers and other caregivers in English. I can imagine events like these being discouraging to those whose first language isn’t English, leaving them isolated from their child’s school’s community.

  • Kelly says:

    Thank you Ingrid for sharing this article!

    After reading this article, I realized that a monolingual school website can be a barrier to parent engagement. It makes me 5 years later to understand why my parents reacted before I was ready to study in Australia.

    Due to my parents’ poor English foundation, they cannot read any website in English, let alone the campus website of a foreign university. In fact, I still haven’t figured out why they sent me to an international school since I was a child and eventually sent me abroad to study. I think there is a big chance that they are blocking because they have seen a lot of English-only websites about international schools. As a result, the admission guidance department of the international school has saved them a lot of things, and there will be no more obstacles.

    In China, international schools will have independent guidance departments for further studies. The teachers of the college admission guidance have many years of experience in applying for overseas universities. In the third year of high school, they will help students plan their further studies and explain the application requirements of various foreign universities in advance. As well as the difficulty of the application, it is matched according to the actual situation of the students. Through the guidance of further studies, the chances of students applying to the ideal university will be greatly improved. Finally, I successfully applied to Macquarie University.

    • Thanks, Kelly, for sharing! I’m glad you made it to Macquarie University but also a bit sad that English is so powerful that parents sometimes feel they have to make decisions in the best interest of their child that will alienate them from their children …

  • PurebearJo says:

    I agree parents’ engagement in their children’s studies affects their academic achievement, and understanding the content and learning a new language is double the burden for children and parents. In the part where parents need to pay attention to English words “language,” “translation” or “translated version,” I thought about replacing them with the image of each country’s national flag. Then, it will stand out and be more accessible. However, above all, I wish there were some people and service for solidarity so they could communicate more freely.

    • Thanks, PurebearJo! Good suggestion re using flags – would certainly help some but is not without problems, either, as language and nation state do not always neatly match (e.g., which Indian language gets the Indian flag, and what about all the other Indian languages? Or which flag do you use for Kurdish which doesn’t have a state? Or which flag do you use for Korean, which is used by two states?)
      Agree that ultimately this is about solidarity and creating institutional communication that is inclusive and shows respects and everyone has an equal and fair chance to succeed …

  • Clara says:

    In Viet Nam, where language is taught as a second language, the language barrier is a frequent occurrence. In my nation, parents frequently enrol their young children in English-language programmes at a young age with hopes that they will grow up to be fluent in both spoken and written English. Since few of them are competent in this language, it can occasionally be difficult for them to tutor their children at home. When I worked as a teaching assistant in the English centre, I was in charge of compiling a report on the lesson’s subject matter and providing feedback to the parents of the students. Their parents frequently brought them to class for fifteen to thirty minutes, during that time they requested me to review the previous lesson with the students. They always explained that because they did not have time and did not fully comprehend what their children learnt in a center. In addition, it is practically impossible for them to communicate directly with the native instructor when they want to know more about the level or how their children learn in the classroom.

  • Abdulla Zubayr Nafea says:

    Thanks for sharing such an excellent article. I want to share my uncle’s experience here in Sydney. He struggled a lot with his children in terms of their education. The English proficiency level of my uncle was shallow when he came to Australia with his family. The problem starts When he admits his son to a school. We all know that The advantages of parent participation in early childhood education might not be immediately apparent or measurable. Parents’ involvement is essential for the learning process to continue and improve and to foster a lifelong attitude of curiosity and openness. As he could not understand English, he could not talk with the teachers about his son’s progress and future. As a result, his son’s school performance was demoted daily, and he failed in 5th grade.

    • So sorry to hear that, Abdulla! Hope your nephew will recover from this setback. His story demonstrates the importance of inclusive home-school communication more than any research article can.

