Parents to be offered courses on role in school councils

The Association of School Councils (AKS) and the Foundation for Educational Services (FES) are planning to jointly offer an annual course for parents focusing on a parent's role within the school council and school community, as well as in the education of their children at home.

Frans Borg, president of the association and general secretary of the European Parents' Association, said the course would allow parents to become very familiar with the legal provisions and workings of school councils, thus enabling the councils to function more effectively and efficiently.

Such competence, he said, would ensure that parents fully realise their role of representing other parents within the school community.

Nora Macelli, the foundation's chief executive, said the foundation's experience in the past year had indicated a very high level of parent enthusiasm and readiness to participate in in-itiatives that enable them to become more effective and involved members of their school community.

Through the foundation's Id f'Id programme, which is aimed at building parental capacity in the "curriculum of the home", participating parents had held meetings with parents from other schools to describe their experience of learning techniques that enable them to support their child's learning and growth.

She said these parents had been invaluable in stimulating others to embark on a similar process of learning better ways of helping their children learn how to read, write and communicate, while at the same time having fun doing so.

The association and the foundation now want to move a step further by formalising the learning opportunities they currently provide. The plan is to offer practical courses for which parents will gain certification.

Course modules will focus on the roles and responsibilities of school council parent representatives as provided for in current legislation; how to open up channels of communication at home so that children become freer and more open to learn; how to write with one's children; how to stimulate the love for reading and writing; and practical techniques that parents can easily adopt at home that nurture a child's learning journey.

The two organisations are looking for a feasible way of having a "lifelong learning passport", which parents would use to record their efforts at becoming active and involved school community members.

Ms Macelli said many parents in the Id f'Id programme had openly stated that, in the process of learning how to help their own children learn more effectively, they themselves had realised they had their own learning needs which they would like to follow up.

The AKS-FES collaboration would make sure that parents' expressed learning needs would be translated into actual learning opportunities. Parents would be key partners and trainers in the process of creating such learning opportunities.

Both the AKS and the FES would welcome other organisations that are ready to provide financial or other resources towards this venture. The AKS can be contacted through email: francis.a.borg@gov.mt, and the FES through email: fes@gov.mt.