Parental Involvement in Schools

A Review of Existing Arrangements and Proposals for Change
 

In looking at parental involvement in schools, it seems sensible to start with the current arrangements for parents in school - school boards, PTAs and parent teacher interviews.
 

1) School Boards

a) Membership and organisation

The original purpose of boards was as embryonic boards of management for opted out schools. They were set up on a business management model - a small efficient committee with formal arrangements and outside co-opted [1] "expertise". The bulk of the legislation therefore covers membership and methods of appointment.
 

[1] The position of co-opted members has always caused problems. The original idea was to involve some local businessmen etc. but such people have little real interest in school matters so, even when a board can find people willing to be co-opted, they rarely turn up to meetings. On the other hand the co-opted role does allow some former parents to keep a tight grip on boards, as in the case of the board chairman who had had held that position since the inception of the board, first as a parent, then as a co-opted member.
 

b) Function

Boards principle powers are to: -

1. Approve the headteachers' spending plans
2. Engage in discussion and development of school policies including the school development plan
3. Participate in the appointment of staff, in particular members of the senior management team.
They also have a duty to keep parents informed, but as this can be a very time-consuming job and most parent board members are busy people, this duty tends to have been only minimally fulfilled.
In the 2000 Education Act, boards were also given the duty to exercise their functions "with a view to raising standards of education in the school", but it is not clear how they can really do this.
 

Outside these duties boards have developed three main forms of activity

1. They are a focus group for the school - discussing school policies and issues. In this they most properly exercise their "parents' representative" role.

2. They act as a lobbying group for the school, taking up school needs with outside authorities, usually the education authority.

3. They act as a consultation group for the Executive, although boards themselves rarely take such consultations wider than their own membership and, counting the number of responses to any Executive consultations against the full number of boards, very few undertake this role fully.
 

c) Official Status

School boards have come to be viewed as the "official" way parents are involved in schools and in many respects it is this "official recognition" which is their greatest asset. It has forced some reluctant heads to allow parental involvement for the very first time.

• Boards have a right to information
• Headteachers have a clearly defined responsibility towards boards
• Boards have financial support to run their affairs, for clerking service, to cover members' transport costs, attendance at conferences etc.
• The formal postal elections are funded by the authority
• Both Executive and local authority consultations are directed to school boards
• Boards are the general recipients of mailings, invitations etc.
• Boards are invited to send representatives to authority-wide consultative committees/education committees
• Most authorities have a school board unit - or an official with responsibility for school boards - which offers support
• Boards are agents of the authority and members are indemnified against prosecution
• Authorities are required to consider the views of school boards

In return, this official recognition has given parents the courage to ask questions and challenge the system.
 

2) Parent/Parent Teacher Associations

a) Membership and Organisation

Parent Teacher and Parent Associations are similar enough to be considered the same. Both are "home grown". Their membership and organisation is locally determined. They usually have a constitution but this tends to be no more than a simple description of the organisation. All the parents (and teachers) are members by default although the committee is often taken as being the PTA/PA. However, even this committee tends to involve more parents than the school board, be less formal and attract a wider range of parents although mostly women.
 

b) Functions

PTAs have traditionally varied in what they do. They predate boards and used to exercise many of the consultation/ lobbying functions of boards. Now their main functions are seen as fundraising and promoting the social dimension in schools.

Many also see themselves as having a role in providing information, running extra curricular activities for pupils, acting as a channel for parents' concerns etc.
 

c) Official status

PTAs are independent of the school and are publicly liable. They need insurance protection. SPTC provides this.

PTAs are self-financing and get no money from the authorities.

They get no official recognition from the authorities - they are rarely included in consultation exercises or asked to participate in consultative committees.

What they are "allowed" to do is totally determined by the headteacher. Many heads regard them simply as the fundraising arm of the school who should hand over money without asking any questions.
 

3) Parent Teacher Interviews

These potentially involve all parents in the school and focus around the pupil. For most parents this is the central and most meaningful part of their involvement with the school.
 

