To think parents expect too much of schools?

Of course it’s a parents job to teach their child how to spell their own name. I spent time with my DCs doing this before they started school.
Days of the week, what do parents actually do?
It is your job as a parent to speak to your children And educate them.
Do they just plonk them in a corner now?

And one we regularly get in my school re students who are repeatedly late ‘he just won’t get out of bed in the morning, could someone at school have a chat to him?’

I used to work in a secondary and we all used to cover reception now and then.
Parents ringing at 2.55pm to give their DC a message. When you explained you couldn’t leave the desk,
staff were heading out on duty already and children were probably already leaving classrooms - why can’t you stand outside and tell them. 800 kids and 4 exits.

They would also say they had been ringing ‘all day’ and no one answered, unfortunately for them calls were recorded on the computer. It would show they hadn’t called once. They would just lie to try and get staff in trouble.

Exactly. I work in early years and some of the children are coming in with so many barriers to development already there and 9 times out of 10 it’s not because the parents don’t care but because they are struggling themselves and are crying out for help. Help that often isn’t there now because services are at breaking point.

Im a single Mum to a disabled child so I get how hard things can be for parents. But I am also lucky I have a support network and I’m not reliant on external agencies to provide that. I can well see how without that life for DS would have ended up every different.

As if it's only one meal...

It also doesn’t cause it!

it’s much more complex than that. I wish it was a simple as don’t have your phone out for one meal.

Having their phone out in Wetherspoons does not justify any of this.

It’s easy to be simplistic and say parents are on their phones, they should teach this and that and eat a Sunday roast Some families live in the most appalling and chaotic circumstances - usually with poverty as the underlying factor. Insecure housing, DV, family behind bars, no money, in debt, poor health, parents with limited education and literacy. Feckless fathers nowhere to be seen. Often multiple generations of this. There’s not a straightforward solution.

The illegible handwriting is because they're taught to write in cursive at school instead of printing letters. It does get better. The other stuff I'd expect parents to teach.

I actually agree with the idea that too many parents think it’s Schools job to teach their child basic stuff but…

This comment rankled. The original comment by IkaBaar was spot on. These things are an early indicator of dyslexia.
DD2 struggled with all these things - I can't tell you how many hours of my life I spent trying. She is now 12. Still spells her name wrong if she’s in a hurry. Still can’t count in 2s,5s or 10s. Still has almost zero concept of telling the time. Took forever to learn the days of the week and months of the year.
And was diagnosed with dyslexia aged 7. And dyscalculia aged 9.

This was despite reading to her daily, doing all the little things (counting Everything from sweets she was given to stairs as we climbed them to sticks we collected…). We counted in 2s daily for about six months until I gave up in despair as she still couldn’t get past 10 and was getting upset.

It would have been easy to assume I’d done nothing. These things are indeed an indication of SEN - worth bearing in mind.

I could write my full name before I went to school. I’m surprised how many parents don’t really bother with any of that.
I was late summer born aswell so had only just turned 4 when I started school.

Re: eating in nursery -

If parents send in packed lunch/bento box, children have no opportunity to learn to use a knife and fork. Their food is bite sized and pre-portioned, with and without motivational messages.

Using a knife and fork has to be done at home. If their tea is similarly sandwiches or something else they can just pick up, they won't use a knife and fork. If they are lucky, their family will put priority into a roast lunch on a Sunday...

I’m an ex teacher. Parents don’t expect too much from schools, they just blame the wrong people when their expectations aren’t met. Parents have every right to be angry about huge classes, unmet SEN needs, hardly any money for resources and staff who are utterly exhausted caring and teaching their kids. It is awful. But the constant underfunding combined with taking totally the wrong approaches in primary schools in terms of testing and over formalisation of the curriculum are the fault of the government.

Be angry, vote angrily, tell your MP, become a governor and tell other parents how appallingly under funded schools are, join with SEN parents in demanding more special school places… do all this! But don’t shout at the exhausted teacher who is doing their best.

But saying that doesn’t fit with the “good old days” agenda!

Agree!

Also I'm amazed that people can remember who could or couldn't read in their reception class in 80s/70s. I went to school in the 90s and I'd have absolutely no clue what the other children could do.

More likely, they haven't been informed of their middle name, and haven't had any rote repetition of the days of the week, their numbers, their ABCs.

Parents are too busy on their mobile phones.

I’m kind of surprised by some of these comments - I did read with my kids ( now teens ) and draw and talk with them , take them different places - I have boys so it was tiring them out really . They went to preschool 4 mornings a week - and it sounds like it was a great one as they learnt lots of this basic stuff there . I’d assumed that children in full time nursery before school as so many more are now would be at a huge academic advantage . It doesn’t sound like the issue is solely one of deprivation

I started school in 1970 (Y1 not nursery) and none of us started with this deficit.

I agree but I am a teacher so I would.

Toileting comes up a lot but I would say eating is a big one. Trying different foods, being able to sit still and eat a meal, having basic table manners etc.

Another is children losing things then not putting any effort into finding them and then parents accusing us of not looking (we do). The first thing I say to my children is YOU need to look for X.

YANBU - schools have too much to do already and I groan when I hear someone say ‘this should be taught in schools!’.
Theres so much that you can do to educate and interest your children as a parent and it’s completely bonkers what teachers are now expected to be responsible for.

@Fridayyesterday ty and very interesting. Do you reckon the average primary school teacher is aware?

This is Autumn 2 term. Most are only 5 years old. Their hand muscles and coordination is still developing; of course their handwriting is poor. It is also not the school's responsibility to teach children how to spell their middle names. And they will almost certainly have covered days of the week in Reception with the days of the week song. I am glad I am not teaching that class!

Thread jack

@RosesAndHellebores wrote
Sadly, some of the teachers could not construct grammatically correct sentences, could not spell and one taught my son that the x axis was vertical and the y axis horizontal.

While I agree that it’s better not to label the axes that way at primary school level, technically it’s not wrong as long as they are labelled. It’s just a convention which not everyone uses, which is why you have to label them. There’s less agreement with 3D coordinates, which we usually label x, y, z. My internet search illustrated this with the first results it produced. (See picture, when it loads)

I wouldn’t teach it that way, though.

Thread jack ends

Yes absolutely. DH is a high school teacher and he frequently gets told schools should teach how to manage money, being a good citizen and various basic things that are essentially parenting. The other one is along the lines of “I can’t control him/her you need to teach him how to behave”.

Where is it you want children with English as a second language to go?