The Act
Background
The Scottish School (Parental Involvement) Act was passed by the Scottish Parliament on 10 May 2006.
The purpose of the Act is to make it easier for parents to become involved in their own child's education and in their child's school. It is recognised that parents, carers and other family members have a crucial role to play in helping children to achieve their potential in school.
The Act places new duties on Scottish Ministers and local education authorities to promote the involvement of parents in children's education.
It will introduce a more flexible and inclusive system of representing parents' views. School boards will be replaced by Parent Councils from August 2007. There will be a transition year to allow education authorities and schools to prepare for the development of Parent Councils.
Many authorities and schools are already working very hard to involve parents, but the Act now makes this a priority for every authority and every school. These materials present some of the key points from the Act and what it means for local education authorities, schools and parents.
Responsibility of education authorities
The Act places duties on education authorities to:
strengthen existing practices with regard to parents' involvement in their child's school education and in school education generally
give advice and information to parents on the education of their own child
have a complaints procedure covering how they carry out their new duties.
Education authorities are required to develop a strategy for parental involvement setting out how they will carry out the above duties, and how they will establish and support Parent Councils in schools. When developing the strategy, education authorities have to consult both parents and pupils as well as anyone else they feel has a legitimate interest.
The appointment of a headteacher or depute headteacher is of crucial importance to a school and its community. Parents have a particular role to play in the process and as such, education authorities must involve Parent Councils if an appointment is to be made. This involvement could include the initial drawing-up of the job specification, the sifting arrangements and sitting on the interview panel.
Responsibility of schools
The Act means that strategies for involving parents must now feed into the development plan of all schools. When school performance is reviewed, the extent to which parents are involved will now be included in the process.
Schools can show evidence of actively working to improve parental involvement by having:
a clear statement on how parents can be involved in and can support their child's learning
a clear communication strategy for sharing information with parents, including consulting with parents about how best to do this; this will help make sure that both parents and schools get the information they need at the time they need it
a clear statement on how parents and other family members can be involved in the life of the school and how the school seeks to take account of parents' and other family circumstances
a clear complaints procedure at school level and also guidance on how parents can contact the education authority if they want to.
The HMIE self-evaluation tool 'How good is our partnership with parents?' will help schools to consider how well they work with parents.
Responsibility of ministers
The Act introduces a new duty on Scottish Ministers to promote parental involvement in their child's education in relation to public schools. This duty includes providing guidance on implementing the Act.'Making the difference' is produced by:
