Involving parents

Involving parents in identifying options

There is a range of ways parents could get involved in identifying the type of Parent Council they would like to see in their own school.  The best place to start is to identify what the issues are for parents about their school and the type of parental involvement they would like to see.  Starting from this point can then lead to parents thinking about whether they want a Parent Council and, if so, what type of group they would like for their school.  Some ideas to generate discussion about issues and what is already working in schools include:

• A one-day conference held for the school or for parents across the education authority to share good practice and think about ways they would like to get involved in their child's education.  As part of the conference, parents could identify whether they are interested in setting up a Parent Council and what they would like it to do.  (See the Aberdeen City Council parents' conference example in Section 6)

• Run an open space event.  This could help parents to explore good practice and identify issues for parents.

• Hold an informal meeting for parents and use some of the issue identification exercises in the toolkit to look at what is working and what parents would like to change. Section 2 and Section 3 have examples, activities and checklists for you to work with.

• Parents taking part in a conference, open space meeting or informal meeting could decide to set up a school working party to develop and consider options to set up the Parent Council.  The working party would be made up of a small group of parents and could include representation from each year group in the school, the headteacher or representation from the Parent Council.  Once options are developed, the working party could bring parents together to talk the options through.