As always, we start the January Backchat by wishing you all a very Happy New Year; then we get down to business by reminding you to pay your 2007 membership/insurance fee. Forms were sent out in November and well done to all those who got them back on time. The insurance ran out on December 31st 2006 and, for those who’ve still to renew, here’s a checklist:

• If you have lost the forms, then contact the office and we’ll send out replacements.
• If you’ve paid but haven’t received a receipt, please phone/email us in case it has got lost in the post.
• Has this newsletter been delivered to the right person? Are you still involved with the PTA/PA? If not, please contact us or pass this newsletter on to the school.
• If you pay late, the rules of the policy mean that you still have to pay the full fee.
  
  

As SPTC’s Annual Conference was over-subscribed, we are holding a second event on the theme, “How to Build a Parent Council”. Delegates will have the chance to work through section 8 of the toolkit and discuss the various options for a Constitution.
The date is 27th January; the venue is the Holyrood Campus of Edinburgh University (Moray House).
Registration starts at 10.00 am.

The cost, which includes morning coffee and lunch, is £7.50 per head for members (or £5 per head if more than one person comes from the same member PTA/PA).
There are still places so, if you haven’t signed up already and want to come, please get in touch.
The registration form can be downloaded from our website www.sptc.info

Last year we ran our Annual Conference as a series of workshops. Delegates were guided through the process that will be necessary in all schools when parents set up their Parent Council. The conference report is a step-by-step account of the workshops. We hope it will be helpful when you set up your Parent Council.

Step 1:

All parents should be informed by the local authority both that they are part of the school’s Parent Forum and that there will be a school meeting to set up a working group which will be responsible for designing a draft constitution for the new Parent Council.

As with all things, more progress will be made if there has been some pre-planning. So, once the local authority letter about the Parent Forum has gone out, it would be a good idea for those parents who are currently active in the school (in the PTA and/or school board) to get together to discuss who should set up the school meeting and who should chair it. Should it be the headteacher or the PTA and/or school board?

Similarly, rather than arriving at the meeting with a blank sheet of paper, it would be sensible to think in advance who might be on the working party. It is always much easier to discuss and change draft proposals than start from scratch. For example, the PTA and/or school board might propose that the working party is made up of an equal number of parents drawn from the PTA, school board and parents who are not currently in either group. It would be a good idea to ensure that each stage of the school is represented by this system.

Initially the Parent Council will be drawn from parents who currently have child/ren at the school (although other people may be included later) so it is important that it is parents who make the decisions at this early stage. The definition of “parent” is very wide and includes everyone who has a caring role for a child as well as absentee parents.

Step 2:

Once the working party has been established, it will have to draw up a draft constitution which it will then put back to the parents at the school for approval. “Considering options for a constitution” in Section 8 of the Toolkit offers a useful guide on how this might be done and we add some useful pointers from our conference.

Topic 1 - Name: Although you can call the Parent Council whatever you want (e.g. a Parent-Teacher Council!) it would be sensible to leave the name until the end of the process, until you have decided what you want the Council to do and who should be on it.

Topic 2 - Aims/purposes: A constitution is a description of the organisation that you want to have; it is not something fixed that you have to comply with, so we would suggest that the working party begins by deciding what the Parent Council should do. A good starting point would be to list all the activities that parents are currently involved in at the school and then think whether there is anything missing. Once you have a list of activities, match them to the aims – purposes of a Parent Council given on page 89 of the Toolkit.

For example:-

• Fundraising, buying equipment, running clubs etc. would fit under “Supporting the school in its work with pupils”.
• Discussing school policies or lobbying the local authority for a lollypop person would fit under “Representing the views of parents”.
• Social events, school discos and sending out a regular newsletter would fit under “Promoting contact between the school, parents, pupils etc”.
• Open meetings, newsletters, annual general meeting would fit under “Reporting to the Parent Forum”.

It should soon become clear both that you are already doing the kinds of things that will be required by the new Parent Council and that the general nature of the aims and purposes listed in the toolkit cover all the activities that parents are likely to want to do. This general set of aims would serve your Parent Council well.

Topics 3 & 4 - Membership & selection: The next thing to consider is who should be on the Parent Council, how many parents and what selection process, if any, you should have.
The membership of the Council is for each school to decide itself, but there are a few requirements from the legislation:

• members will be drawn from parents with children currently at the school
• the headteacher (or his/her representative) has a right to attend all meetings
• in denominational schools, the local church can nominate a representative.

