The Press MONDAY, APRIL 5, 1976. A voice for parents in education

Press, Volume CXVI, Issue 34120, 5 April 1976, Page 16

The Press MONDAY, APRIL 5, 1976. A voice for parents in education

Many of those who took part in the Educational Development Conference two years ago argued vehemently that parents should be allowed a much Greater say in how the schools which their children attend are run. The struggle which many local school committees and the Canterbury School Ccmmittees’ Association are having to survive, let alone play an effective part in the running of individual' schools and the determination of educational policy, suggests a strange neglect of the formal means the Government provides for parents of children (and in fact all householders) to become involved in the affairs of their local school. The school committees’ association, which enjoys neither strong local ties nor national importance, is languishing, but no school committee is as active as might be expected only two years after the Educational Development Conference. The declining importance and influence of school committees was noted, and deplored, for some time before the conference was held. The conference did little, it seems, to check the decline. When issues arise which do concern parents—the 1973 discussion paper “ Human Development and Relationships in the School Curriculum provided such an issue on a national level and proposals to establish intermediate schools and decapitate existing standard one to six primary schools regularly do the same on a local level parents generally act outside their school committees. The committees are not regarded as satisfactory vehicles for expressing concern about or taking action on these occasionally troubling issues. The committees have a reputation which may also have discouraged those eager to do more, in a sustained way. than see that school grounds and buildings are properly maintained. Some headmasters and some officials of the Department of Education have apparently, in the past, discouraged school committee members when they attempted to tackle “ professional ” problems. The Educational Development Conference should have prompted people with real power and authority in the schools and in the Department of Education to encourage bodies like school committees to make their views known on a wide range of questions—even those, like the curriculum, about which the school committees have no statutory power to decide. Encouraged in this way, the school committees could well revive. The parents of school children, and others concerned about what goes on in the country’s primary and intermediate schools, who are keen to express their concern have instruments to hand, in the school committees, which they could use effectively if they chose. If they fail to make better use of them in the next few years than they have done in the immediate past, what was said during the Educational Development Conference about the interest of parents in what goes on in the schools will have to be regarded as wishful thinking rather than an accurate assessment of what New Zealand parents feel.