  • Tushar says:

    The communication process between parents and the schools is a very crucial issue. I experienced the pain of a parent in relation to his son’s education. He wasn’t that literate and he didn’t understand a word of English. He used to work in the construction of our house. One day, he just requested me to fill the admission form for his son. He had no idea how to fill the online form because the form was in English language and the form itself was too complicated to be filled by even a literate individual. I talked with his son as well and his son could understand English a little bit, but he had no idea how to fill the form online. In this situation, I could feel the pain of both the father and son as they were feeling powerless in their situation. The father wanted his son to study in this English medium school so that his son doesn’t have to live a hard life; like his father. In this world of linguistic diversity, maximum attention should be given to providing equal opportunities to all human beings all over the world.

    • Thanks, Tushar, for sharing this painful story. I hope you could be of some assistance to that family. Sadly, English-medium education often is not even all that it’s cracked up to be 🙁

  • Suyeon says:

    It’s such a shame that engagement of parents from linguistically diverse backgrounds is unavoidably inactive due to the language barrier. Considering that engagement is critical for their children’s academic success, there is an urgency to figure out realistic and effective measures to support communication between schools and parents. I wonder why there still isn’t any financial support from the government. Since Australia has been gaining a lot of profit from international students, I think there should be governmental actions to solve these issues to ultimately bridge the language barrier. As Australia is a multilingual society, the government should take responsibility for this challenge. One step towards inclusivity could be for the government to provide schools with access to and funding for translators.

  • Ayesha Akber says:

    Something has been brought into the light. Yes, this article was really important for me to read because it accounts for various information on educational institutions that do not supply what parents with low levels of proficiency in English need to clear the roadblock. As a child, I had seen my parents, especially my mother, struggling to explain to me the theme of the story written in my English book because she herself wasn’t taught English seriously. However, this case is way too different and three times more serious when parents are living in a different country, whose language is still hard for them to grasp. It’s great to hear about the concerns of many schools regarding the subject and their providing of the services via websites, via building platforms to translate each source of information to make it available and clear for the parents and students. It is first and foremost important to engage parents in the class and educational system of an institution. Otherwise, they cannot teach their students or somehow wouldn’t concede their children’s work properly.

    • Thanks, Ayesha! It’s sad to see parents struggling to explain a story to their children. We really shouldn’t put people in such situations where stories are seemingly better because they are in English; but in reality, only make people feel small – in front of themselves and their children …

  • Randomcastmember says:

    Thank you for sharing this Ingrid.
    Admittedly, I have to say that I am the witness of such an event where parents and kids face a language barrier to engagement in school. As I work as an educational consultant for students and parents specially from Thailand, Laos and neighboring countries who wish to pursue their education in Australia, I have experienced a number of cases where non-English speaking parents have limited understanding of their kid’s future school because everything in the school website is in English. They have no choice but to use education consultant service as their assistance in selecting the appropriate school for their kids. This does not mean that education consultancy is a bad thing, it is a job that provides suggestions and recommendations to education choices. However, based on my job, what I can help those clients with is selecting a certain school based on my discretion and requirement from parents and translating school information for the parents. Sometimes I have to sit in a zoom meeting being an interpreter between the principal and parents before enrolling students to a particular school. I totally agreed with Ingrid that the problem of not having other languages than English on school websites not only limits parents’ access to broader information but it also restricts their opportunity as well as the future engagement with the school, and potentially child’s education achievement. If any of you have a chance to visit certain websites of primary/secondary schools in Australia, you will find that each website tries their best to create such an image of warm and friendly schools for international students (by showing photos of students of all colors, ethnicity etc. within the school), showing how inclusive they are. But what may be controversial here is still the unavailability of information in languages other than English.

    On the other hand, certain schools (not all) do provide an English language support program for children who newly arrived in Australia. Those programs include Intensive English Centers (IECs) and the Intensive English High School (IEHS). These programs may help students to develop their English proficiency in order to be able to chase up their peers, however, it takes a great amount of time and additional money for students and parents.

