The Herald
10 January 2012
Over the past 30 years the relationship between parents and the schools their children attend has undergone a long overdue revolution.
Parents are no longer, and must be no longer, passive payers of fees and limit their involvement to dropping their children off and picking them up.
Soon after independence, with the incredible growth of the school system following the needed political decision that all children should be given the opportunity to attend school for at least 11 years, it soon became obvious that even with the accompanying huge surge in the budget, the education ministry did not have nearly enough money.
So steps were taken to involve parents. School development associations were formed and State schools were permitted to charge levies over and above the fees. As the then minister said, the ministry would provide teachers and chalk and parents would pay for the rest.
The little left over in the budget after salaries would largely be allocated to rural schools where money was very scarce.
Steps were taken to ensure that parents had to be involved. One revolution was the legal right of parents to see the SDA accounts and the requirement that they had to approve, at a special meeting, any changes in levy with the ministry having the final word.
For two decades the system worked fairly well. The ministry rarely intervened so long as a substantial majority of parents agreed to the levies, or to the labour levies that many rural schools introduced to build new classrooms.
The inflation years caused concern, but after some ups and downs and legal battles it became clear that so long as parents agreed to levies they could raise them.
With the switch to hard currencies many SDAs went a step further and used levy money to supplement teachers’ salaries to ensure that qualified people would remain in the profession and that they would be able to concentrate on teaching, rather than their own businesses.
Unfortunately this extra set of responsibilities for parents has caused some problems.
In some schools powerful committees of the SDAs, and even some heads, have forgotten that all parents have to be involved in the budgeting and the setting of levies, and just make decisions without going through the process required.
At some of these schools, and at others, the parents have overdone it, taking their financial responsibilities to mean that they can have a say in how the school is run.
The present minister, Sen David Coltart, has now fired a warning shot. He has made it clear that the laid-down procedures for setting fees and levies must be followed. Parents decide, after going through the costs of what facilities they want their children to have, just what the fee or levy is.
Minister Coltart, before becoming minister, was heavily involved in private education and has always argued that what parents agree to pay they should be allowed to pay.
But he clearly wants to see that agreement, and in State schools his officials obviously have to ensure that a substantial majority in a particular zone can find the money.
The other requirement is that parents do not run schools. Heads run them. This is right. Education is not something that amateurs should be making decisions about; it needs professionals.
Again the minister knows this from his earlier days; in the non-government systems boards of governors have a lot of say over money, but so far as education and administration go have to limit themselves to hiring a competent head, or for that matter firing one that does not measure up.
Even at the minister’s level, the Education Act makes it clear that the Permanent Secretary makes the professional decisions, such as what the core curriculum consists of and, through his professional assistants, who shall run which school.
The minister has more say over money and general policy, but not on what happens in a classroom. So we see the need for ensuring that the system and the laws that make it work are kept in front of all.
This is presumably why the minister is planning new regulations, not to change the system but to make sure that it works properly.
We need to keep parents involved, otherwise the system will collapse.
But parents also need to understand that while they have quite a lot to say over the finances raised through levies and how they are spent, the professionals cannot be interfered with when it comes to who teaches and what is taught.
Obviously parents, or even an SDA, who are unhappy about how a school is run can complain, to the governors at a non-government school and the regional director at a government school, and equally obviously a responsible authority will investigate and take action if the complaints are justified.
But there is a clear division of responsibility and parents have to accept this, just as school authorities have to accept that parents are now entitled to be involved in the budget process and a majority agree to what is proposed before fees and levies are set.