Parents found it difficult to engage with consultation

"A consultation on possible changes to how schools are governed `excluded many parents`, according to an organisation representing parent teacher councils. The Scottish Parent Teacher Council said it gathered more than 800 responses to submit to the Scottish government's consultation. But it said most respondents skipped questions about the school governance review itself..."

"The government intends to devolve more powers to head teachers, and is also looking at creating new regional education boards to work across council areas. Some in local government fear councils will end up with a greatly-reduced practical role."

"A government consultation closed on Friday, with detailed plans likely later this year."

"In the introduction to its response, the SPTC highlighted what it sees as problems with aspects of the consultation itself."

It said: `While we gathered more than 800 responses, the majority of respondents skipped the questions about the governance review. This in itself communicates a great deal about the perspective of parents on this consultation`."

"`The feedback received regarding the consultation events has similarly indicated that parents who attended (and are therefore by definition motivated and engaged) have generally been left puzzled and feeling excluded from the debate`."

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-38563112?SThisFB

"A number of concerns were raised by Parent Council Chairs, the Education Advisory Group and the Head Teacher Executive on the lack of detail stated in the consultation document which makes it challenging to answer the large number of open questions contained within the national survey... Overall, this lack of detail in the consultation document and the complex open questions may have resulted in a low response rate to both the Midlothian consultation and consequently may be the same in terms of response rate to the national survey. It should be noted that more respondents started the questionnaire than completed the questionnaire."

https://midlothian.cmis.uk.com/Live/Document.ashx?

"The Education Secretary was pressed on criticisms that the consultation was filled with jargon during an appearance before Holyrood’s Education Committee..."

"[P]arents at a Glasgow meeting held to discuss the issue last month told the Herald newspaper that the questions posed were `completely impenetrable to your average parent`."

"Committee member and Labour MSP Iain Gray said: `We read in the press that some of the parents there felt the document was filled with jargon, that the officials present couldn’t provide clarification for some straightforward questions, and they also felt that the questions the consultation asked of them really made little sense to them`."

https://www.consultationinstitute.org/consultation-news/scottish-education-secretary-pressed-jargon-filled-impenetrable-school-consultation/

All going to plan then.