Welcome to our first Newsletter of this school year. A particular welcome to our new Nursery and P1 parents, as well as the parents of other children joining the school. We hope that all the children are enjoying being back at school and that our new pupils are settling in well.

The Parent Council firmly believes that the staff, children and parents all do a great job in making Davidson's Mains Primary one of the best schools in Edinburgh.

WHAT DOES THE PARENT COUNCIL DO?

Many of you will have heard of the PTA who do a fantastic job organising social events and fundraising for the benefit of the school. The Parent Council is separate from the PTA and does not have a fundraising role at the school.

The role of the Parent Council is to act as a representative body for parents and to ensure good communication between the school and parents. We are consulted on and represent parents' views on matters such as school budgets, additional in-service days and educational matters such as changes to the curriculum and class sizes. All parents who have children in the school are automatically a part of the Parent Forum. The Parent Forum then elects a Parent Council to represent them and act on their behalf.  So YOU are part of Davidson's Mains Primary School Parent Forum and are invited to the AGM.

COMMUNICATION

The key objective of the Parent Council is to represent the views of parents, support the work of the school and ensure that everyone is as involved in the school as they want to be and in a way that suits them. The Constitution and Minutes of all past meetings are posted on the School's website and are available to view from the School Office.

Council Meetings are open to all parents and new members are welcome to join at any time. If you are interested in participating, please come and talk to us at the Meet the Teacher event on 15 September, come along to the AGM on 22 September or contact any of the existing committee (details on the school website or from the school office).

CHAIRMAN'S ANNUAL REPORT

We have been fortunate during the past year to have had a full committee of 15 members, comprising 12 parents and 3 staff, and in addition, our meetings were occasionally supplemented by other parents who wished to raise particular issues.  It is also gratifying for only our 2^nd year of operation that we successfully engaged with our local elected representatives on Edinburgh Council, who also attended our meetings and listened to our concerns particularly regarding the condition of the Upper School toilets.  While this is still an unresolved issue we will continue to lobby the Department for the necessary funding to have them refurbished.  Also during the year we actively discussed disability access, and the heating in the “temporary” huts.

We were consulted over the introduction of the Curriculum for Excellence additional in-service day and organised a questionnaire among the whole Parent Forum to ascertain their views, which were then fed back to the Children and Families Department.  When the issue of the composite class for the current P2 arose, we communicated to the Department the strong feeling against their proposal and had an alternative suggestion successfully adopted.

We have supported the Head Teacher in a variety of other issues as they have come up eg, review of fire safety equipment, and continue to actively do so.  We have been represented at the Consultative Committee with Parents which meets with the Department at the annual budget presentation.  We are also active within the local school cluster.

An energy efficiency sub-committee has been formed with the aim of exploring the options for saving money on heating and lighting, and becoming generally greener.  A member of the PC also coordinated a cycle to school day during Bike Week.

Finally to finish on a piece of good news, a member of the PC nominated the school’s case for a £4,000 RBS Supergrounds grant and the school was successful in it's application. All of the children will benefit from the resulting improvements in the school grounds

We would welcome all parents to any of our meetings, even if not an elected member, to hear what we do and how we can better represent all who care for our children.

Andrew Haswell, Chair Davidson’s Mains Parent Council