l Tips on good governance, securing support and harnessing volunteers Managing your PTA
Making your meetings a success It’s no surprise that one of the most common complaints from PTA members on our Facebook groups is how to get more people to come along to committee meetings. While many parents may seem keen to get involved, for some it can be difficult to attend meetings due to work and home commitments. But for any organisation to work effectively, members need to be able to get together in order to make important decisions and tackle issues as a group. So how can you encourage more people to attend?
Face to face Among the PTAs we spoke to, the general consensus is that evening meetings work best. Typically these are held on school premises, but some have found that holding the meeting in a local pub encourages more people to come along as they prefer the more informal atmosphere. Be mindful that most attendees
won’t want a late night, so for evening meetings it’s crucial to stick to your agenda. Discussions can quickly go
off-topic (particularly if you’re in the pub!) and you do run the risk of new members being put off by a late finish. To avoid this, some PTAs now hold
their meetings straight after school. If parents are picking children up anyway, it’s not too much to ask for them to stick around for a meeting. On Facebook, Vicky Thompsett says: ‘We had always held our meetings in the evening but we recently held one straight after school with the children going into the after-school club for free. It was a huge success and we had no spare seats!’
Take it online With more and more of our daily communication taking place digitally rather than face to face, should PTAs consider holding online meetings? This would resolve any childcare issues and might also encourage less confident members to share their opinions with the group. Skype and Google Hangouts are effective platforms for group chats and conference calls, but Facebook is clearly the favourite for PTAs. Whether
you have a group for all school parents, or a smaller group for PTA members only, it’s a great platform for sharing ideas, but could it host a meeting? Liz Newmarch from Ysgol Nannerch VC Primary School in Mold, thinks so. ‘We are a small primary school with supportive but busy parents so we recently held a “virtual PTA meeting” on Facebook one evening. The committee posted various questions/ topics/polls for parents to engage with. All parents could see what was being discussed so it was a very open and transparent “meeting”. Parents could comment at a later date if they couldn’t make that time. There were no minutes to type up and it’s been easier to chase up action points because we just check the comments and add a reminder.’
PTA+ online
For more ideas and advice on managing your PTA, visit
pta.co.uk/ running-a-pta.
pta.co.uk SPRING 2019 15
IMAGE: MONKEYBUSINESSIMAGES/
ISTOCKPHOTO.COM
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52 |
Page 53 |
Page 54 |
Page 55 |
Page 56 |
Page 57 |
Page 58 |
Page 59 |
Page 60
