• Join! If Sunnybank Parent Voice has a member for each class,nursery included, we have a sturdy group and you can be sure you have all information relevant to your wee one!
• Be a Friend of Sunnybank Parent Voice – if you don’t feel like joining yet but would like to lend a hand now and then, whenever you can!
• Give your opinion! On the projects, anything you think we could do. There’s an ideas box in the hallway.
• Being a link between school, children and parents & carers: the voice of the parents in the school, but also a voice for the parents, making sure everyone has updated information on what goes on with Sunnybank School
• Coming up with ideas for activities that can help our children’s education, and taking part in such activities in the school and the Sunnybank Community Centre – a chance to be involved on their life “out of the house”!
• Organising informal ways for parents to meet
• The playground! Last year, together with the school, we put in a successful application with Grounds for Learning to help us build an adventurous green space for the kids, the results of which can be seen now
• Together with the school, we kept insisting with the City Council that the 4-year absence of a permanent Head Teacher was unacceptable. Now, finally, we have a permanent HT in Mrs Taylor!
• Each September we will organise an informal meet-up for parents to have a chat, get to know the faces
The Parent Council is a group of parents selected by members of the parent forum (the collective name for every parent, carer or guardian at a school) to represent all the parents of children at the school. Parent Councils have an important role to play in ensuring that children’s education is enriched by parents’ valuable life experience, individual personal skills and unique knowledge of their own child.
What is the role of Parent Councils?
Parent Councils help parents and carers to become more actively and effectively involved in their children’s learning. It is recognised that parents play an important role both in their own child’s learning and in the life of their school. Find out about various ways of getting involved in your child’s school.
Parent Councils are flexible and designed to make sure that they represent their school and its interests effectively. Parent members should decide what is most important for the Parent Council to work on.
Parent Councils can:
Working in partnership with the school
Your Parent Council helps to create an environment where all parents know that their views matter, and where they feel confident and comfortable putting them forward.
It is important that the Parent Council and the school have a joint commitment to seek parents’ views and ideas and to ensure that these make a real difference to the work and life of the school.
Sharing parents’ views with the head teacher and staff, and making sure those views are listened to and taken into account, will be possible if the Parent Council and the school have a positive working partnership.
Gathering and sharing parents’ views
Each school community is unique and there is a wide range of educational issues on which parents may wish to contribute their views. Areas in which parent views could be sought may include: