Relationships between parents and schools: a case study

The complexity of the relationships between parents and teachers rests not only on the ambiguity of their shared interests but in the way in which off icial policies affect them. This study, based on qualitative ethnographic r esearch, explores teacher's, headteacher's and home/school liaison worker's experience of and attitudes towards the relationship between schools and p arents. The research focuses on the differences between the desire to have closer and mutually supportive relationships and the various impediments, b oth psychological and the result of government policies. Only by understand ing how deeply relationships are affected by the different barriers can the latter be overcome.