 My name is Maria Tobin. I am currently employed as a national manager with TUSLA Educational Welfare Services. But my background, I began my career as a post-primary teacher. I worked in an educationally disadvantaged setting. We all appreciate that education is the way out of poverty and I think if we are to fully engage children in education I think the only way that we will truly achieve our goal is to acknowledge the importance of the parents in this. I think it is a partnership. It is a partnership between the educational systems, schools and parents because parents are the most important people in children's lives and it is only in their in partnership with those parents that we will be able to improve educational outcomes for children. So that is why we put so much energy into developing the partnership with the parents and we must empower the parents to support their child but to do that they must first be empowered in their own lives and in their own attainment and then they will have the confidence and they will have the vision for their child. My name is Nasira Saidi. I'm working for an organization in Antwerp called the Scholbruch. It's an organization who has a lot of projects going around parental involvement from primary school, secondary school to higher education. My background in my own education I'm a social worker. Parental engagement is important for student learning and well-being because first of all parents know their child the best. Second of all in education you have teachers, you have school teams and teachers know the things the best about education and because parents and teachers every day meet each other, they meet each other at school parties, they meet each other at the door when the parents bring their children to school, they meet in each other during information sessions, during parental contact. So it's important to also get those two parties together. The life of the child at home is different from the life at child in school. It's important to also bring those two lives together to get a better understanding like from teachers to parents or the life at home but also to enrich each other because if the parties see each other as equal parties they can enrich each other as well the parents in education but also education at the home life.