Athaliah Reynolds, Staff Reporter

Sylvester Anderson (second right), president of the Meadowbrook High School Parent-Teachers' Association, is congratulated by members of the island's PTAs shortly after he was elected president of the National Parent-Teachers' Association of Jamaica on July 14, 2007. - Junior Dowie/Staff Photographer

The National Parent-Teachers' Association of Jamaica (NPTAJ), formed in 2006, serves as the islandwide organisation which facilitates partnerships and interaction among parents, teachers and the school community.

Sylvester Anderson, who has been president of the NPTAJ since its inception, says the association has been playing a critical role in ensuring that the parent and the school community maintain a strategic link.

When the organisation was launched, one of its main objectives was to increase the number of parent-teachers' associations (PTAs) across the island and to ensure involvement at the national level. At the time, there were some 140 PTAs attached to the organisation. The goal was to increase this number by 100 per cent.

Currently, there are just about 200 PTAs attached to the NPTAJ. It is estimated that this is a mere 20 per cent involvement. Anderson admits that this is way too low. The NPTAJ president was unable to say just how many active PTAs there were across the island.

Great need

"It goes without saying that there is a great need for better parent involvement in the student's educational development," Anderson told The Gleaner. He said things had been improving, but said there was still a long way to go.

"Attendance at PTA meetings is pretty low," he said. "We have an attendance rate of about 20 to 30 per cent."

He told The Gleaner that most parents would often show up for the first meeting of the school year, but the rate dwindled to a severe low for the remainder of the school term.

Good performance

This, he said, is something the NPTAJ had been working to change. "Parents need to know that their job does not end with just sending the child to school, but they need to be involved in every part of the child's growth," he said.

"They have to attend the PTA meetings and develop a relationship with teachers and the school community, because there are certain things they will not know unless they are communicating with the school," he advised.

He said statistics showed that children who performed well in school were the ones whose parents were involved.

The NPTAJ, therefore, holds this idea in mind and seeks to ensure that parents play an essential role in their child's learning.

He said the organisation had also been working to get more fathers involved in the PTAs, as this was also important. Generally, more mothers would turn out for the meetings.

"We have been trying to organise activities that will attract the fathers and get them to come out more. So, sometimes we conduct 'male only' PTA meetings, or we will have cookouts or domino games to attract the fathers," he said.

Lack of funding

Anderson, however, said the organisation's work, to some extent, had been crippled by a lack of funding.

He said the NPTAJ was funded for the most part from the dues collected from the PTAs across the country, but with just 20 per cent of involvement, this had proven to be just a drop in the bucket. He said the Ministry of Education also provided some level of support to the organisation. "The ministry mainly provides us with funding for our annual conferences," he said.

"Right now, we are unable to conduct several of our training programmes that we have organised for the parents, because of a lack of funding. We have also recently completed a parenting-support programme and a conflict-resolution workshop with JA-Style, which we would like to pass on to the parents but without adequate funding, we are unable to conduct the training."

Essential to development

Despite this, however, Anderson said the work of the organisation would continue, as he believed the NPTAJ was essential to the develop-ment of not only Jamaica's education system, but to the growth and success of students.

"We continue to serve as the link or a mediator between the parent and the ministry," he said.