MINUTES OF 3rd MEETING OF PARENTS LIAISON COMMITTEE (PLC)
AL BATINAH INTERNATIONAL SCHOOL, SOHAR.
The third meeting of PLC was held on February 13th in the meeting room of LC3, ABIS at 1800hrs.
The attendees included: Orla, Ella and Neil Tomalin (school principle)
The agenda of the meeting was set by the members of PLC (besides the official ABIS representatives) during a sub-meeting on the 5th February 2019. The points were presented to the school officials for discussion.
1) Questions brought up by some parents:
a) Can the school pay extra attention to school ethics to the students?
Neil: School ethics are integrated in the curriculum. We work hard on this, but it is always a challenge. Parents have the main responsibility for the behaviour of their children, and the school is partnering on this. We deal with it constantly. We dedicate a fair amount of time on this area in the secondary. In primary it is mainly around classroom teachers. We will keep this topic definitely on the table.
b) Can we maybe introduce Buddy benches at school? The idea is: if a child feels lonely, they can go to the bench as a signal that they need someone to play with. Another child will see them, go and talk to them and include them in their games.
Neil: this is a great idea- we will work on this.
c) Can we get more clarification on the costs of Oman week?
Neil: The prices of the Oman week trips are linked to the costs the school has to organize the trips. The school makes no profit on it. Teachers are using their own cars (free of charge) and are working overtime without any extra pay. A lot comes back on the goodwill of the teachers and the parents who are volunteering. The more parents are volunteering, the less the cost is.
The numbers of students has grown but the number of parents who are able/willing to help has not grown. The result is that we have to rent more cars for certain trips and take more teachers.
The school will review Oman week in 2 weeks. We have to see if all the trips are sustainable with the larger numbers of students. And, we will consider if we have to break up Oman week and spread it out over a longer period to make it easier to organize and for some trips it is better to do them in a different month due to weather conditions (eg the diving trip).
d) The toilets at school are not always clean – can you do something about it?
Neil: We are aware of this problem. We are checking the toilets regularly and we do our very best to keep them clean but it also depends on how the children are using the toilets. But we will increase the cleaning (from twice a day to three times a day). We are considering to redo the older toilets.
e) Can the school pay extra attention to healthy food (eg healthy food in lunch boxes) and healthy life style? We as PLC would like to organize something like a coffee morning for parents on this theme.
Neil: It is certainly an important theme. We have education on healthy food embedded in the curriculum (eg lessons on nutrition and healthy lifestyle is integrated in PE lessons). It is most effective when it is integrated into the learning, but parents also play an important role in this.
An aspect we shouldn’t forget in this respect is that the question, what is good and healthy food is also related to your own culture.
A coffee morning for parents where you discuss these things is a good idea.
2) Events
1 The PLC together with the school organised the first ABIS biathlon on Feb 1st which was a great success. There were 50 participants.
2 The PLC has planned the following events for the upcoming period:
• Thursday night 21 March: a Fun Run with activities, for all ages followed by a bbq.
• Thursday night 28 March at International evening: The PLC will have their own table and do some activities for children and share some food.
• April (TBC): the PLC in cooperation with the Student Union will organize a school disco.
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The meeting finished at 1900 hrs. The next PLC meeting is scheduled for 1 May 2019.