Should my child have learnt what I refer to as essential life skills at school?

Yes, exactly all of this, when I think of good teachers and good schools teaching skills like resilience is just woven into everything they do.

An extract from an education report in 1964:

848. Fewer authorities provide special classes for maladjusted children, although referrals to child guidance clinics reach a peak at about nine. Difficulties often increase at adolescence. But demanding, aggressive, unco-operative or withdrawn behaviour may appear before this and teachers need to have sufficient knowledge of the emotional and social developments of children to notice it and to refer children when necessary. Check lists of children's difficulties, imperfect as they are, can be valuable in helping a teacher to describe a child's difficulty. In schools where there is absence of stress and generous attention to individual and group needs, disturbed children often remain and improve in their ordinary classes. One organisation in their evidence to us (2) estimated that 15 per cent of children in primary schools may at some time need special help and understanding from their teachers. But disturbed or aggressive children can be upsetting and disruptive and some authorities have established classes for them on two or three mornings or afternoons a week with considerable success. Similar arrangements have been made for children discharged from mental hospitals and psychiatric units in hospitals. This has helped them to settle down in ordinary schools.

Sounds like schools were dealing with a lot of what we might call now additional needs in the mid 1960s.

I think "special help and understanding" and the "absence of stress and generous attention to individual and group needs" is rather in absence in schools today.

And apparently still teachers are not trained on SEN.

Your child is one of thirty or so that the teacher sees. If you think they observe as many of your child's interactions, and as clearly, as you do, you're very much mistaken.

It has nothing to do with parenting responsibility, and everything to do with educating the next generation of adults. Turning young people into well rounded individuals who will go out and do well in the world is as much the roles of schools as it is of parents. This Victorian notion that schools only focus on book smarts excludes a whole bunch of children for whom that is not their path. On the one hand we have older generations who lament what schools are bung asked to teach kids, and on the other we have employers complaining kids are coming out of schools with no knowledge of the world of work.

I explained the complexity of income tax to my daughter at the weekend because I got a letter from the tax office. She’s 16 and although she understood the premise of tax, she didn’t understand the nuts and bolts of how it worked. She said it would be great if they taught kids that in schools as many wouldn’t have parents who could (or thought to) explain it. Learning personal finance is really important but we don’t teach it in schools.

Teaching and reinforcing interpersonal skills in the context of education is just as important in schools, otherwise parents have no back up.

I'm not sure if that last sentence is directed at me.

Of course I teach my children these things, and I ensure they have extra curriculars that help too, as I truly believe it "takes a village" and children benefit from having a range of role models and adults in their lives.

But not all children have the privilege of active and involved parents.

I had friends at my university who were absolutely there because of the influence of their teachers, and despite not because of their parents. What a privilege to be a teacher who has made that much difference

Of course parents should do all sorts of things, that doesn't mean there isn't a place for those things to happen in schools too

I find the responses to this thread totally at odds with my experience. I don’t think you can outsource soft skills to schools or that they should necessarily be doing specific “resilience lessons” but I’d say that these sort of things are consciously embedded in everything my sons’ does.

They plan sports days and concerts and assemblies and even day to day lessons to give children a chance to develop these skills- like having to participate even if you’re not very good at something or worried about it and learning to fail and try again and supporting classmates and being part of a team. They have a buddy system where older children help younger ones settle not just because it’s nice for the younger ones but because it’s good for the older ones. They are very big on manners and develop emotional intelligence through their behaviour policy and have had specific lessons in reception around recognising emotions etc.

Schools can do these things in a different way to how you would at home because it’s a group setting.

I’d never have chosen a school which cared only about teaching my child to read and write and most go way beyond that. That obviously doesn’t absolve me from responsibility for teaching this as a parent though.

YABU. In fact, I get annoyed if I think the school is encroaching on stuff like this as I see it as our responsibility to teach DS these skills.

Teachers have enough on their plates trying to teach the curriculum and balance all the conflicting EHCPs!!

🫤 That’s YOUR job OP.

I think critical thinking is embedded within the teaching of many subjects taught at school.

Schools do need to address bullying. If your child in year three is being bullied by a year six child, which does happen at our school then they really can't and don't ignore it.

They do teach about mindfulness, caring, but some children just don't want to take it on board because the parents don't back up the messages.

Private schools do this as a matter of course.

