Is there anyone out there? Yes, and it's me!

I started writing this last week after attending a 'Parental Involvement' meeting at Musselburgh Grammar School. The meeting was very poorly attended and although the presenter, Susan Guy was extremely optomistic and encouraging, when I tried to put my thoughts into words for this blog it became a bit of a whinge about the difficulty in getting parents to turn out to meetings then I tried to add link to Susan's questionnaire and the whole piece disappeared. Upon reflection this was the best outcome (I just hope it doesn't reappear in some incongruous place!) because what I really wanted to record is the satisfaction I get from my involvement. I joined the PTA and then The School Board for lots of reasons but the overarching one was to make my son's experience of school as good, in the broadest sense, as it could be. By that measure it has worked - he has had a very good experience of school. I know that doesn't demonstrate a causal link but that is surprisingly unimportant to me. My involvement has impacted on my experience which is, I suspect, where the satisfaction comes from and it seems entirely credible that that has also benefitted Calum. But it is also entirely credible that other parents gain that same positive experience and satisfaction from entirely different forms of involvement so to get caught up in doing headcounts at meetings may be easy but is probably a bit pointless and I'm goimg to try not to do it anymore. I've got a final meeting at Campie tomorrow, I'll let you know if I manage.