The business of learning: Parents as full, unwilling or sleeping partners

The concept of a partnership between parents and schools or parents and teachers has, for almost two decades, been written into policy documents such as home-school agreements and homework programmes without the term being adequately questioned. As a 'condensation symbol', partnership is persistent and is used to drive ideological initiatives at the expense of those whom it suggests it serves. This article proposes that the partnership metaphor has been inappropriately invoked from a business lexicon and, with little to tie it into the school and home-school context, potentially does damage to those it claims to involve.