Parents Forum

As parents and carers you are the most important influence throughout your child’s education and parental involvement in their learning makes a real difference to your child’s achievements. Our sole purpose of our Parents Forum is to help all our parents and carers to become actively and effectively involved in their children’s learning and in the life of our school. The forum is always attended by our Headteacher, Miss Brown and our Learning Mentor, Mrs Gleaves. The forum is held every half term. All members of our parent/carer community are invited, and people are encouraged to put forward items for the agenda prior to the meeting.

On this section of the website, we will post the minutes and action taken as a result of the discussions. If you have any questions about the forum, please do not hesitate to ask.

What is the Parents Forum?
Our Parents Forum is:

• A working group consisting of parents, our Headteacher, Learning Mentor and a member of our Governing Body.
• A time for parents to come together to share ideas, and put their views forward to the Leadership Team.
• A group of parents / carers to support the school and Headteacher in developing strong home/school partnerships
• A group of parents / carers to support the school in its development and improvement, and in understanding and making links with the wider community
• A way to capture the unique and varied skills, interests, knowledge and experience that our parents can offer school
• An opportunity to give parents a voice and increase their active involvement in decision making, fostering a culture of ownership and participation
• Specific time to develop our partnership between school and our parents/careers in order to support and promote children’s learning.
• An advisory role and a consultative role between parents to the governing body.
• An opportunity to share the positive work of the school
• A solutions focussed group.
• A place for the school to learn more about its parents and parents to learn more about the school.
• A group that is clear about its purpose and decides its agenda in partnership.

Our Parents’ Forum is not…

• A decision making body. It is involved in discussions and consultations, and coming up with recommendations. But it is the governing body that make the decisions and decide the strategic way forward for a school.
• The channel for individual issues or concerns. Concerns or complaints involving individual children, families or staff will not be discussed. These should follow normal school procedures. This does not stop parents giving their views on topics being discussed
• A replacement for the governing body or PTA.
• A group that will become involved in staffing of financial issues.

When does the Parent Forum take place?
The Forum meets six times during the school year.

Our 2022 summer term meetings are on Wednesday 4th May and Wednesday 13th July at 9.15am-10.00am. 

How can I make my views known?

1. All parents can suggest agenda items or request that their comments are raised during the meeting by speaking to one of the class representatives or e-mailing  parentsforum@bolshaw.stockport.sch.uk
2. We aim to send a text out a few weeks before the meeting to allow agenda items to be suggested.
3. A week before the meeting, the agenda will be published to allow for comments to be collected (the agenda will be available on the Parents Forum notice board (currently being purchased), the VLE and school website).
4. Approved minutes will be e-mailed to all parents who attend the Parents Forum, on the VLE and website. The latest minutes can be read here.

We have found that our Parents’ Forum has been extremely beneficial in allowing parents to become more involved in supporting their children’s education and in school life. It also helps drive forward the school improvement agenda through parents taking more ownership of the success of the school and feeling involved in the plans that are made.

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