Good practices handbook in relationships between immigrant families and school

This guide is a 40 pages document edited in 2010 by the Employment and Social Affairs Department of the Basque Government. This handbook is an extract of a previous and more extensive study entitled “Relationships between family and school from social and cultural diversity”, developed in 2009 under the policy framework Intercultural Education Program from the Educational Innovation Directorate of the Basque Government. The good practices listed are selected from education centers from Europe and EEUU that have successful experiences with students from low socio-economic background and ethnic minorities. First of all, the guide, from chapter 1 to 3, elaborates recommendations (drawn from the successful experiences studied) to enhance parental competences and the participation, collaboration and communication between immigrant families and schools. The last chapter, number 4, lists best practices examples to help famlies to develop parental competences, and activities to boost families, community and school collaboration (in this chapter, from page 19 to 25, “Good practices to train immigrant families at school” are listed). To sum up, this handbook offers a compilation of immigrant families’ participation strategies developed at several education centers, pointing as the best ones those that not just imply parents in the education and learning process of their children, but indeed, aimed to achieve the education community members’ participation at the school in order to build up a shared citizenship through civic learning processes.