I don't know what to think about this - Some parents need to be nannied by the state

The article that started this thread was about assumed knowledge - including education and careers knowledge . If parents don't know this information and not all school pass this information to pupils they are at a disadvantage to people with parents who do have this knowledge.

So sharpclawedkitten post is very apt to this thread - that schools aren't filling in blanks like my School in 90s to some extent as career advice and even libraires are much rarer.

Well they are and entitlement is off the scale. I grew up in poverty and my mum worked 3 cleaning jobs to put food on the table. We always had a tooth brush. As it turns out - it was my poverty and trauma induced childhood which made me see education as the way out.

Some people nowadays are just lazy, entitled and feckless. Unfortunately the innocent children then repeat the cycle.

I think you may of meant to post on this thread https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/am_i_being_unreasonable/5191132-to-think-social-mobility-is-impossible-for-working-class-lower-middle-class-kids?page=13&reply=139222696

@sharpclawedkitten I agree and have made that point myself on here.

We've encountered it our selves with our and kids education - lack of aspiration from schools and careers advice for all levels of ability.

Locally fewer than UK national figures kids go on to uni but they tend do other courses at local college most who do A-levels go onto uni. However new to college Y13 Psychology* * teacher that DD1 got started p/t meeting saying obviously university wasn't for DD1 despite her high predicted grade and watching DD1 wilt and look upset and embarrassed - and I piped excuse me - she planning on Uni and got back oh I assumed she'd go into workforce like you did - confused hmm pointed out we'd been to 4 well known and respected Uni between us both had undergraduate and post graduate degrees and DH was a lecturer at local uni. Apparently entire class went on to University - so no idea what the teacher was thinking. DD1 in her second year of her Uni course having sailed though first year with ease.

I was quite shocked when I was speaking to a colleague who was helped by the Sutton Trust, which is a charity for improving social mobility. She went to a secondary school in Plymouth and mentioned that careers advice from her teachers was purely aimed at "non-professional" careers. It was all about carpentry, hairdressing etc but there was no information at all about say law or accountancy - or indeed, becoming a teacher.

AIBU to think that teachers should be more aspirational for their pupils and not write them off because they go to a secondary modern in an inner city?

Note: I am not "dissing" being a hairdresser. If you are creative and like people it's a great career and very easy to combine with having a family, which is still sadly a consideration for women. And you may well make more money doing a trade than a profession. But schools should be promoting careers for all levels of academic attainment.

If parents don't have aspirations for their kids, their teachers should at least try.

It's one of the taboo areas on MN, you just aren't allowed to say it.

There are schemes already in areas of deprivation for tooth brushing in the school day. It’s already happening. Social services won’t get involved in serious cases of neglect as they don’t have the manpower.

I don’t know why we are so scared of saying some parents are just shit and failing their children. Nothing to do with money. Some people just don’t want to parent.

Of course it won't work

Intresting.

I notice it's something he said before he was elected so most likely irrelevant waffling, I'm not sure how this would even work with 30 kids and only one sink in the average classroom would they all line up to brush their teeth? Which would take up a whole hour or would they do it in the toilets?

Same here had one of these places where I used to take DC as a baby only about 6 years ago so it's not really true they're all closing I don't recall speaking to any of the mums at the baby groups who seemed "wealthy".

Mind you there isn't a "wealthy side of town" here the wealthy people in this area live in a separate town about 15 miles aways. Why the hell would they travel so far just for baby groups and advice groups etc. They most likely have similar in their own area

1 of Labour's flagship ideas is mandatory teethbrushing in all primary schools

www.theguardian.com/society/2024/jan/10/keir-starmer-announces-plan-for-supervised-toothbrushing-in-schools

At what school is toothbrushing part of the school Day? Certainly not my kids school or the school I used to work at.

I agree that some parents are just clueless when it comes to dental health though. The idea that children should constantly be allowed to eat sweets and chocolate is very toxic as I've tried telling certain grandparents but you know what they're like 🙄.

