The NGA does not believe that the office of Parent Governor Representative is properly defined. The lack of clarity leads to varied practice throughout the country.
Parent Governor Representatives were set up to provide parents with a voice at local authority education committees and to disseminate information to parents. Many parent governors have found this latter part of the role very challenging and almost impossible to fulfil.
In some cases there has been little interest in the role and many local authorities have carried vacancies for PGRs for a considerable length of time.
In some local authorities PGRs have been ‘used’ as representatives of local governors rather than representative parents. PGRs are elected as representative parents and not representative governors and the NGA is concerned that some local authorities confuse the two.
If the role of the PGR is to be a serious one then the NGA would like to see it more clearly defined and local authorities’ responsibilities to PGRs clarified. There is little value in PGRs having a dissemination function if they lack the means to carry this out.