Introduction
This toolkit has been developed by the Scottish Executive Education Department (SEED) to provide parents and staff in education authorities and schools with a practical resource to support partnership with parents in all aspects of children's learning. SEED is grateful for the help of all those parents, pupils and local authority staff who contributed to its development. Thanks also go to Outside the Box for their input and creative thinking.
It looks at the ways parents and carers can be involved and includes advice and practical materials to support the arrangements introduced by the Scottish Schools (Parental Involvement) Act 2006 published in September. The toolkit is intended as a resource and readers should refer to the Act and Guidance as appropriate.
The toolkit includes:
- Checklists
- Practice examples that can be used or adapted
- Activities
- Methods to help people identify issues and express their ideas
- Ways of resolving parental complaints/concerns
Who the toolkit is for
Parents: there are ideas about how to get involved in their child's education and learning.
Headteachers and school staff: there are practical methods and good practice examples of how to develop effective partnerships with parents.
Local authority staff: there is material to support authorities in developing parental involvement strategies and setting up parent councils in partnership with parents and schools.
The toolkit will also be useful to other people who are helping parents and teachers work together to support children's learning. This might include community learning and development teams, family support staff, home-school link workers and learning support staff. It will be useful to all those people who have an interest in making the school a part of the community it serves, including pupils at schools, children's extended families, local councillors and people from the local community.