Otara Boards Forum  

Concerned about the low educational achievement levels of their children, Otara parents set up their own forum in 1996 to share skills across 13 schools in the area.

The Otara Boards Forum now runs a parents as tutors programme, involving 30 parents working in schools with up to 160 children a day. Its board of trustee training sessions help develop skills needed for complex decisions. It runs an annual literacy celebration day and a parent support programme.

It includes a network linking early education providers and, in 2007, it took on the South Auckland truancy contract.

The forum organises initiatives for schools with high student absence rates and supports families as they look for underlying factors contributing to absences.

In 2007/08 an ASB Community Trust grant helped the forum with operating costs and the Parents as Reading Tutors programme.