Family-school-community partnerships as a catalyst for sustainable development in Kenyan basic education

The article explores the potential for family-school-community partnerships to drive sustainable basic education outcomes in Kenya. It uses document analysis of a purposively delimited collection of contemporary scholarly literature relevant to the four areas of parental engagement, school-community partnership, learner support, and sustainable basic education. The analysis was anchored in Epstein’s Overlapping Spheres of Influence Theory, which explains learner outcomes as emerging from the interaction of family, school, and community influences. A systematic source-identification process located 58 records and retained seven article documents for analysis. The evidence indicates that reciprocal, structured, and inclusive partnerships enhance learner participation, academic support, retention, attendance, early-childhood engagement, school-community alignment, and sustainable-development-oriented learning. In Kenya, evidence shows that parent education, income, provision for academic resources, headteacher-led involvement, and family-based truancy impact learners. Institutional partnership routines and culturally responsive engagement in particular are additionally shown by regional and international evidence to enhance the standard of parent-school-community relationships. The article suggests that schools should recognise families and communities as co-producers of sustainable development in basic education, as being producers of learning, welfare, inclusion, and relevance. It suggests structured communication, partnership planning by the headteacher, educating parents, community-related learning initiatives, partnership indicators, and focused support to low-income households.