Parent Councils

Contacts:

Parental Involvement Unit
The City of Edinburgh Council
Children and Families
Council Headquarters
Level 1/1, Waverley Court
4 East Market Street
Edinburgh
EH8 8BG

Tel: 0131 469 3131

In this section:

Parental Involvement Unit
Consultative Committee with Parents

Parent Involvement Unit

Latest updates

View the Children and Families Annual Meetings Calendar (Excel). Please note this document is updated regularly and therefore should not be printed.

See information about the Edinburgh Parent Councils Network (Word), supplied by Gavin Corbett, Parent Council Chair of Criaglockhart Primary School.

For the attention of Parent Council Chairs - An Information Folder has been sent to you c/o your school address. Please ensure that you have received your copy. Within this folder are sections on "Parental Involvement Unit - Further Information, Copies of CCWP Summary Sheets, An updated Finance Guide and a copy of the latest Newsletter. The latest CCWP Summary sheet was issued to your recently (or can be found on this web page). Please insert a copy of this in the folder. If you have not received your copy of the Information Folder, please contact Wendy.Gray@edinburgh.gov.uk

Issue 3 of the Parental Involvement Act newsletter (PDF, 63kB) is now available to download.

Parental Involvement Act 2006

Background

In March 2005, the Scottish Executive issued their consultation paper and draft Bill, Making the Difference – Improving Parents' Involvement in Schools’. This took forward their commitment to review and reform school board legislation, set out in ‘Educating for Excellence’ their response to the National Debate on Education. While proposals for a new system of parental representation formed a major part of the consultation, the Bill went further, placing a new duty on education authorities to support parental involvement and strengthen parents' rights to information.

The School Boards Act 1988 was restrictive and it is recognised that where parents are involved, children do better.

The Scottish Schools (Parental Involvement) Bill was passed by the Scottish Parliament on 10 May 2006.

The Scottish Schools (Parental Involvement) Act came into force in June 2006.The Act is about the following:

Strengthening parental involvement and representation
Ensuring parents' voices are heard better
Whole relationship between parents and schools and local authorities
Strengthening parents' rights – as individuals and collectively
New duty on local authorities to promote parental involvement
New flexible Parent Councils – shape/ constitution/ to be decided by parents
New duty on local authorities to respond to parents’ requests about own child’s education. Not prescriptive about operational details.
New sections in School Development Plans
To ensure complaints procedures are in place

Key features of the Act

To promote the involvement of parents in their child’s education and in schools
To achieve a more flexible and inclusive statutory system for parental representation
To strengthen parents rights both collectively and individually
To modernise procedures for senior appointments
A new statutory system for parent representation – the Parent Forum deciding on its Parent Council

What is meant by ‘parental involvement’?

Learning at Home – parents as first and ongoing educators of their own children
Home/ School Partnership – schools parents and the community working together to educate children and make their school the best it can be.
Parent Representation – parents having an opportunity to comment on practice and a voice in the development of education policy at school, local authority and national level

Parent Forum and Parent Council

Every parent with a child at the school will be a member of the Parent Forum
The proposed Parent Council is a smaller body that can represent parent’s views to the school and local authority.
The Parent Forum decides what kind of Parent Council it wants – how big it should be and how it should be made up

Resources to support change:

A toolkit is being produced to help schools, local authorities and parents make these changes
'Making the Difference' leaflets
CD Rom with examples of what works in schools
Model Constitutions

Toolkit

The Scottish Executive Education Department has commissioned Outside the Box to develop a tool-kit for parental involvement in schools. Outside the Box is a recognised Scottish Charity, which provides community development support.

The Toolkit will provide practical information for parents, teachers, support staff and education authorities who will in the coming months be looking at ways to encourage other parents to get involved.