    • Thank you, Randomcastmember, for sharing your experience! I’m glad you can help families choose good schools for their children. I wish the roles of educational consultants and migration agents could be extended beyond school choice and making the initial deal; surely, these parents need ongoing support to engage with their children’s schooling …

  • Minnie says:

    Thank you for bringing this to my attention. The issue related to the relationship between the school language and parental engagement was rarely raised in my mind when I was in my home country (Vietnam) since we all speak Vietnamese. However, it seems to be a significant issue when it comes to an international environment with diverse cultural communities. For example, when I decided to study abroad in Australia and my parents have a negligible level of English language proficiency, only I and my education agent could discuss with each other subjects related to my further study such as which university I should choose, what courses there are, and what the curriculum is. This was because all the university’s websites are resolutely monolingual. Therefore, it has been such a long time since I last shared my study with my parents. Besides, I have some relatives here who have migrated to Australia since the Vietnam war. Their English proficiency level is basic, but their children who were born and raised here in Australia are proficient in English. The parents shared that the information they received from their children’s school during that time had all been translated by their children. Their children mostly worked on their own in their studies. Moreover, in terms of language barriers in using public services, even though they provide on-demand telephone interpreting services, my relatives need someone to firstly speak in English with the callee in order to ask for the translation service afterwards. Overall, I hope that there would be more inclusive designs to enhance greater not only parental engagement but also social inclusion in linguistically diverse societies in the near future.

    • Thanks, Minnie! You have put your finger on something intangible that is not widely discussed: that language barriers also cause rifts between parents and children. I wonder how your parents feel about not being able to talk much with you about your studies? And would this be different if Australian universities provided information in Vietnamese, or is this an inevitable consequence of studying overseas? Same with your relatives – the consequences of Australia’s institutional monolingualism for family relationships, particularly parent-child relationships, remain poorly understood …

  • Kat says:

    Thank you for sharing this article. My parents prepared me mentally and familiarised me with the new learning style before I entered elementary school. The ways of learning and teaching between kindergarten and elementary school are remarkably different. However, I still had some obstacles when I entered school. Therefore, I can understand how challenging it may be for children to adapt to a new environment and a new language. Unfortunately, both children and parents struggle to get used to a new language.

    Australia is regarded as a multicultural country, and it is partially portrayed on the government’s website through multilingual materials. When I read these documents, I felt like I was reading material that had been translated by a translation tool because of the mechanically translated phrases. However, it can be said that it is an attempt by the government to provide necessary information to all citizens. Even so, physical or face-to-face support services are difficult to access daily.

    • Thanks, Kat! You put your finger on the real problem: there is a lot of translated information available in this country but it’s too often of poor quality and ongoing daily f2f is almost completely absent … many people say “ah, but that’s too difficult” when it really isn’t; we just need to start to think systematically about how we can best use our rich multilingual resources …

  • Ian says:

    Hi, thanks for this article!

    I never knew before reading this article that there was an issue like this in regards to monolingual schools impacting parents and their children.

    When looking at the official school websites for information in regards to enrolment, fees and other business stuff, there are only a handful of schools across Sydney that have this option of direct translation and help. The engagement of parents significantly helps with students and their studies, however if parents don’t even know where to look for information to try and help their child/children about their education, it can obstruct their learning needs and motivation – it’s like a domino effect.

    I went to a private school in Sydney’s north-west suburbs and there was nothing at all to help parents or observers of another language to guide them about the school; despite the fact that there were quite a few children of various backgrounds eg. Lebanese (Arabic),

    This might be slightly off-topic, but the Western Sydney Wanderers which are a professional soccer team based in Parramatta, have now introduced a new language iniciative that every volunteer at the club who will help at their home games will wear a pin of the language they speak eg. Spanish flag for Spanish language proficieny. I think this is a great way to promote an inclusive environment. Maybe the NSW Government could follow this lead with reference to schools to promote an inclusive, linguistic diverse environment. It would be very nice to have.

