AS schools across the island grapple with the problem of poor academic performance and indiscipline among students, the National Parent Teachers Association (NPTA) has begun the task of assisting parents to improve the behaviour of their children.

The NPTA, which is scheduled to be officially launched in July, says it is already sharing best practices on how schools should approach a number of challenges including truancy, absenteeism, and bullying.

The new body, which was formed late last year, arose from a recommendation of the National Task Force on Education, which is the blueprint for the much-debated education transformation process.

Minister of Education and Youth, Maxine Henry-Wilson, last week called on parents to play a greater role in the education of their children through the NPTA.

Real estate executive Claudette Chin heads the 11-member interim executive, comprised of PTA heads from across the island.

“We have seen a strong correlation between the children who do well and the parents who attend the PTAs,” Chin told the Observer.

According to the Jamaica College PTA president, the children of parents or guardians who are active in PTAs usually excel in academics, sports and other school activities.

At the same time, she pointed to a disturbing trend where some parents/guardians tend to reduce their participation in the PTA as their children progress through high school.

“Parents attend strongly when the child is in first form, but their attendance falls off each year, until the child reaches fifth form. It’s almost as if the parents vanish; it’s a very troubling phenomenon,” Chin lamented.

This lack of interest by parents is reflected in the children’s grades, she added, emphasising that no one economic grouping was more guilty of this practice.

“There is no trend in who attends PTA meetings”, Chin noted. “You have people from uptown there, but many of our inner-city parents are very much there”.

Meanwhile, she said one of the objectives of the NPTA is to share strategies used to encourage parents’ participation in PTAs, especially fathers.

Jamaica College, a corporate area traditional high school for boys, has had special father-son evenings, where dads and their boys play dominoes, tug-of-war and other games to share quality time.

Other PTAs also have proven strategies to deal with a range of problems, such as fund-raising, monitoring students who cut classes, and curbing of extortion of money from young students by their older schoolmates.

These best practices will be compiled by the NPTA in a manual, Chin said. Under the transformation, a website will also be set up to publicise the NPTA’s activities.

The association will also assist schools in establishing PTAs, she added. It’s no small task as there are more than 1,000 schools in the island, covering infant, primary and secondary levels of public and private (independent) schools.

“The response has been good”, Chin said of the PTAs so far.

The main task now, she added, was to sensitise all stakeholders about the role of the NPTA. To this end, members of the executive are holding meetings for PTAs in the different regions of the island.

Ways have to be found to expand guidance counseling departments, Chin said, noting that many children came from violence-prone communities and had non-functioning parents or no parents at all.

She also pointed out that nutrition programmes were needed to assist children who “come to school with money only for bus fare and a bag juice”.