THE WAY FORWARD

Rationale for parental involvement

The starting point has to be a recognition of why parents are in schools. They are there because they have children at the school. If they didn't, they would not be involved. Therefore, although some parents may have a general interest in education, the majority rightly focus on their own child and their main interest is to interact on behalf of their child. Parents will come to the school if they see the issue as relevant. It is commonly joked that the best way to get parents to turn up is to announce that the school will close, but school closures are a legitimate parent issue because of their impact on children. Similarly parents' outrage over the SQA exam results in 2000 was prompted because the issue was directly relevant to their children. Any future system of parent involvement should start with a true recognition of the parental role and interest.
 

Good features of existing system:

The good features of the existing parent committees should be maintained. For boards this is:- policy deliberation, right to information, ability to lobby, official support. With PTAs it is:- their grass root focus, social and fundraising roles. However, there is a need to take account of parents' real lives. It is important to recognise that the amount of time parents can devote to school affairs will vary according to the pressures they face from non-school matters and that their level of interest will vary according to how central/or critical the issue is to them. Any future system should be flexible and allow parents to come in and out. It should also recognise that some parents do not feel comfortable in school but still want to contribute ideas. It should be easy and accessible.
 

Proposal for Parent Councils at school level

There is, however, a need to organise parental activity in schools so that it doesn't become too chaotic and impose undue burdens on the teaching staff and so that there are clear and appropriate channels of communication. Some form of committee structure is efficient, but such committees should be flexible in their membership and organisation. We would propose legislation to set up a single parent committee/council in all schools. The councils would have the same rights to information and consideration that school boards currently have. They would receive all the support currently given by local authorities and the Executive to school boards. They would take on the activities of both boards and PTAs, but their structure would be determined locally, at the school, between the headteacher, staff and parents. It might be decided to set up sub committees to deal with different activities e.g. for policy discussion, for organising social events, for fundraising etc. but this would be a matter for local decision. In the case of a policy forum, parents should set the agenda and outside matters would be discussed only if they were seen as directly relevant. Any sub committees would be part of the parent council, and membership could change according to parents varying availability and interest. It is important that all committees are involving not excluding.
 

School Parent Officer

The technique in all this is to have an open door policy and, as with so much else, the real trick is to get people thinking the right way. There is no one correct system and different schools will find that different methods work for them, depending on size and parent population etc. However, one helpful step would be for each school to designate one member of staff as a parent officer whose remit was to look at strategies for involving parents and who was given a time allocation for this duty. He/she could determine what useful consultations should be undertaken, liaise with parent groups, channel communications from outside bodies etc.
 

Official recognition and funding

• The funds, which are currently made available to boards, could be made more generally available to support parental involvement in schools.
• If elections were deemed necessary, formal costly elections should be replaced by in-house elections.
• Consultation should be at a meaningful level. Instead of sending several copies of everything the Executive produces to every school for parents to respond to, some sifting should be done, more summaries should be used with parents advised the full document is available on the web-site or on request.
• Parents should be told of the changes and that any money saved would be used to support school mail shots home to all parents.
• Support services should be renamed "parent units" etc
• A decision should be made about whether parents' activities will be indemnified or stay independent as at present.
• If parents are to participate fully at all levels of the education debate, they need time. At present, only those who either have no job or who are in jobs where they can control their time are able to participate. To facilitate participation by all parents, parents should be entitled to a limited number of paid days off work.

Local Authority Level

Most authorities have set up some type of parent consultative group with membership drawn from boards. These could continue with the membership drawn from the new parent councils. It is to be hoped that as the school-based committees focus more on parents' concerns, so the authority consultative committee would similarly find more time for the parental agenda.
 

National Organisations

Any reorganisation of parent groups within schools would have an impact on the national parents' organisations. At present there are two. The Scottish School Board Association represents school boards and the Scottish Parent Teacher Council represents PTAs/PAs. They both play an important role in supporting their members and in putting forward the parental view on the national stage. However, a single committee structure in schools would suggest a single committee at national level. Its format should ultimately be determined by the grass root parent councils but, in the early years, an acting national parents' organisation should be set up to carry forward the existing work of the SSBA and SPTC. The acting body would then be charged with consulting school parent councils on the format and funding of the permanent national organisation. It should be given a set period of two or three years to complete this process.

01 Nov 2002