    • Thanks, Ian! The Wanderers initiative is fantastic! A bit problematic to associate a language with a national flag but definitely a step in the right direction – do you know how it is being received by fans?

      • Ian says:

        The season hasn’t started yet so I’m unsure, but they have done video clips about their new playing jerseys and fixture announcements and it has blown up on social media. There have been many languages on show for example Greek, Burmese, Serbian and South Sudanese (not sure what specific language they use).

        I think it will be very helpful!

  • Haein says:

    In my niece’s primary school in Sydney, there are many students who have different country backgrounds, such as India, Korea, and China, in the school, as well as the teachers from various countries backgrounds. When I visited the school to pick my niece up with my aunt, it looked like it was extremely easy to communicate with the teachers. Even though my aunt speaks English, sometimes she needs help to get information in detail from the school. Then, she can get help from a Korean teacher to ask for help from the school in Korean even though the teacher is not my niece’s class teacher. Like this, in the school, communicating and getting help from the teachers, who have the same backgrounds as the parents, is a common way of joining the school community. In addition, there is the other advantage of this when the school has events with parents. For instance, they give a translated paper to explain the events and the order of events. Because of the diverse backgrounds of teachers, the parents in the school get an advantage in language support compared to other schools. For this reason, it affects the students’ academic achievement and participation in school activities and events positively.

  • Tram says:

    Thank you for raising this matter. As I am a citizen of a mostly monolingual country where there is not as much multicultural happening, I rarely encounter such a home-school communication barrier, to be honest. Some of the types of schools I can name include all-Vietnamese schools, international schools (Vietnamese-English, Vietnamese-French, etc.), and all-Korean or all-Japanese schools (specific schools for a certain foreign community). Therefore, the solution to address the home-school communication is quite simple, which is to have a translator or in my country, these translators are no other than the teaching assistants. Obviously, these schools’ websites are written in both Vietnamese and whatever the other language that the school uses. Besides, the f2f meeting, say, between Vietnamese parents and foreign teachers is well-handled with the help of teaching assistants.

    What about countries occur much less in multi-diversity? In other words, for those who let their children attend a school where their language is only composed of 1% of the entire school, should the responsibility be on the school only or also on the parents? I suggest that in this case, parents and the schools share half of the responsibility and that the parents’ responsibility is even more important considering that not all schools can afford to enact all of the suggested solutions above considering the staff or financial issues, for instance

  • Ziadah Ziad says:

    In Indonesia, state schools that can afford to have websites and website managers are mostly located in the cities. For example, SMA 5 Mataram, the high school that I went to. The website, https://www.sma-5-mtr.sch.id, is monolingual, only written in Indonesian, and it is such a simple website. The content focuses on providing the school activities that are written like news, links to the students’ podcasts on YouTube, to students’ enrolment, to the school’s social media, and some announcements such as when the students can take their certificate, exam schedules, etc. Now one of my nephews is studying here. His parent told me that every class has a parents’ WA group that makes it easier for parents and homeroom teachers to communicate.

    Parting from the example above, many schools, especially elementary schools in Indonesia do not have websites. This school still depends on face-to-face meetings for enrolment or for providing information. Parents are usually informed through letters about any important issues. For parents who don’t speak Indonesian, the family member or their children will assist them to know the content of the letter. Further, if there is a serious problem, students’ parents are called and have a private meeting with the teachers or the principal. If the parents do not speak Indonesian, the teacher who speaks the local tongue would be the interpreter or bridge the communication. For Indonesian children, especially those whose parents do not speak Indonesian, going to school is a solitary process, They have no one to ask for help when they have trouble doing their homework. In addressing this issue, specifically in Lombok, many Lombok youths built a reading hut for the kids in their village, where they can learn, play, and read together after school.

