Education Advisory

PARENT ADVISORY COUNCILS A long history brings us to the year 2007 when parent advisory councils in BC schools are now more the norm than the exception. Provincial legislation authorizes their existence in public schools when parents organize and apply to constitute such a group. When my children became of school age they were enrolled in  1972 in a Vancouver school in an innovative program, an open-area school which was an adaptation of exciting programs in England at that time. Many parents traveled great distances to bring their children here because they too endorsed the idea of informal learning with exceptional teachers. (The teachers had spent a year in England.)

Some of these parents were members of an activist parent group, CARE (Citizen Action to Reform Education) which I readily joined because on the whole we saw parents being excluded from the substance of education. The existing PTA groups, because they included teachers, did not meet our group’s interests as they avoided curriculum and educational quality questions. However, in 1974, a research report on our school found a significant difference in performance between a control group and the students in our school. Other students were scoring “significantly better in reading, writing, and mathematics than did the pupils from the informal classes with an innovative program”. That spurred us, in 1975, to apply and receive a grant from the Secretary of State for a 3-year project:

• To provide a consumer advisory service in education
• To help equip parents with the information, skills, and confidence to effectively guide their children’s education
• To encourage public involvement in the planning and delivery of educational services
• To report on important issues and research findings in education
• To generally advance the cause of education in an open society

Thus, Education Advisory was born. We held workshops, published newsletters and handbooks and distributed them across the province to parent groups. We generally tried to advance the rationale, models, skills and impetus for greater involvement of parents in their children’s education. I was the coordinator of this project, and as funding dried up, I continued on a voluntary basis for many years. My background included a teaching certificate, BA with a major in psychology, and work in youth counselling and psychological testing. We were never anti-teacher, but were critical of the system. Some of our member parents and friends were themselves teachers. Our feedback and research told us it was an unaware and sometimes defensive system which conspired to exclude parents from meaningful involvement. Our workshops and materials focused on developing skills and awareness. Our briefs and presentations sought parent involvement in developing criteria for principal selection, better teacher preparation for parent involvement, and structures for parental voice in school decision-making. If you read my blog so far, you will see that what I am doing now is downloading a lot of past material from Education Advisory and my own independent efforts. I recently retired from the work force, and as I clean house, I recognize that a lot of this material is too valuable to throw out. It might provide some memory and archives of the struggles parents went through in those days. There is no need to re-invent the wheel! I sure wish I had access to this kind of material when I was a young parent. Hopefully, it can be of help to current parents. I will continue posting material as I come across it, but would now welcome comments as to whether parents are indeed genuinely and effectively involved in their children’s education. How do they feel about themselves individually and about the legislation and machinery that have been set up for parent involvement?