A parenting education workshop is underway in Indonesia.
There is a dynamic and growing energy in Indonesia focusing on parenting education, particularly for low-income families. However, little is known about parenting styles and related outcomes, much less the coverage and effectiveness of various parenting education approaches. Parenting education programs aim to improve the well-being of both parents and children by creating awareness of the importance of parents in supporting children’s development and success.
Through decades of studies across countries, we know that effective parenting education programs can improve child nutritional levels, strengthen children’s cognitive and literacy skills, reduce problem behaviors, and reduce parents’ depressive symptoms and substance rates. In a recent show of commitment, Indonesia’s Finance Minister, Sri Mulyani Indrawati, pledged to unlock the potential of her country’s young children as a way to help create future economic growth. Minister Indrawati mentioned that despite a 20 percent spending in education, almost 37 percent of three to six year olds do not attend early childhood education programs. This underscores the role of parents and how they can support children’s development and success.
To this end, Indonesia just created a new position within the Ministry of Education and Culture - a Director for Family Education Development, which represents the country’s growing attention to the issue of parenting education. Our report, Parenting Education in Indonesia: Review and Recommendations to Strengthen Programs and Systems, seeks to complement these efforts by providing a snapshot of parenting education programs in the country through evidence collected via interviews and field visits.
We found that many of Indonesia’s parenting education programs focus on the poor or operate in poor districts. Programs take place once a month for one to two hours and serve one or two dozen parents, usually mothers. Facilitators are often untrained and underpaid (or unpaid) health care workers, teachers, or parent volunteers who are given a loose set of messages to discuss according to their own or the participants’ interests.
Collected from--http://www.worldbank.org