    In the two international schools where I used to teach, the websites are bilingual consisting of English and Indonesian, excluding the local tongues although these schools had 1-3 Sasak students who were sponsored by a foundation. The school’s posts on social media are fully written in English. Parents who do not speak English might click the translation button or use any assisting online tool for translations. Further, any other modes, such as letters, reports, etc are always written in both languages. During my teaching experience, I never heard that Parent Association raise this issue since the Sasak parents speak Indonesian and, on many occasions, they came to school with staff from the foundation. I also found many Indonesian parents signed up for English classes to keep up with their children. Many or probably most Indonesian children who were sent to this school at a very young age preferred English to Indonesian. Their parents are proud of it. Meanwhile, some foreign parents were concerned if their kids’ Indonesian is better than their English.

    • Thanks, Ziadah, for this overview of home-school communication in different Indonesian schools! School websites can have all kinds of purposes and some of the examples you describe seem to be more symbolic and don’t necessarily communicate content with parents?
      Generally, I think that f2f communication can be more inclusive in linguistically diverse situations and not having a website may not be a bad thing for some schools…

  • Tu Nguyen says:

    The home-school communication problems in this article reminds me of the case of my privately tutored student’ parents. Their child’s school is a primary international school with parents coming from various backgrounds. In this teaching context, English is adopted as a lingua franca in all types of parent-teacher communication such as parents’ meetings, report cards, text messages, etc. Due to the limited English proficiency, this student’ parents have to rely on a Google Translate to understand and reply to all school messages. However, by realizing that a machine translation is not effective enough for them to be fully informed about their child’s learning progress, they decided to hire me as both a tutor for their child and an interpreter following them in every parents’ meetings to help them overcome the language barriers. After joining some meetings, as I figured out that some Vietnamese parents in this class were in the same situation, I suggested they raise their concerns to the Parent Teacher Organization to allow the Vietnamese form teachers to conduct the bilingual parents’ meetings. I believe that this small change might improve parent engagement.

    • Thanks, Tu Nguyen! Is that international school in Vietnam? It’s quite shocking to hear that the school would opt for English Only in such a context. Is it the attraction of English that makes parents send their children there? Why don’t they send their child to a regular public school?

  • brownies says:

    This article got me thinking about how impossible it is for my parents, who do not know English, to acquire information about my study in Australia when everything is in English. Therefore, I was urged to research this issue.

    To help parents who cannot communicate with their children’s teachers in English, VIC Government implements a telephone interpreting service in public schools and offers it to the parents. However, I found that all guidance relating to this service is written entirely in English, including the booking procedures, important information such as “no translating service is provided for calls longer than 60 minutes”, and follow-up processes. Additionally, the Government uses the LanguageLoop website as a different option for parents to book interpreters; however, when I opened the website, the only languages available are English and Chinese. I might miss a few pieces of information because I am unable to sign up for the website, but by the look of it, it can be seen that people speaking minority languages are at an extreme disadvantage and not able to access numerous services despite policies supporting multilingual, which is proven by this article.

    This situation does not only occur in schools, but also in many other services in Australia where the majority of guidance to access interpreting services, whether online or through phone calls, is in English, which is unfortunate considering how Australia has one of the most culturally diverse population in the world.

    • Thanks, Brownies! Good point and one that continues to frustrate me: there are many language services available in Australia but to access them you need to know English! Some years ago I wrote a report on the translated version of instructions how to call emergency services (Triple Zero). The instructions have been translated into numerous languages but they only explain the procedure if you speak English and don’t include instructions how to ask the phone operator for an interpreter and how to identify your required language…

  • Quynh says:

    This introduction to the home-school communication problem has led me to look further into the interaction between parents of Vietnam’s ethnic communities and their children’s schools.

    Vietnam has 54 ethnic minority groups, each has its own language that contributes to the cultural diversity of the nation. The Viet people account for 87% of the country’s population and mostly stay in the lowlands, while the remaining 53 minority groups are scattered over remote mountainous areas. Poverty and low levels of awareness of minority parents have deprived education opportunities of children. In other words, parents rarely find ways to send children to school or engage in their kids’ schooling. Instead, these children are expected to stay at home and help with farming.