I think certain parents who's kids have severely rotten teeth and constant headlice should have a little pressure from social services as a kick up the backside to get their shit together sometimes all that's needed is a phone call from them to scare them into getting their shit together. Honestly I know a family with chronic headlice and the school won't even say anything to them even though EVERYONE knows it

Not true where I live. We still have one but limited. It was a proper mix of everyone in the neighborhood. We also had a good homestart service that would help people less likely to go to attend. A lot of the reason people don't go who potentially could do with the help is that they are very under confident. If you're not used to walking into unknown situation it can be quite intimidating.

No not a joke. I'm asking why is it now so bad that we have to have teeth brushing brought in as a mandatory part of the school day. Links to my point about the more the state does then the less responsibility lies with parents.
Why can't we just say that some parents are shit and those are the ones who need targeted support rather than have whole classes brushing their teeth when it isn't needed for the majority because their parents know it is their responsibility to do these things with their kids?

Also, it was cost effective. We are spending far more on childcare provision for all children now, because they want caregivers (mostly mothers) to work rather than parenting. This article from IFS is quite a good summary. Apologies if it's been linked already

https://ifs.org.uk/articles/sure-start-achieved-its-aims-then-we-threw-it-away

Is this a joke? There's always been children with rotten teeth back in the day it was a lot worse than now kids would literally die from sepsis because of infected rotten teeth. Obviously I'm talking way back in the day but even 20 years ago when I started school there were a far amount of kids with rotten teeth because parents gave them too many sweets and didn't brush them.

Exactly

Someone mentioned earlier that cutting SureStart was an ideological decision by the Conservative government and I agree. The swingeing cuts of 2010 onwards didn’t look to just save money. They were targeted at reducing central and local government’s involvement in people’s lives in line with the idea of small government. It was sheer vandalism to dismantle SureStart.

Apologies, I’ve read back and I was entirely unclear! I was trying to say that the ethos of Surestart was about support and not moral judgement but I can see how that became garbled in my post.

That’s not my experience.

In my area it was fantastic and not dominated by middle class parents at all. Lots of people in real need.

It was absolutely not about moral judgement. The (false) claim that it was solely used by middle class parents proves that.

Sorry but this is absolute rubbish. Surestart centres were not about moral judgement whatsoever. They were open to all parents from all backgrounds for a start, as has been discussed on this thread. Their influence was measurable. The 'coalition' government closed them because they don't give a shit about women and children.

My parents were poor. They worked in factories all their lives and had no qualifications.

Every week they bought me a comic and every week took me to the library.
I saw my mum reading a library book all the time and my dad read a paper almost daily.

There was always reading matter in the house and I saw them reading and read myself. The reading matter was either cheap or free.

They toilet trained me before I went to school and when I went to school, I was already able to read.

So, poor parenting is not connected to money and to say so is fucking, fucking insulting.

It is connected to lazy no hopers who expect everything to be done for them-for their children to be taught to use the toilet by someone else and who won't even provide a cut of toast for their kids in the morning-they expect someone else to do it.

Time to stop connecting lack of money with poor parenting and address the elephant in the room. There are people out there who see no reason to bring up their kids and expect someone else to do it. To keep connecting it to poverty is an insult and a spit on people like my parents.

Books are free, bread is cheap, toilet training is free. Parents-do it yourselves.

When the Windrush generation arrived in the UK they didn't get a warm welcome and they mostly ended up in overcrowded houses, flats, bedsits and lodging houses that nobody else wanted to live in, doing the kind of jobs that not many others wanted to do - unsocial hours, low pay, dirty, exhausting etc etc. They had it tough, no doubt about that, as every wave of immigrants to the UK always has.

Asylum seekers, however, are not allowed to work (legally). They live in limbo, often for years, waiting for their cases to be resolved, with very little money or free choice and agency over where they can live and how they spend their time. It's a stupid system. Lots of them have qualifications, experience and skills that we could be making good use of.

I was out with a friend last night, who runs a school for young people who have struggled in mainstream - multiple exclusions, disruptive, violent etc.

She was talking about how great the Sure Start centers used to be, and the measurable difference it made to children’s lives. This wasn’t about middle class parents (so what if it was) meeting for a brew .. but young fathers groups, multi-agency support, and interventions before things got too bad.

It was really sad that the Tories got rid of them, and am hoping that early years provision gets a real boost now

(and asylum seekers are not staying in plush hotels … but that is a different story)