School consultation bodies currently only involve members from the school: pupils, teachers and parents. Yet external members could make an important contribution to the functioning of the school.
19 October 2006
Working together with ‘peripheral' stakeholders in the education process is becoming increasingly important. Not just for tuition, but also for matters such as child care, security and citizenship. There are many other organisations in society that have a stake in primary and secondary education.
Allow external members in the school's consultation body
External stakeholders could be allowed to sit on a school's consultation body. This could be achieved by constituting a ‘society group' in addition to the parent group, the pupil group and the staff group. When we suggest external members, the Education Council is referring to representatives of organisations such as the neighbourhood association, the village council, local business and industry, care for the elderly organisations, faith groups and recreational organisations. This would increase the level of engagement in education from the community. The Education Council would like to see the relevant legislation [Wet medezeggenschap scholen] amended to allow schools this option.
To involve the community more in the school, the Education Council also believes that:
* relationships with external parties should be sustainable and should be clearly in the interests of the pupils (e.g. by bringing about better education or better child care);
* relationships can be diverse in nature and should therefore not be prescribed by lawmakers.
Do not anchor consultation procedures in law, but keep things simple
The Education Council does not consider it useful to impose (alternative) consultation and public accountability procedures, or to anchor them in law. This would lead to bureaucracy and would not offer a single guarantee of creating win-win situations. The most successful form of cooperation is one based on a voluntary partnership between the various stakeholders inside and outside the school walls. The parties could, of course, always agree to formalise their cooperation by entering into a covenant, for instance.