Scottish Parent Teacher Council

WHAT'S IN A YEAR?

Once again it falls to me to report on the activities of the past year. As I look back, I'm pleased to say we've continued to move forward on a number of fronts - more members, an improved database, an updated website, ongoing surveys of members' views and increasing involvement in a range of national education groups.

MEMBERSHIP

It is very satisfying to report that our membership has increased yet again - from 1392 to 1425 – and this is against a programme of school closure. All members, except those who have joined most recently, are listed by authority at the back of this report.

INSURANCE

After the changes to insurance in recent years of both company and format, insurance provision has settled down and we are working competently within the new rules, ably guided by our professional advisers at Adams Tingle. A sharp increase in all insurance premiums followed the uncertainty created by 9/11. However, the market has since calmed and we have been able to hold our membership prices steady.

OFFICE PROJECTS

We continue to move forward on a series of projects.

Success Stories III , a catalogue of innovative projects in Scottish Schools compiled and edited by us over the summer of 2004, was launched in December and sent to all schools and local authorities.
We've used the opportunity provided by our new computers to change from using DataEase to Access for our database. The office staff spent this summer transferring data and checking it for accuracy. Using Access gives us better transfer between programmes.
The website is now very much part of our thinking and is regularly updated to keep it topical. Feedback has been favourable, with more and more people using the download facility. To find out more, visit us on line - www.sptc.info

PUBLICATIONS

We continue to issue regular editions of our newsletter, Backchat, and the in-house production means that it's very up-to-date. We have also improved its e-provision. We now send members a link to Backchat on the website so that they do not have to cope with downloading huge files and we have a special email-friendly version for contacts. Similarly our leaflets are all downloadable from our website as well as being available by post. All our material is available on request, free of charge.

SURVEYS

This year we ran two major surveys of members.

Work Experience in Schools : This looked at the current provision of work experience for S4 pupils in secondary school. We were interested in establishing the level of support for the current system and whether people would like to see a change to a more flexible system. This was clearly not a “hot” topic as it attracted only 428 responses from 45 schools, including 20 secondary schools. The overall vote supported a change to a more flexible system but when we looked more closely at the figures, the secondary schools strongly supported the present arrangements whereby S4 youngsters go out of school on designated weeks. This was based on practical considerations and concern that a more flexible system would be very disruptive to learning. In conclusion the survey showed that there is a level of dissatisfaction with the present system of work experience; that the quality of the experience varied not only across the country but from school to school and that people have different views about what it is meant to deliver. However, there is also an understanding that any scheme has to result in minimal disruption and the present system scores well on this point. There is scope for improvement, but what that improvement should be is, as always, less clear.

Parent Forums: Our second major survey was on the Executive's proposals for parent forums. Understandably this attracted a higher response – 1207 votes from 141 schools, again including 20 secondary schools. We were interested in establishing whether there was support for the principle of more flexibly-designed parent committees.

The results showed that the majority supported the proposed parent forums. Moreover, comments from the substantial minority who wanted the current school boards to continue showed that even this group recognised that legislative changes needed to be made. A quarter of respondents returned a “don't know” vote and their accompanying comments indicated that there has been a shocking lack of consultation with the wider parent community.

The full reports on both these surveys are available on our website www.sptc.info

CONSULTATIONS

Inquiry into Pupil Motivation: The Scottish Parliament Education Committee conducted an inquiry into pupil motivation. This posed an interesting challenge and prompted some lively discussion on what exactly was the magic ingredient for getting children to work. We considered a range of factors including an interest in the subject, through a desire to please to the impact of competition and peer pressure. We recognised that a number of factors could work both ways: for example children might want to emulate successful parents or might want to rebel against their parents' success. In the end we decided that the most important fact was the relationship between the pupil and the teacher.

Making the difference – improving parents' involvement in schools: A major part of our time and effort was taken up with responding to the Scottish Executive's Consultation on its plans for improving parental involvement in schools. We had a number of discussions with officials before the consultation was launched and then, during the process of the consultation we not only ran a survey, we also held a series of open meetings to discuss the proposals with parents. As a result of these various deliberations, we responded very positively to the consultation. We also decided that it would be helpful to continue the public consultation at our annual conference and invited the Minister, Peter Peacock to come to talk about the proposal and answer questions.

Review of the Children's Hearings System: Several SPTC directors participated in the series of public consultation events that the Scottish Executive held to consider how the Children's Hearings System might be improved. At all the meetings that we attended, there was general support for the current process but criticism of the lack of facilities to deal with youngsters once they have been through the hearing system. There is a serious shortage of secure places and of probation officers to deal with youngsters who have offended or need help.

Bichard Report - from DfES: Child protection and the need for police checks has been a major issue for us this year, so when invited to respond to the English consultation which follows the Bichard report into the Soham murders and looks to introduce a system very similar to the one currently operating in Scotland, we fed in our experiences, particularly the problems the scheme generates for voluntary bodies like PTAs.

INVOLVEMENT

SPTC Directors and staff have been actively engaged in a number of national/local policy committee groups.

