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Join the PTA Square Dance---and coffee morning An espresso to warm the parent--school partnership

“Partnerships with parents” is a cliché that trips as lightly off the tongue.  Like an order for a ‘grande-2 shots-soy-cinnamon dolce latte’ by a coffee geek, it sounds up-to-date, consumer conscious, heart-warming and brimming with promise, but is it for real? Where are the beans?  How real and lasting is the partnership?  Or is this just another do-si-do around the dance floor?

The dance analogy holds good. Too often schools and parents step around each other, embarrassed to tread on toes or to be out of step with whatever the prevailing educational wisdom is. But who is calling the tune about the expectations of this ‘partnership’? And while the pardners do the hoe-down, what are our kids doing?  Or are they just expected to sit this one out? 

Parents are our children’s front-line educators; it is for us to build partnerships with the schools that we entrust with nurturing and developing tomorrow’s citizens of the world. But, entrusting is not surrendering. Parents are often treated as consumers in this enterprise, recipients of CDs, DVDs, freebies and invitations to cosy breakfasts, intimate coffee mornings, seductive afternoon teas and potluck suppers. To be cynical, it can suit schools to use the Parents–Teachers Association (PTA) for photo-calls and sound bites in support of its promotional literature and to funnel and diffuse grievances. They count upon the stalwart support of the dedicated and the loyal and the silence or acquiescence of the majority. But this is to fundamentally undervalue the potential of the PTA as partner.

Buying our children a private education has become something of a rite of passage for a growing, internationally mobile executive class. The marketing mantra determines that parents too need educating with workshops to explain how our children learn rather than what they are learning. We must be taught the vocab of ‘education speak."  We are to be ‘life-long learners’ and enthusiastically empathic. 

But should parents be considered as simply the consumers of some educational cappuccino – ‘ethnic food, no-sugar, extra language, extra transport, double-shot activities’, or as people investing on behalf of their children? A pre-K to grade 13 private education for one child, let alone two or more, costs more than a house. Fees are increasing faster than consumer prices, yet, in the end, we don’t end up owning the asset, and the private rate of return is uncertain at best. But that commitment requires that parents be treated as real stakeholders with a focus on total quality assurance.

Many schools have PTAs, but how active are they in promoting day-to-day quality issues that deal with objective, measurable values such as learning outcomes in literacy and numeracy, accountability for the cost of school lunches, transport safety, risk management and value for money, rather than will-o’-the -wisp goals such as developing “international-mindedness,” or becoming a “centre of excellence”? Such visionary goals are lofty and fine but require a sound foundation of knowledge and skills. By and large professional parents in the international marketplace are well-educated and know what they are looking for in terms of educational standards. Their own education in the 80s and 90s was not ‘old school’ and their professional careers now probably place them at the cutting edge. But are parents included on the board of governors? Do they have voting rights? Does the PTA have any appropriate involvement in key staff appointments, performance appraisals, project management and strategic development?

How influential is the PTA in helping create school identity and culture? Does it have its own Web page? Can parents communicate with teachers through their school e-mail addresses? Can they access their children’s homework and learning support pages on the school Web site? Does the PTA make regular contributions to school literature?  If so, is it visible, easily accessible and high profile?  The parent body, whether organized or not, is a vital resource when it comes to the school’s interface with the community at large and to providing supplementary expertise and support within the classroom.  Do schools really encourage parents to support their children’s learning at school as well as at home? How much information and structured training is provided to enable this support to be effective? Are parents encouraged to become volunteer helpers in the classroom?  What are schools doing to promote family learning, cultural awareness, TESOL or other language proficiency?  Has the school ever sought to discover the range of experience and skills at its disposal through its PTA membership and its network of contacts? Some schools are developing partnerships with adult education providers to organize language, IT, first aid, and cultural exchange classes not only for parents but as outreach to the wider community.  Such partnerships––that begin with the mobilization of parents––help embed schools within the wider educational and social community.

Partnership involves schools being proactive in meeting the needs of parents. Helping arrange access to crèche facilities, after-school care, additional learning support, homework clubs and counselling workshops for managing issues like bullying, exam stress and truancy promote closer interaction between home and school. Parents appreciate being consulted about sensitive areas of personal and health education like relationships and sex, addiction, moral issues, behaviour in a civil society, religious belief and tolerance.  Schools would do well not only to canvass opinion but to include the PTA in forming a steering committee when developing the curriculum in these areas.

Is PTA fund-raising part of overall strategic development for the school, or is it confined to managing the proceeds from bake sales or similar for charitable giving or even to fund a coffee machine it can call its own? Provided that it is clear in its constitution that the prime purpose of a PTA is not fund-raising, the entrepreneurial activities for which PTAs can become a catalyst in providing start-up capital to fund student-led ventures can be both educational and revenue-generating and self-sustaining. Partnership with parents with a network of contacts in the corporate sector can feed into careers advice, work experience opportunities, secondment and joint ventures. Sponsorship of teams visiting schools abroad often begins through overtures made by individual parents or PTAs. Schools should not be afraid of allowing PTAs claim ownership of a project like a school shop or special needs unit – or indeed develop partnerships with the PTAs of other schools.  Ownership is about empowerment and this is the cornerstone of successful and productive partnerships benefiting both school and community.