ABSTRACT
Every newly-appointed head will have had a greater or lesser degree of contact with parents when a class teacher, but this contact will most likely have been on an individual, ad hoc basis. The responsibility of the headteacher is for the policy of the whole school concerning relationships with parents. Most primary schools encourage parents to approach their child's class teacher with information about their child which they feel might affect the child in school. The relationship with parents is so crucial that this is an area where the head needs to build a consensus amongst the staff and ensure that a school-wide policy operates. The environment in which schools operate is one that sees participation as a legitimate parental right. The promotion of parental involvement has been a recurrent theme in the literature since the Plowden Report. The Plowden Committee made a point of meeting groups of parents at most of the seventy-six schools they visited.