    The mismatch between the mainstream language as the medium of instruction and children’s local dialect has exacerbated the situation. As students find it difficult to understand what teachers say, they strongly dislike schools and then drop out shortly after enrolment.

    In recent years, efforts have been made to improve minority students’ literacy. Many projects are implemented in some remote provinces with the bilingual teaching approach, in which Vietnamese is taught as a second language, and students’ dialect becomes the instruction medium. Lessons are delivered with the help of local teaching assistants. Students are encouraged to create their own books, paintings and drawings to express their thoughts in the new language. Accordingly, they become more enthusiastic and eager to go to school and learn new things. This is a positive indicator showing that education in ethnic languages is effective in increasing school access for minority children.

  • Tviq says:

    Thanks for sharing!
    The article reminded me of my parents’ confusion when browsing monolingual school websites. The websites of these monolingual schools rarely have an option for parents to choose between different languages, and even in the few cases where there is a translation, there is still a lot of disagreement about the content after the translation.
    I think best school can hire professional translators will be able to translate the content of translation (for example, especially for non-english speaking background family, and not every family member of the family are proficient in English), the effect of the translation will be more accurate than Google translation, parents also won’t be misled by the inaccurate information. It will also promote effective contact and trust between parents and school.

    • Thanks, Tviq! Some schools have community liaison officers and that’s a great start. I’m not a school administrator but I think your suggestion for schools to hire translators is unlikely to be financially viable. Translations probably need to be outsourced and/or handled centrally by the Department of Education, while individual schools need to find ways to integrate interpreting services and other forms of language mediation into their usual roles and processes (e.g., employing bilingual staff and allocating a fraction of their workload to the provision of language assistance)

  • Dung says:

    Thank you for sharing the article! I totally agree with the opinion that the engagement of parents plays a vital role in the achievement of students. I used to be an academic officer at an international school in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam. During that period of time, I had opportunities to work with many parents coming from different backgrounds. Most of the parents in my workplace are Vietnamese, but the others are foreigners, not Vietnamese speakers. In that school, there was also the same problem as what is shown in the article – the language barrier that non-Vietnamese parents had when using the monolingual school website (only Vietnamese). They complained to me quite often about how difficult it was when trying to read and understand school announcements in Vietnamese on the website. They thought it was unfair for non-Vietnamese parents to update the latest information from the school, especially their children’s exams and extracurricular activities. Even when they tried to use Google Translate, the translation was sometimes weird. Listening to them, the school’s principal decided to hire a translation team who was in charge of translating all important information on the website into appropriate languages for foreign parents and sending translation versions via email to them. Besides, the website now also supports them with English versions and works quite well. I am sure that all of them are pleased with such improvements.

    • Thanks, Dung! That’s great to hear that your school was so responsive. I think the dynamics outside the Anglosphere are a bit different because English can serve as a lingua franca, and so providing English versions can help bridge the language barrier, particularly in an international school. Did your school provide only English translations in addition to Vietnamese, or other languages, too?

      • Dung says:

        In every class, the form teacher was in charge of collecting information of students’ nationality and reporting it to the translation team. The team would translate school announcements into different appropriate languages based on the nationality of the students in classes.

  • Hai Trang Tran says:

    I was raised in Vietnam and luckily, I was sent to different types of schools in Vietnam such as public school, private school, international school and English center. According to my surroundings and previous learning experience in different school environments, hardly can people at my parents’ age (over 40 years old) speak other languages than Vietnamese. A few people are able to speak French or Russian. On the other hand, young Vietnamese parents who are from 25 years old to 30 years old are better at English communication. This is because Vietnamese Ministry of Education Training has placed focus on developing English learning and teaching recently. That situation leads to the fact that newly – established schools and international schools are more likely to use English as an official language of communicating with children and parents than older schools.
    To maintain the accurate transmission of information, in many English-speaking schools, comments which are written by English – speaking teachers are translated into Vietnamese before being sent to Vietnamese parents. Besides, parent – teacher conferences are mostly conducted by Vietnamese teachers despite the ability of English level of parents. Lastly, children play a significant role in helping their parents to comprehend English messages from their schools.

