FROM your report “Fees hurting parents’ pockets” (NST, Jan 5), it is pretty obvious that parent-teacher associations of some schools are padding up the PTA fee by including all sorts of collections.

This is not correct. Payments for use of computers, books, materials, etc, cannot be lumped together with the PTA fee, which is a form of membership or subscription.

The reason many schools use this fee is because they have no right to collect a whole lot of “fees” from parents. Many unsuitable things are done by school administrators using the name of the PTA.

The Education Ministry must regulate the membership fee of all PTAs.

Allow PTAs to have only a fixed amount of money to run their PTA activities in a year. State clearly what this money collected can be used for.

Should PTAs want to support the schools in various ways, they should apply for permission from the local district education officer stating clearly what projects they intend to support and how much money they want to collect and how they want to collect such funds.

This would act as a counter-check after the project has been approved by the PTA committee. This should be the standard procedure for schools when they want to raise funds and should be applied to all fundraising by PTAs.

The suggestion by the president of the National Council of Parent-Teacher Associations, associate professor Mohamad Ali Hasan, asking the ministry to “set standard guidelines on the charges that each PTA could impose” is good.

But, like all guidelines, they are wide enough to cover the various funds schools want to collect for or they are usually full of loopholes for manipulation.

Leaving the decision to a trained officer would standardise collections better. Such an officer can consult higher authorities or other district education officers to make his or her decisions.

Not only is the amount of money collected a bone of contention but the activities some PTAs carry out in certain schools must be stopped.

One such activity is tuition classes carried out by schools in the name of PTAs. They use their own teachers to teach after school hours. Although the fees charged may be less than that of tuition centres, the pupils do not really benefit because the same teacher is conducting the classes and most pupils are tired by the time the tuition classes are held.

PTAs are also drawn into glamour projects like making the biggest flag. These prestige projects not only involve large sums of money but also the precious time of teachers, students and even the parents.

Schools will always cite the social values of co-operation and cultural or social exposure for such projects. But when weighed against the money and time wasted, such social gains can be obtained through much cheaper means.

Many of these “wrongdoings” come about as a result of a weak PTA committee elected during annual general meetings where only a few parents attend. When most parents fail to participate, then can we blame the committee if they are led astray by manipulative school heads?

So, the next time you get an invitation to attend the annual meetings of your child’s PTA, make sure you attend and vote the right people into the committee.

My apologies go to those committee members and schools with effective PTAs. What I have highlighted here are only the weak ones that give PTAs a bad name.

Source: NST – January 8, 2008