One of the most popular options emerging from our conference was that parent members should be drawn from each year group. There was great reluctance to turn any volunteer away by operating a screening/ selection process. This would mean that the number of members should be given as a range – say from 5 to 20 – to allow the Council to continue whatever the level of parental enthusiasm. A large Council would mean that there were more people to help with activities but it would be important to share out the jobs. One person could be responsible for clubs, someone else for social events and someone else for a newsletter. Moreover, even if you have a potentially large Council, not everyone will turn up every time, so meetings should be manageable.

Topic 5 Other members: Once the parent membership has been decided, the working party then has to consider whether anyone else should be invited to be a member of the council. At our conference there was considerable support for including teachers, but it was thought that links with others – pupils, community members, etc. – would be better done on a “needs” basis. If teachers are to be part of the Council, the constitution has to be written to reflect this.

Topic 6 - Office bearers (see also SPTC leaflet Office Bearers and their roles available on our websitewww.sptc.info ): Having got the membership sorted out, the next thing to consider is office bearers. The only requirement coming from the legislation is that the person who chairs Parent Council meetings must always be a parent with child/ren at the school. The task of chairing meetings can be shared, as long as it is always done by a parent.

It is helpful to think of the tasks of the different office bearers. The Chair ensures that meetings run properly and that the business of the Parent Council is carried out. The Secretary is responsible for the paperwork of the Council – for distributing the agendas, minutes and writing any letters, etc. And the Treasurer is responsible for looking after any money, keeping the accounts and getting them audited.

These roles can be treated as “posts”, with people actually appointed to be Chair, Secretary and Treasurer, or they can be seen as “jobs” which a number of people share. The legislation also suggests that the Council could appoint a clerk to undertake the secretarial and treasury roles. If the clerk is a member of the Council, the post will be unpaid, but if the appointee is not a Council member, he/she can be paid and the local authority will provide the funding for this.

Topic 8 - AGM (see SPTC leaflet Good Practice for AGMs, available on our websitewww.sptc.info ): This is an important part of the reporting back process and it should be very similar to a current PTA AGM i.e. the agenda should allow for reports on the activities of the group, on any money raised and on how it has been spent. It is also the occasion when new Council members are appointed. As part of the constitution, the working party needs to decide whether any office bearers are to be chosen at the AGM or at the first Council meeting after it; the latter system makes it easier if office bearers have to resign during the year. One important feature of all AGMs is that audited accounts have to be presented for approval. The auditing does not need to be done by a professional auditor, just someone with a financial background (e.g. bank employee) who is not a member of the Parent Council or a relative of one.

Topic 13 - Changing the constitution: One of the important new features of Parent Councils is that it is possible for the parents at a school to decide to change the constitution. For example, if originally you decided to go with a small Council but later think it would be better to have a bigger Council with year group representatives, it is possible to put this proposal to the Parent Forum and ask them to approve the change at either the AGM or at a specially called General Meeting. It is important to give the Parent Forum proper notice of such a meeting (we suggest two weeks) and to tell them in advance what changes are proposed. As long as everyone knows what is intended, it is acceptable to go with a simple majority on the night.

Matters like how the Council works, the need for proper papers, agendas and minutes are not normally part of the constitution. Such procedures should be agreed and could be written down in Standing Orders which can be amended more easily on a majority vote of the Parent Council itself.

Similarly, as reporting back to parents is a very important aspect of the Parent Councils, it is probably worth giving thought to how this should be done. Will there be a newsletter? Will there be a parents’ notice board? Will information be passed on through year-group reps? Will it be possible to develop a website or use some space on the school website? Can email be used?

Step 3: Once the working party has agreed on a constitution, then it has to report this back to the parents for them to approve. This process should be as open as possible. The proposed constitution should be made widely available using some or all of the routes outlined above. An open meeting should be called with adequate notice – at least two weeks.

Again pre-planning for the open meeting is important. Will you move through the constitution section by section? Do you expect that some areas will be more controversial than others and how should time be allocated at the meeting? Who will chair the meeting? Will changes proposed on the night be accepted if they have majority support? (If this is to be the case, then you should tell parents this in advance.) Once any agreed changes have been made, will the new constitution have to be re-submitted to all parents for approval? (Our advice is that if the changes had majority support at the meeting and all parents were advised in advance that this is what would happen, there is no need to go to a second meeting.)

Step 4: Finally, the constitution has to be reported back to the local authority who will send it to the Parent Forum for its approval, if this has not already been done. At our conference there were concerns that the local authority would have a veto over the constitution. They do not; it properly belongs to the parents at the school and it is for the parents to approve and adopt or change, not for the local authority. The local authority would only be able to veto the constitution if it broke some legal requirement – for example, if you said that only women could be on the Parent Council.