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The SPTC Newsletter - September 2002 - Issue 69 

In this issue

SPTC Conference

Food in Schools - Is it glorious?

We recently sent you a letter and poster about our annual conference on Food in Schools. The speakers will be Gillian Kynoch, the Food Tsar who will talk about the Executive's plans for better, more nutritious school meals, free water and such like, whilst Tommy Sheridan MSP will explain his proposals for providing meals free of charge. Now, here as promised is the registration form. The charge is £7.50 to anyone from a member organisation (£20 for non-members) but only £5 per head if more than one person comes from the same school. A number of people have already expressed an interest in coming, so it would help us if you could send completed forms back as quickly as possible.

Parent Participation Pays Off - Yes!!

In December, we sent out a questionnaire asking you what you thought about the Executive's proposals to make it illegal for parents to smack their children, even lightly, if the child were under three. We asked you to discuss this either within your committee or with a wider group of parents and then to tell us the actual numbers supporting and opposing the proposal.

All in all, just on 2,500 parents participated in the survey. Of these, 56% opposed the executive's proposals. However, 94% did support making it illegal to hit any child with an implement. We presented the outcome of our survey when we gave evidence to the Justice Committee.

We are delighted to say that parents' views have been heard. The Criminal Justice Bill is to be amended in line with what you said i.e. the ban on smacking children under three will be dropped, but it will be illegal to hit any child with an implement. We see this as a real victory for parental involvement and welcome proof that the new Scottish Parliament, particularly through the committee system, does listen to what people say.

Besafeonline.org

It has finally happened. The website for the Safer Use of Services on the Internet (SUSI) projects has gone online. The address is www.besafeonline.org

For some time we have been involved in the SUSI project, which is designed to provide parents and pupils with a green cross code for the Internet. The website gives information on different services like chat rooms, email and bullying. It highlights the benefits and drawbacks of each and then offers golden rules to help parents and children negotiate the Internet safely. Just as the ultimate aim of the Green Cross Code is to teach children how to jaywalk safely, so the purpose of SUSI is to teach children how to use the Internet safely. The website has a discussion forum where you can add your comments as well as an online survey for you to give feedback on the project.

We are including a SUSI poster with this mailing as a visual reminder and as an easy way to pass the information on to other parents. We hope the poster can go up somewhere central in your school.

Need Advice about Special Educational Needs?

Some 20 per cent of children are identified as having some form of special educational need and often parents are at a loss to know where they can get advice. Enquire, the national information and advice service for special educational needs in Scotland, is there to help. They can help families in every school understand how the education system works, the Record of Needs process, what resources are available, what legal rights they may have, as well as help make sense of the jargon and terminology. Enquire aims to provide independent information, advice and mediation services to families with a child or young person who needs support for learning. For more information, see the enclosed leaflet. If you want to get in touch with Enquire or to order any of their useful publications please contact them on:

Helpline 0131 222 2400

Typetalk 0800 959598

Textphone 0131 222 2439

email Enquire.SENinfo@childreninscotland.org.uk
website www.childreninscotland.org.uk/enquire.htm

8th October 2002 European Day of Parent and Schools

The European Parents Association is launching a Europe-wide initiative to celebrate the importance of the parent role and of the home-school partnership.

 

Many schools already have links with schools in other parts of Europe, and perhaps joint activities could be planned for each school. Send them a recipe for haggis in return for a recipe for paella.

You might think of having a "European lunch" - not difficult when pasta and pizza are so popular with children. But, how about rising to the challenge of running the lunch in the appropriate language or using Euros for the day?

You could run a quiz night, naming European capitals, rivers and five things each country is famous for. Then you could link in with Scotland's football enthusiasm and name European footballers playing for Scottish clubs. Real fanatics will be able to give you their shirt number! Perhaps you could all agree to write a letter supporting the European Cup coming to Scotland and Ireland in 2008.

New Directions

Now for something completely different, we periodically send you copies of Direction, the journal of the Scottish Road Safety Campaign. As each year more children in Scotland are killed in road traffic accidents than by drugs, road safety is an important item for everyone's agenda. Direction is full of information about road safety projects across the country. Many will remember, because they have copied the idea, the "walking bus" where parents walk a group of children to school, picking up others along the way. The latest edition of Direction carries important information for all ages - from the dangers of using mobile phones when driving, through the new crack down on driving under the influence of drugs to advice on cycling safely - and visibly. It also carries information about initiatives being run in different authorities. As it is quite a bulky magazine, we will send it separately, but please do take time to look through it and see if any of the ideas can be adopted in your school. 

