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inner-city communities which results from their low level of education and the marginalization from sectors of the society.

In addition, many parents also lack the courage and initiative to seek help for themselves and as a result succumb to an attitude of carelessness in their children’s school base activities. This has led to their perpetual absence from and non-involvement in school base activities. Researchers of parental involvement in schools have stated that parental involvement has direct and lasting impact on children’s learning and academic achievement (Wishon, Crabtree & Jones, 1997). Consequently, this has not changed the action of many parents to become involved in school base activities. From all appearance it seems that many parents of lower socio-economic status are unaware of the impact they have on their children’s performance when they are involved.

Furthermore, limited data exist on parental involvement in inner-city basic schools which perpetuates the cycle of non-involvement. There is also an insufficient amount of materials available for parents to read, especially parents in inner-city communities who need materials that speaks to their needs and situations, to understand the role they can play in the school and their children’s lives to affect better outcomes for them. I am also unaware of any previous studies of parental involvement in an inner-city basic school from a developing country where schools often have low parental involvement. Interventions that have been shown to be effective in developing countries may be more difficult to implement in this context. Different cultural beliefs and values may also affect the acceptability of the strategies advocated by these programmes. Although inner-city refers to the central area of a major city, in Jamaica it is used to define an impoverished area where majority of the population is poor, unemployed, lack education and training. These communities are volatile with frequent occurrence of criminal activities and murder. Inner-city communities usually generate a feeling of hopelessness and perpetuate a vicious cycle that seems hard to break.

Provision made to schools by the government differs from country to country, which result in some schools struggling more than others. Primary to tertiary level schools in Jamaica receive better funding than basic schools. Basic schools are community funded organizations catering to children from 2-5 years of age. Fees are set by each basic school which can be the same or different. A subsidy is paid to the practitioners each month and a very minimal nutrition and material grant is given to the school twice yearly by the MOE for each student, along with food items such as rice, flour, cornmeal, oil, corn beef and tin mackerels. The school fees, lunch fees and funds raised are used to operate the school and pay staff salaries along with funds from the sponsoring body. Not all schools have a sponsoring body and hence they experience more challenges in meeting their yearly expenditure. As a result of unemployment many parents experience problems in finding both school fees and daily lunch fees. This sometimes spill over into anger towards the school when they cannot meet their needs and are called in to settle their account. This has resulted in many parents being absent from school activities as they oftentimes try to hide from practitioners and administrative staff b