Getting involved
Parental involvement is crucial to a child's development and learning. Where parents are involved in their childs education, the outcomes are better for children and this underpins the Executive's drive to improve parental involvement. Research shows that:
- 85 per cent of the language used as adults is in place by the time a child is five and 50 per cent is in place by the age of three
- when parents are actively involved in home reading, their children's reading scores improve by, on average, between 12 and 18 months
- doing homework regularly throughout their school career has roughly the same benefit as an extra year's schooling
An Act to update ways to involve parents in their childs education has been passed in Parliament (see Parentzone website for full details).
The key parts of the Act are:
- local authorities and Scottish Ministers having a new duty to promote parental involvement in its broadest sense
- School Boards being replaced with Parent Councils established by the school Parent Forum - all parents at the school will be members of the Parent Forum and the Act will allow parents to decide on the arragements which best suit them and their school
- not prescribing issues which must be discussed - the Parent Forum and Parent Councill will decide on the issues of interest and concern
- enabling authorities to modernise appointment systems for headteachers and deputy headteachers, but ensuring the new parent forums will continue to have a role in those systems
A series of Making the Difference leaflets have also been published to offer parents practical advice on how to get more involved with their children's education. These cover subjects such as: homework, starting a new school year and healthy choices.
The Parentzone website forms an integral part of all this work to help build better partnerships between parents and schools. It gives information and practical advice to parents to support their involvement as well as comprehensive information on all aspects of school and education.
School term dates
School term dates differ across the country and a list of school term dates is published annually.