    • Thanks, Hai Trang Tran, for sharing! I’m interested to hear that schools in Vietnam start to use English in home-school communication. What’s the rationale for that? Wouldn’t it make more sense to simply stick to Vietnamese for that purpose?

      • Hai Trang Tran says:

        In my opinion, many schools in Vietnam would like to become international by using English as one of the main communication languages because this change can attract the attention of more wealthy parents who are looking for an international environment for their children. These parents do not need to send their children to other countries as Vietnam already has some international schools.
        If schools insist on using Vietnamese, it can be hard for them to use advanced and useful textbooks from other countries or distinguished international authors.
        I think some changes in language of communication is necessary.

  • Hakunamatata says:

    Thank you for sharing this interesting article that raises the awareness of inequality in parental engagement in Australia. In comparison with native students, linguistic minority children often face an educational comparative disadvantage in school because of a linguistic mismatch, they face a double challenge as they are required to simultaneously learn a new language as well as the teaching contents.

    It is hard to believe that even a school with 98% of non-English-speaking enrollments does little support on the school website to minimize the language barrier. It must be really stressful and frustrating for those bilingual parents because even though they have noticed the eagerness for needs and support from their children, they still lack the critical linguistic ability to access the administrative and academic resources, and could offer only limited parental guidance. With such a lack of expected parental supervisory, together with institutional monolingual habitus and socioeconomic disadvantage, such factors contribute to a vicious circle that diminishes the possibility of academic and career success of the bilingual learner. In addition, in a way, I believe there are intentions from those schools that provide limited support, as filtering out families with poor linguistic competence of the dominant language helps to avoid troubles, extra workloads and spending on additional language support.

    • Thanks, Hakunamatata! I agree with you how stressful it must be for parents not to be able to fully participate in their children’s education – that’s the impetus for change. However, I doubt schools intentionally try to filter out NESB families. First, because students have a right to attend their local public school, and second because diversity has promotional value in Australian education. The problem to me seems a genuine ignorance of how language barriers work …

  • WAA says:

    My children go to a school where the majority of parents are from a non-English speaking background, Mostly Arabs. The school Facebook page and notes sent home are provided in both Arabic and English. However, the quality of the Arabic translation is very low which makes the ideas not clear. I assume they use Google Translate to do this job. once, I contacted the school to explain the issue and offered my translation for free, in order for parents to understand the content of the notes, but the school didn’t seem interested. I am not sure if I should contact someone else in this regard, but for sure I am going to something about that. This is because I was one of these parents and I understand their concerns about their children’s education. This issue would affect parents and children; thus, the government has to ensure equal opportunity for all parents.

    • Thanks, WAA! That’s so frustrating to hear that if there are translations, their quality is poor; and that offers of language assistance from NESB parents are not taken seriously or even rejected. Have you tried making an appointment with the principal to discuss the issue? Or raise it with your school’s P&C committee?

  • Emily says:

    I used to work for an international school in Japan. About 90% of the parents’/guardians’ backgrounds were Japanese (some spoke English at varying levels), and about 10% were international or mixed families. Teachers communicated in English, with written communications translated by apps, and in-person conversations were interpreted or improvised. The administrative side used Japanese, with English translations as the “second language” (I spent one year in the office, writing such translations). While having different language backgrounds, most international families spoke Japanese or English, at least as a second language, and communication problems were rare. I hope the school would provide services in other languages if anyone needed it, but this never came up. I’ve considered two potential reasons:
    1. Linking to the lecture, the language situation likely reflected class. Private international schools are expensive, and parents are usually well-educated with high paying jobs. Most people fitting these categories have proficiency in either of the languages used at the school.
    2. Families not proficient in either language may send their children to public schools, if they have lower SES and need cheaper options, or feel that while living in Japan, a Japanese education would serve better than an English one.

  • Sharkie says:

    It was surprising to learn that schools websites still do not provide much translation for families who have a non-English speaking background, especially a multicultural country like Australia. The experience I have in Macau is quite different. For Cantonese mainstream schools, some websites do have tailored English or Portuguese translations and some websites do not have any translations at all. Immigrants in Macau are mostly from mainland China and the Philippines.

    Luckily, for most Mandarin-speaking parents, they may not speak in Cantonese but can still understand Cantonese conversations. So they almost never experience difficulties when asked to participate in school events. As for the families from the Philippines, schools tend to be quite aware of communication barriers. Most teaching staff and general staff should be able to communicate with at least a basic level of English nowadays. When the school delivers a speech, they also invite expert staff to do translation services or deliver the speech in English. Even with all these supports, a lot of the Filipino families tend not to participate in most school events. They find more covenience in using social media apps like Wechat, since Wechat has got a translation function by just scanning the documents. Another way is to ask their children who are already fluent enough in Cantonese to read out important information to them.

    • Thanks, Sharkie! What you say about schools in Macau doesn’t sound so different from schools in Australia: there is a lot of goodwill and good intentions but a systematic scaffold and approach seems to be lacking in both contexts.

  • Brynn says:

    I think the recommendation to have a centralised hub of info on the school website (in the required languages) is a great one, and it’s one that would be very achievable. Something else that I have noticed as a parent is that a significant proportion of immigrant parents with a non-English L1 are hesitant to engage with the (usually) English-speaking staff at their children’s school as well. When I was in America this was usually because the parents themselves were undocumented immigrants and therefore did not want to draw attention to themselves by speaking to a teacher or staff member, even if it was for the cause of advocating for their children’s education. In Australia, I’ve spoken to several parents at my kids’ school who feel that their level of English is “poor”, and they have expressed that they don’t want to sound “stupid” in front of their children’s educators. These parents tend to not make warranted complaints against a policy or educational practice that their child has encountered because they already feel like an outsider in the community and don’t want to be further ostracised.

    • Thanks, Brynn! Astute observation! It’s hard to present yourself as a competent adult in a language you are still learning; in a migration society, schools (and all institutions) should be more attuned to that fact …

  • Foronda, James Vincent S. says:

    Reading your article, I was intrigued by both the premise and its contents. It gave a new emphasis to the importance parents have in affecting the academical achievement of their children. It also gave a better insight on how there are still linguistic issues regarding school enrollments and the education of non-native language speaking students. These issues are something I never realized still existed nor given much thought about until I read the article. I often overlooked the importance of parents in deciding the education of their children, and how monolingualism still gatekeep parents from helping their students achieve academically.

    After reading your work, it made me be sympathetic to immigrant families who are being gatekept by the monolingual issue not just limited to education. It also inspired me to further investigate parental engagement’s role not just in education in a linguistic standpoint. My current study emphasizes the importance of language in garnering specific reactions from audiences. But your article inspired me to pursue a similar issue in the future. Thank you for sharing us your work, Dr. Ingrid Piller. I hope we would be able to read more of upcoming works in the future.

  • Stephanie Talavera says:

    I found your article very interesting and informative. I am very grateful to have encountered your work because I realized deeper linguistic issues regarding school enrollment. I often read about the lack of plain language in school enrollment policies and procedures, but never did I think about the difficulties migrant parents encounter in understanding these materials.

    After reading your work, I felt inspired to explore parental engagement further. I am currently finishing my thesis on the autonomous learning of young EFL learners, and my findings showed the involvement of parents. I may endeavor to investigate how parents with limited English proficiency guide their children in learning EFL. Thank you very much for sharing your work, Dr. Piller! I hope to read more.

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