Early in 2008, the Ministry of Education announced that all schools should have Parent-Teacher Associations. The decision was accompanied by an instruction to Heads of schools to “take all available action” to ensure that PTAs were established.
This directive marked a sharp departure from previous times when PTAs tended to emerge from initiatives taken jointly by schools and parents. Then, PTAs served primarily as a means of maintaining a relationship between the parent and the school and more importantly between the parent and the teacher in what one might call a mutually reinforcing manner. Then, the relationship was concerned primarily with ensuring a measure of harmony between the school and the home in ensuring that both the social and the academic needs of children were met. PTAs also held modest fund-raising activities, as a matter of goodwill rather than any kind of obligation and schools benefitted from those fund-raising activities. Certainly, PTAs were not known in those days to be part of the day-to-day management of schools.
The Ministry’s 2008 directive changed all that. PTAs are now compulsory and the range of their responsibilities now embraces critical aspects of school management. Moreover, parents, not teachers, are the key players in the PTAs. It is known, for example, that heads and teachers are directed by the Ministry to steer clear of any fund-raising activities outside the ambit of the PTA. Moreover, there is a Unit/Department within the Ministry that is actually responsible for PTAs, though the exact details of its functions are unclear.
Given the contemporary challenges associated with executing the roles of both parent and teacher – dysfunctional homes, worsening juvenile delinquency, increasing instances of violence in schools, academic underachievement and a reduced level of respect for teacher authority – a case need hardly be made for the importance of PTAs. One of the more disturbing features of our contemporary school system has been the loss of respect for the role of the teacher (which goes way beyond providing tuition) and the attendant increase in deviant – often alarmingly violent – behaviour among children. Worryingly, violent children, have, in some instances, been known to have the support of equally irresponsible parents. PTAs have the potential to help remedy this disturbing trend. Working together, parents and teachers can bring their own unique roles to bear in improving child behaviour and, by extension, creating a more disciplined school community and more settled learning-friendly classrooms.
What appears to have emerged out of the recent Ministry of Education directive, however, is a requirement that PTAs assume a huge portion of the responsibility for the actual running of schools, a circumstance that raises questions as to whether the changing role of PTAs has not resulted in reduced teacher authority and handed parents a more direct role in the day-to-day running of schools. Under the Education Ministry’s new regulations PTAs must, for example, “exercise direct control over school canteens;” create a “support group” to help parents with difficult children” and be part of a “committee of management” responsible for making recommendations for “the daily management” of schools. PTAs now “participate in the formation of school policies and work plans,” have a say in “the administrative practices of the school” and are involved in “making recommendations for the daily management of the school including discipline and performance standards in the school.”
These are weighty responsibilities and questions surely arise as to whether PTAs are in many, perhaps even most cases, competent to fulfill the mandate set out in the Ministry’s directive. Some Heads of schools have made clear their concern that this significant rise in parent power may have altered the traditional balance of authority between the substantive school administrators (Heads and Teachers) and parents (since the Chairpersons and Treasurers of PTAs are all parents) in a manner that can be counterproductive for the management of schools.
If Heads and teachers readily accept that parents have a role to play, they insist, correctly in our view, that the professional running of schools belongs in the domain of those who are trained to perform that function. The same they say is true in the cases of some school Boards. Here, it should be noted also that PTAs have the authority to “represent grievances” to the Ministry of Education – which grievances, presumably, can include matters to do with “the daily management of the school” – and, presumably, to have important decisions changed.
What is interesting about the enhanced role of PTAs in important aspects of the management of schools is that it has coincided with the diminished ability of the Ministry of Education to afford the high cost of free education. Increasingly, PTAs (and school Boards) at several schools are engaged in undertaking major fund-raising responsibilities associated with the day-to-day management of schools. These days, PTA fund-raising is undertaken for projects such as the painting of classrooms, the restoration of toilets, the provision of furniture and, in at least one case, the erection of a school fence, all pursuits, one feels, which ought to be the responsibility of the Ministry of Education.
This newspaper is also aware of a case in which a PTA, specifically parent members of that PTA, has become locked in controversy with the administration of the school over the professional suitability of two teachers to tutor their children. Again, while parents have every right to be concerned about the quality of education which their children receive, one wonders whether matters pertaining to the tenure of teachers are not best left to the Teaching Service Commission with the professional guidance of the Heads of schools.
What appears to have emerged at some schools is a pattern of greater assertiveness on the part of PTAs which, it would appear, has arisen out of an increased dependence on parents to subsidize the running of schools. The content of the Ministry of Education’s memorandum on PTAs points to a ceding of greater authority to PTAs – particularly in the matter of the day-to-day running of schools – in a manner that has placed some Heads and teachers very much on the defensive. One wonders whether, despite the obvious benefits of strong PTAs, driven by committed teachers and energetic and enlightened parents, the balance may not have been tilted to an extent that can have a longer-term negative impact on parent-teacher relations and, ultimately, on the effective management of schools.