 The Great Debate - The Answer!

There were 1,500 actual responses to the debate with some 20,000 people contributing to these. Of the known respondents, 12 percent were teachers, 17 per cent were parents and 30 percent were pupils. The rest included organisations as diverse as SPTC, the CBI and the Scottish Arts Council. An easy to read summary document will be sent to all respondents, all schools and relevant organisations in early October. More detailed reports will be available on the website. The main points that have come out so far are the importance of education, the value of the teacher in the classroom and strong support for the comprehensive system. As with all such consultations - when people are asked what they want, they reply by saying they want everything. So people wanted stability and also change. More specifically this meant meeting the needs of individuals and offering more choice and flexibility. There was no specific desire to change the curriculum but the curriculum was seen as not meeting the needs of the 21st century. People want breadth and balance, but say the curriculum is overloaded. There was a worry about the emphasis on formal qualification and that was certainly a message which came through strongly from our meetings around the country.

Alongside the Executive's Great Debate, the Education Committee of the Scottish Parliament was running an inquiry into the purpose of education. Many of their findings matched those of the Executive. However, one interesting proposal was that education should be satisfying at the time and involve young people more actively in decision making - that's more time for computer games then! School experience should be seen as part of lifelong learning.

 

The next stage in the debate will be to consult with key bodies over the findings and then by January 2003, the Executive hopes to come forward with proposals for "next steps" and look more widely at the direction in which to move forward.

Your Questions Answered

Hired in Entertainers

Q: A teacher from the secondary school runs our discos for us. We pay him and he gives the money to a charity. Must he have public liability insurance or do we need extra cover?

No, the teacher is a volunteer. However, to make this absolutely clear, you could pay the cheque straight to the charity of his choice. You can also pay him money to cover his expenses.

Changing a PTA into a PA or vice versa

Our head teacher has just said that the teachers no longer want to be involved in the PTA. How can we change into a PA?

The membership of your association determines whether you are a PA or a PTA. With a PA only parents are members. With a PTA, parents and teachers are members. The committee is not the organisation - either of a PA or of a PTA. The committee runs the association on behalf of the members. There is no absolute requirement to have a teacher on the committee, even in a PTA. Your constitution might simply say that the committee is made up of between five and fifteen people appointed by the members. However, the chairperson should always be a parent. If you want to change into a PA, you have to change your constitution. You have to change your membership, your name and perhaps who is on the committee. Changes to the constitution should be done at a General Meeting. All members should be given notice of the meeting and of the intention to make a constitutional change and of what that change is. As long as everyone has been told and has had a chance to object, then you can go ahead with a simple majority at the meeting.

Who's in charge of spending money?

Q Our head teacher requires us to hand over money and then spend it as she wants. Is this right?

Most fights in school are about money, in particular about who decides how the PTA's money should be spent. It's good practice for the PTA/PA to keep control of the money and make the final decision themselves. Obviously it's important, if you are buying something for the school, to buy something that the school wants. Also, there are advantages in allowing the school to make the actual purchases as they can get things VAT free. However, the PTA is not there to act as a reserve bank account for the head teacher to tap into when the authority-provided budget runs out. Good practice would be to ask the school for a list of things they want; decide what the PTA will buy from this list and then report back to parents on how the money has been spent. Remember to keep some money back for exciting activities like Hopscotch theatre!

Head lice

An item on head lice always prompts a response and we are very grateful to one reader for reminding us of the "bug busting" method of solving the problem. The main item is a special fine-toothed comb, which you use for two weeks to remove all traces of the lice. Some people advocate using conditioner or oil first to make the hair slippery so that the nits come out more easily. The system is not approved by all authorities but it is supported by the UK Department of Health. To find out more phone the Bug Busting help line on 020 8341 7167.

And now wash your hands!

Recent studies have shown that many infections are passed from person to person and that the cycle of infection could be broken if we all washed our hands more. You should recently have received a pack from the Health Education Board for Scotland as part of their campaign to encourage more hand washing.

Regional Meetings

We are continuing our programme of regional meetings and have a date to come to Bellshill Academy, on Wednesday 23rd October at 7.30 pm.

If you'd be willing to host a meeting - you just provide the venue and coffee, we do the rest - please contact the office

 

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