Four events this week at school during working hours…

100%. I had a parent recently ask me in my governor role if I could push the head to allow paid music lessons to go on within the school day, as in a parent could pay and their children be pulled out of a lesson at any time. Zero acknowledgement or care of how disruptive that would be for teachers! That got a resounding ‘no’.

Pay and sort your own music lessons out after school! Have someone visit your home- oh wait, nobody is ever there! Stop palming everything off on schools! 🤦🏻‍♀️

Yes you are an example of an entitled parent

And don’t get me started on the ones who send in sick children and then switch their phones off

He wasn’t wrong. Schools are there to TEACH.

Parents are way too entitled. Obviously, there school is entitled to shut at any time due to weather, power cuts, floods, break ins, strikes, etc. Obviously, I will support that because they are MY children and responsibility, not the school’s.

Very poor parental planning to not have thought all of these scenarios through before having YOUR children. You need to be available, or sort your own alternative.

And @TheOutlierthat attitude is why teachers are at breaking point-because we are increasingly being treated like we are ‘staff’ providing a paid for service. I had a parent say to me that the parents evening appointments didn’t really ‘work’ for her, so could we arrange one later or during the day?
7.30 on 2 different days is enough and no I can’t ’dip out of class’ at your convenience.
Or it’s the ‘I was only 10 minutes late’ or the perennial lost jumper (with no name) or the expectation that reasonable’ adjustments should be given to their child because they want them rather than need them - arriving at a quiet time that just happens to be 10 minutes earlier than everyone else, to negate paying for breakfast club….
In all my years of teaching I have never had such an entitled group of parents, which then rubs off on the children, who demand help rather than ask, cannot wait, refuse to do things that they don’t want to do and answer back.
Children (and school) have stopped being a priority- and while @ThankYouNigelmay have extreme opinions, having someone openly acknowledge the need to put your children first is welcome, when it is so sadly lacking these days.

Your old head teacher might have believed it, but hour old head teacher was wrong.

State schools are a state-provided service which take children during fixed hours and educate them during that time.

Women make up roughly half of the UK workforce. I can't find an exact figure, but even with part-time work and pay discrimination their work must contribute at least 25% of taxes.

I'm pretty sure that your old head teacher wouldn't be willing to give up 25% of his school's funding in order to have a parent always turn up at those events.

School is a service provided from taxpayers’ money so the parents are the customers. The fact it is run on a conscription basis does not change that basic fact - the parents (the working ones anyway) are paying for this. So it would make sense to run it on a basis that adapts to the changes in society - such as both parents working. Lots of random events held at maybe a day’s notice make life impossible. Just issue a calendar and don’t expect the parents there too often (or judge them for that) because they do have other places to be. Needing to earn an income is a basic economic fact and anyone concerned with “safeguarding” would try to work around the need for parents to provide for their kids.

Schools are there to educate.

My old Head Teacher made that abundantly clear. He was very cross with parents who regularly arrived 10-15 minutes late to collect their children, said his teachers are not childminders, that’s eating into their after school time unpaid, so he started to charge parents accordingly.

This is a double standard I notice in our society more widely.

The benefits of choosing not to work accrue entirely to that child and that family.

Yet the benefits of choosing to work are expected to be shared.

Firstly in tax taken from both parents salaries. They're sharing the output of their time working with the non-workers. At least 20% of the time that WOH parent works is taken in tax and funds state services which are equally enjoyed by the family with a SAH parent.

But the SAHP doesn't give a reciprocal 20% of their time to benefit the WOH family

And then on top of that, as you say, it's somehow seen as wrong for the remainding (post-tax) WOH parent's salary to actually benefit exclusively their own child.... even though their salary is exactly what they get instead of the time the SAH parent puts exclusively into their own family!

It's not fair for anything to be available to the child of a WOH parent which isn't equally available to the child of a SAH/non-working parent.

But that only goes one way.... You even see it explicitly on this thread where pp say 'why should the children of SAH parents miss out, just because WOH parents can't make the event?'

Complete double standard.

To be honest, it kind of is.

People do use school as convenient childcare, because the kids have to be there, and the parents have to work.
There had been a shift over the past 50 years, where school has become an increasingly important part of the childcare system.

In teenage ages, children have their own plans for after school. Don’t expect them to be rushing home to see you!

but some basic consideration of their demographic would help to ensure attendance at these events and make them effective in what they are trying to achieve.

The ask is simple and reasonable. If you are planning an event that requires participation from people then tell people about it with enough notice that they can actually attend.

You’ve complained about the school so why send your children there? Why haven’t you moved them?
We sent DT’s to a local highly regarded primary for Reception but after a term realised they were never going to meet the needs for trilingual DT’s. We moved them to an independent international school where they stayed until they were 18. Good parenting?

The school is not there for your convenience.

Well they’ll need to start making the profession more appealing somehow, as teachers are leaving in droves. Which I don’t blame them for one bit given how entitled and demanding modern day parents are.

I meant for the specific children where nobody showed up. Of course most had someone, or several for the Nativity, as we sold several tickets per family. However, there were always several who had nobody at all turn up, and that was a really poor show. Usually ones with parents busy with other more ‘important’ things. They were crushed, and it should have been organised for somebody to turn up for them, or even asking another parent to wave and chat to them after if no family locally. Really poor.

Yeah we’ll see…I’ve been interested to read posts of here about the number of mums actually scaling back paid work more during the teenage years, so yeah, let’s see! My children certainly won’t be latch keys kids arriving home to an empty house, that doesn’t feel like a home.

Nope, not the case here.

A lot less time, the rushed dregs of the day when everyone’s knackered.

It’s actually in the top 5% of the country thanks, smashing national results.

But I’ll never be reliant on it, that’s the beauty and flexibility of my lifestyle. I am free to easily switch to another school anywhere or home educate anytime I like and that better suits my children.

No, it’s the parents who don’t prioritise turning up who are not putting their children first. They knew before they chose to have them they’d be invited into school events, it’s nothing new.

I’m paid for 35 hours and do at least 50 hours a week, usually more. 50 is the lowest it could be. That’s far from not working ‘exactly my hours’.

Completely agree. I’ve led 25 years of nativities. Parents and carers without fail always come. It’s the highlight of the year.

It's not putting children first. I can't imagine any other routine situations in primary school where schools know what they are organising will leave some children very upset i.e. because their parents are not there, but they go on doing it anyway

There is a real double standard that goes on in schools. our local state primary head wouldn’t allow an auction of promises (to raise money for school to build a library ) to include teachers time or head for a day as it’s not “fair that children whose parents don’t have money for extras can’t participate “ However they have no problem discriminating against children of working parents by having four events in one week that parents are invited to / expected to attend.

it wasn’t a thing when I was in primary , but seems to be coming more and more an issue, and then we wonder why women are giving up their careers