School participation council.

Focus point - School participation council.

Parents have an important formal position in the school participation council at school and board level. This means they have an important voice on paper in the choices of boards and school leaders.

Every school has a school participation council. In primary education the school participation council has parents and school staff. In secondary school parents, teachers and students are in the school participation council. Every overarching school governing body also has a central participation council, which talks about policies and financial matters across schools.   

Participating in school decisions

Through the central participation council or school participation council parents theoretically help decide about the school’s policy. However, in practice, few parents feel they are truly represented by the school participation council. The gap between parents and the school participation council is large: it is not clear enough what the council does. Many parents find the council not visible or effective enough. This is worrying because more responsibilities are given to the council. You can read more about this in our annual study ‘Staat van de Ouder’. Council members are elected by all parents and/or staff (and students in secondary education). They represent their own group. 

Important topics for the school participation council

Currently, the National Education Program is an important topic for the council. With the school scan the school recently checked how students are doing after corona. Some students fell behind and need extra help in certain subjects. Others struggle socially and feel bad after months of online teaching and little contact with friends. Some children even have a head start in reading or language because they had home teaching from their parents. There are big differences between children. The school gets money from the government to fix this. The plan is to start after summer with a good plan to get all children back on level. The council approves the plan and how the school spends the money. Ask about this at school! Here you can read which focus points we see for the National Education Program.

There is currently a survey among council members about the role of the council in the National Education Program. Help us and take part in the survey!

Another important topic is the voluntary parent contribution at school. It is voluntary, but many parents do not know this. If parents cannot or do not want to pay, the school may not exclude children from activities. Since August 2021 there is a new law that regulates this. Ouders & Onderwijs helped other parent groups to make this law happen.

How does Ouders & Onderwijs help?

Ouders & Onderwijs wants to strengthen the position of parents in the central participation council or school participation council. In practice their influence is often limited. This is partly because they have less knowledge compared to the school governing body or school leaders. Council members spend some of their free time on school matters, but the school governing body works on this all day. Council members get their information fully from the governing body and often do not know how a school or school governing body works. They often do not know their legal tasks well. We also see that parents sometimes find it hard to be critical because they fear a bad effect on the relationship between school and their child or children. We help parents to talk with school in a good way.  

Making a stand

We also think it must be easier for the council to make a stand if really needed. In practice this is sometimes hard. Councils that want legal support are sometimes even opposed. This makes parents give up the fight after a while and accept the situation. We give council members tools to do their job as well as possible.

Our position:

• Strengthen school participation council in practice by structurally and independently supporting them in policy, legal and administrative matters.