Madam, while the MOE has the COMPASS council to strengthen home-school collaborations, many parents and schools are still not actively engaging each other. Some barriers to parent involvement include: lack of time by families and school staff; prior negative contacts between teachers and parents usually when students misbehave; and lack of strategy and skills in engaging parents effectively

In a culture where teaching of daily life skills and character-building are either missing or outsourced to schools, equipping families in this area is a potentially meaningful way of engaging them. At a recent meeting with educators, I heard that there are students who have not peeled an orange or cooked a meal for themselves before.

One way that MOE can facilitate win-win school-parent engagement is the provision of easily accessible online or face to face modular learning workshops so schools can engage families to coach their children in topics such as social etiquette and other daily living skills applicable to the home, community and global settings.