Anti-Bullying Network – Lynda Grant
Assessment Action Group – Jennifer Stewart
Audit Scotland Advisory Group on A Teaching Profession for the 21 st Century – Judith Gillespie
Curriculum Review Group – Judith Gillespie
Edinburgh City Council SEN Forum – Miranda Harvey
Ethos Network – Susan McColl
Learning and Teaching Scotland (LTS) Advisory Group – Eleanor Coner
LTS Enterprise Group – Dr Jo Beaumont
National Qualifications Steering Group – Judith Gillespie
National Sexual Health Advisory Committee – Miranda Harvey
Scottish Council for Financial Education Advisory Group – Eleanor Coner
SCFE Working Group on PSE – Jennifer Stewart
Scottish Forum on Education – Eleanor Coner
Scottish Joint Committee on Religious and Moral Education – Linda Coad
Scottish Network for Parental Involvement in Children's Learning – Susan McColl
Scottish Qualifications Authority (SQA) Board - Judith Gillespie
SEED Working Group on Class Sizes – Judith Gillespie
SQA Advisory Committee – Steve McColl

ISSUES

Parental Involvement: This has been an exciting year for us, as parents have finally made it onto the political agenda. No longer are parents merely the providers of extra cash for the school and the whipping boys for children's bad behaviour; their importance in children's education has been officially recognised. The result is that the Executive has tried to work out a system which makes it easy for parents to get actively involved in schools. They have produced a series of parent-friendly leaflets designed to help parents understand better what goes on in schools, brought forward proposals for parent forums and for a new duty on local authorities to have policies for parental involvement. As these proposals required legislative change, they were put forward in the form of a draft bill that went out for consultation in March. This caused us a very busy summer term as we both ran a survey of members' views and conducted a series of public meetings. Overall the consultation generated a lot of interest and a good response. The Executive duly amended the draft bill to take account of the feedback and the new revised version is now set to begin its passage through Parliament with the hope that it will become law sometime next year. SPTC all along has welcomed the proposals which will give parents more control over the format of the parent committee in their school and a better chance of having their issues discussed.

Child Protection: A less positive change, from our point of view, has been the introduction of regulations arising from the Protection of Children (Scotland) Act which sets up a list of those deemed unfit to work with children and requires that anyone appointing someone to a childcare post after 11 th April 2005 ensures that that person is not on the list by securing an enhanced check of their police record. The outcome has been a lot of confusion and a lot of very worried PTAs concerned at what this means for them. We have worked closely with officials from the Scottish Executive and Disclosure Scotland to produce what we hope are clear guidelines for PTAs on this matter. We have established when checks are required and when they are not necessary and are able to answer the many phone calls that we get on this subject with confidence. We have also been able to calm many a panicking PTA secretary about his/her level of responsibility.

Advertising: Following our survey on advertising in schools that showed that whilst there was opposition to advertising by multi-nationals, parents were less willing to rule out advertising completely, we developed Advertising Guidelines highlighting good practice. These were distributed to all members in March 2005. Additional Support Needs: One of our directors, Miranda Harvey, has kept an active eye on the developments associated with the Additional Support for Learning Act and, using her expertise, has contributed positively to consultations on the appeals process and the guideline information that is to be provided for parents.

OFFICE HOURS
The official office hours are from 9.00 a.m. to 2.00 p.m. Monday to Friday, but there is someone around until 4.00 p.m. most days. Otherwise, messages left on the answerphone will be answered as soon as possible. An increasing number of members are now contacting us by email - sptc@sptc.info - whilst our website

www.sptc.info offers a useful service to people who want immediate information.

HELP AND ADVICE

Our telephone helpline is available during office hours and we take calls on anything affecting our members, or indeed any parent or teacher, member or not. Not surprisingly the number one topic of inquiry has been t he need for police checks, but we have also fielded the normal range of questions on topics as diverse as insurance, the use of a bouncy castles and the role of the PTA chairperson.

REGIONAL MEETINGS

We held regional meetings at Forfar Academy , Victoria Primary, & Inverness Royal on proposal for parent forums and continue to visit individual schools to offer advice.

CONFERENCES

As usual there have been a number of conferences this year attended by SPTC members. These include conferences on: educational research; rural schools; education reform; sexual health; child protection; safe routes to schools; bullying; online safety; inclusion. Reports from conferences are posted on our website.

SUPPORT FUND

We continue to support parents who wish to attend conferences by using the Support Fund to pay delegate costs. Conferences on bullying and improving school grounds always attract a lot of interest. However, this year we also used the fund to help Drummond Community High School produce a new version of its Equality Game which, despite the title, is designed to teach youngsters about the inequalities of life.

SPTC AND OTHER BODIES

We have not met the Minister this year but we have had meetings with officials in the Scottish Executive, Her Majesty's Inspectors for Education and Careers Scotland.

Scottish Consumer Council: We have had good discussions with the Scottish Consumer Council over advertising in schools, the parental involvement bill and the additional support needs (ASL) act.

GARA: We have formed very constructive links with the Glasgow Anti-Racist Alliance and there has been mutual benefit in understanding each other's work. National Confederation of PTAs (NCPTA): We continue to work closely with our colleagues in England to our mutual benefit. We share ideas and initiatives and are quite happy to learn from their expertise as they are from ours. European Parents Association

(EPA): Last year we reported the financial problems that the European Parents Association faced. Following the AGM, a slimmed-down version emerged with much tighter budgetary controls. However, it quickly became clear that the organisation was not working well and we reluctantly decided that the time had come to withdraw. We continue to recognise the importance of working with colleagues in Europe and have maintained close one-on-one ties, particularly with the parents' body in the Netherlands .

AND FINALLY
It has certainly been a busy year and I would like to take this opportunity to say a big thank-you to our three extremely proficient members of staff who work way beyond their remit and to our volunteer Directors who give of their time and expertise so willingly and generously!

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2005 CONVENER'S REPORT – Steve McColl