How To Get Involved With Your Child's School
How To Get Involved With Your Child's School: By volunteering your own time and skills you can help your child's school to offer children a broad learning experience, and assist in the development of your own child and other children. Jeff Smith, Head teacher at Anson Primary School in London, gave VideoJug this advice on how to get involved with your child's school.
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Step 1:
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Why get involved?
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Effective schools are effective communities, so getting involved can help to foster that community spirit.
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Step 2:
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Classroom help
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Parental help in the classroom can be very valuable:
- working with small groups of children
- reading with children
- helping with languages (if you speak another language) can be very useful in a school where several languages are spoken.
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Step 3:
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Reading help
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Reading is a personal process, so parents can help by offering time to read one-to-one with a child.
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Step 4:
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The PTA and Parent Governors
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The PTA and Governing Body offer more formal ways of getting involved with your child's school.
The PTA (Parent Teacher Association) are a group who work to raise money, put on social events and help to nurture and enrich the social environment of the school.
The Governing Body is involved with the running of the school, and will contain a number of parent governors. These may have to be elected if there are more parents wanting to be involved than spaces on the board. They will be responsible for implementing the founding ethos and governing principles of the school. The Governing Body is a good way of being involved with the running of the school.
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Step 5:
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Register interest
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Ask your child's teacher, or the head, how you can get involved. You may have to undergo a police check.
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Step 6:
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Level of commitment
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Once you've made the commitment to help, its important that you stick to it. You should always give good notice if you can't keep your commitment, as this will give the school time to make alternative arrangements.
