This week is Empowering Parents and Carers Week!
It is important to give Parents and Carers a voice when it comes to their child’s Education. When parents are involved in their children’s learning, it benefits children, families and schools: children do better.
We asked one of our NPFS Parent Reps to describe what Empowerment means to them, including highlighting some examples which exemplify Empowerment.
Have a read below!
To me Parental Empowerment allows parents to feel that they are wanted and required as part of solutions when it comes to ensuring our young people have the best education possible, no matter what the family circumstances are or the individual educational capabilities.
Whilst I cannot say parental involvement at our school is perfect, or that it’s been an easy journey, we’ve come a long way since my daughter started nursery 14 years ago. At that time, parents were considered to be very much in the same category as children at the time “seen and not heard” but it’s now a much more level playing field. We now have Parent Councils in our schools and a city-wide parent liaison group. Our City Council always consults our Parent Council Forum (as well as the wider parents from all schools) on all things educational that should have parental involvement, and we have two parent reps (with full voting rights) on our Council’s Education Committee. We also have a voice at a national level with a rep on the National Parent Forum of Scotland (NPFS).
Going forward, I’m very hopeful that the “empowered system” will lead to greater cooperation between all those involved in our children’s learning and development. Parents have a huge influence on their children’s attitude to education so it’s reassuring that we’re finally being recognised as equal partners. It’ll take genuine and sincere effort from all those involved, but I’m looking forward to seeing it develop and make an impact on our children’s day-to-day progress.
Look out for our Tweets (@parentforumscot) each day this week to follow our social media campaign, which aims to raise awareness of the Empowerment Agenda and what that means for Parents and Carers.