Consultation on Parent Forums

Parent Forums to replace school boards

Until 7 th June, the Scottish Executive is consulting on a draft bill to abolish school boards and replace them with parent forums. The changes will affect all parents , not just school boards and PTA committees, as they are designed to help more parents get involved in the life of the school and have more opportunities to raise issues that are of interest to them.

The forums will have all the powers of existing boards in terms of getting information, making representations on behalf of parents and being involved in the appointment of headteachers and deputes. They may also, if they wish, carry out the social and fundraising functions normally associated with PTAs.

The big difference is that the forums will be designed by the parents in each school, and parents in different schools will be able to make different decisions. This is in contrast to the current school board system where membership, terms of office and election processes are all determined by legislation and only vary between schools according to school roll. This means a 600 pupil primary school has exactly the same board format as a 600 pupil secondary school.

With the new bodies, parents will be free to choose to have more parents on the forum; to have one or two representatives from each year group; to have one-year terms of office with the option of reappointment. They might choose to operate with a single large committee to carry out traditional school board and PTA activities or continue with the current two, quite separate, committees. The big plus is that it will be for parents to decide. Moreover, parents will be able to change the arrangements if they decide in the future that something different would suit them better.

The local authority will contact parents about setting up a parent forum . The authority may offer a range of different options. The parents can choose to adopt one of these or design their own body. Because the forums will be different in different schools, it will be necessary to write a constitution. However, as with PTAs, this will be a written description of the actual organisation; there will not be one constitution that all the new forums will have to comply with.

Every parent should receive a leaflet outlining the proposals and telling them how they can participate. All schools will have copies of the full consultation, Making the difference – improving parents involvement in schools which is also available from the Scottish Executive (0131 244 4485) or on the Parentzone website www.parentzonescotland.gov.uk