HOWEVER nobody ever seems to educate children on money management and which is nuts- surely a huge life skill. I’m dealing with that myself - and I think the message is sinking in - for far my kids are great with money

That's your job

It's up to you. Though things were discussed at school when situations arose, it is parents' responsibility to encourage their child to be self assured, ie quiely confident, and able to deal with things as they come up. To know what is acceptable and not. They need to be able to talk to their parents about any concerns and feel comfortable to do so. Teachers can't be expected to do everything. Hopefully there won't be too many many concerns.

My children's school does do lots of work on things like developing resilience etc. Thats why I am surprised to see lots of defensive responses on here.

Plus it's just something that can be woven into the fabric of lessons. It doesn't even need a separate class

It's absolutely the parent's job and not the school's. I agree there. But that's all idealistic dreaming spires theory.

We don't live in an ideal world, we live in the UK, where 1 in every 6 children are growing up in emotionally, physically and sexually abusive households. Witnessing domestic abuse, severe MH crisis, addiction, etc. Personality disorders. Parents who only had the child out of social pressure, coercement or because they're sadists who wanted a minature punching bag. There's a Baby P, a Victoria Climbe and a Star Hobson on every street, in every class.

With no one to model those wonderful life skills and other things that angelic middle class parents seem to assume are imparted to every child by delightful, emotionally intelligent parents... What happens to these kids? Half will replicate the abuse, the other half will struggle the rest of their lives with immense lack of worth and MH issues. And thus the country spirals into

Every other kid is self medicating now. acting out, acting up. Or drowning with no one to help them. GPs are seeing 17 year olds with Ket bladder urinating blood. This shit happened in the 50s and 60s yeah, there were always problems. But we're not in 1965 anymore. Their future should be looking brighter than the past.

Remember Matilda? The Dahl book/film seems almost mild compared to the lives of children marred by what often passes for parenting now. But the theme still applies. It takes a village to raise a child. Everyone has a duty to other people's children, whether they like it or not. That's part and parcel of living in a society. You don't get to shrug and simper and say 'its not XYZs responsibility'. Without Miss Honey to act as a counterpoint to her horrifically neglectful parents, where would Matilda have ended up? Every child deserves a Miss Honey.

And that's why we need a community intervention service of some kind. It's a lot to ask of teachers, and they shouldn't have to be the ones who implement it. So everyone needs to say enough is enough and start metaphorically smashing apathetic people in the face. We need more eyes and ears looking out for kids and building them up from the ground up. Many teachers are of course school bullies themselves who never grew up, they need to be weeded out of the system and binned.

What we don't need is the 'I'm alright Jack, not my problem, my little Johnny is fine' attitude that has lead to what we're seeing now - total breakdown of civility and children as young as 8 attempting suicide (and succeeding).

Bullies need to start getting put in line. Good kids need to know we have their backs. Cowards and spineless people who look the other way need to be kept far away from children. Otherwise we end up with a lopsided late stage neoliberal world of Trumps and Murdochs who think they can crush everyone else into dust.

People are always banging on about what schools should be doing. Then when teachers reply, saying either 'Yes, we already do that!' or 'Ok, so which subjects would you like us to ditch from the current curriculum so that we can make space to teach <car repairs/tax returns/gardening/self defence/mortgages etc>?', they tend to go a bit quiet.

Kids don't start school until after they are 4- the foundations for these skills should have been built by parents long before they get to school, and they should continue to build on them with their kids right through teenage years... You can't wait until kids at school to start to teach these things...

Not at all. If children are in neglectful or abusive families then they should be supported. If children need additional support to overcome disadvantage then this should be provided, e.g. help to access higher education if no one in the family has experience of university.

But the state cannot and should not be the de facto parent in every child's life. Parents are there to teach children emotional intelligence, resilience, manners, morals, communication skills, social skills etc.

Don't bloody have children if you don't want to do that.

Have they? No PSHE when I was at school. You behaved or you were out, followed the rules or you were out. If didn't matter what your background was.
No pastoral team.

I don't think state schools have ever had to pick up the extent of poor parenting to the extent they do now 🤔

Children can develop their resilience through doing hard things at school but the mindset to do so is developed at home.

It’s not a teacher’s job! They can create a warm supportive environment certainly but it doesn’t fall on them when parents can’t be bothered.

State schools have always done that from the start.

Would you not have started teaching these skills before they get to school?

Life skills are taught at home- by parents and family.
Although seemingly parents these days can't even teach their kids to go to the toilet or clean their teeth ... so there is that.

Also now it seems to be going the other way. Don't embrace tech! Don't let them have phones and devices! And then in secondary schools it's all apps for homework. What are parents meant to do with all these mixed messages?