Labour want teachers to supervise kids brushing their teeth ARGH.

[noblegiraffe]

People can't get dentists for their children.

Children's teeth are one of the top reasons for child hospital admission, with 9 out of 10 extractions in 0-5 year olds being due to preventable decay.

This is clearly an area that needs addressing urgently.

BUT schools are in crisis, if they're not literally falling apart they are running out of teachers or unable to hire teaching assistants. Primary schools are increasingly unable to meet the needs of children with SEN and disabilities, where numbers are going through the roof. Where is the time to supervise teeth-brushing going to come from? Who has the capacity to implement this? It seems that Labour are willing to accept that there is a crisis in dentistry, but pushing extra workload onto schools to solve it is just failing to recognise the crisis in schools in terms of ability to take on extra responsibilities.

There is an increasing trend to see a problem in society and expect schools to do something about it. There's also an increasing trend whereby underfunded support services for children reduce the offer of those services, and schools are just expected to pick up the slack. An example would be NHS Southwest deciding to stop accepting referrals for autism diagnosis except in cases of extreme need, saying that schools could just deal with these children not having a diagnosis. CAMHS collapsing under the weight of mental health issues in children was met with the policy that schools should have a member of staff given a bit of training to try to replace expert services. Special schools are saying that some children are too needy for their specialist setting, so those children with extreme needs are left in mainstream schools who are just expected to get on with it.

Why is Labour's go-to that teachers should supervise teeth brushing and not that parents should supervise teeth brushing and be supported in this?

What do people want the purpose of schools to be? If it is to educate children, then the rest of this stuff needs to be farmed elsewhere.

If it is to be that schools should be a one-stop-shop for all issues relating to children, then we need funding, staffing and infrastructure that acknowledges this new role.

I grew up in a very poor rural community. The teachers supervised our tooth brushing, taught us to wash our hands, use knives and forks etc. We did next to no work, lots left barely reading. There is not time for everything.

Is no one actually ashamed at being a shit parent any more? There’s always some excuse, isn’t there, and it’s never I just couldn’t be arsed.

@Noname99 that's why David Cameron shut down the Surestart centres as they were only frequented by sharp elbowed middle-class mums. That was definitely the case in my county.

Not the one time set of lessons where we leaned about teeth and how to care for them? That was educational and good public health.

we can’t keep expecting teachers to take up the slack for parents. Yes, many children are being failed at home. We know that is true, but teachers are not the solution to that problem. The school day is already full and the teachers already have more to do than they can manage.

put this in a wraparound program. Charge a sliding scale for wraparound care and make the programs big enough that there is room for every student to attend.

If they want to get really radical, fund it fully and make it mandatory. Have social workers assigned to each school. Use TAs to run the program. They can do all the parenting type care that the government thinks they need and parents can stop worrying about balancing work and school pickup.

I disagree with you here, Noble.

It would have meant that I'd have got to brush my teeth, for a start - and considering the numbers of children who have milk teeth so rotten, they end up having them removed under general anaesthetic once the lack of care becomes obvious and the huge numbers of 11-12 year olds with multiple fillings, anything that can at least reduce the likelihood of them waiting in pain (because the parents don't feel it's important or are too skint/chaotic/tired to manage things like buying brushes, child suitable toothpaste and persuading a child to accept a brush in their mouth in the first place) is going to improve the health of many of the most vulnerable children.

We already need to provide breakfast, some paid, some not, there are multiple washing machines, dryers, clean socks, underwear, spare uniform, soap, deodorant - why not enable them to learn about dental hygiene and more importantly, to be able to access it when nobody else is going to?

In any case, whilst they're still around, it'll be another Support Staff task tagged into breakfast club, so it won't be teachers doing more, it'll be somebody else with it added onto their job description 'Now you've had your crumpet/toast/half a bagel, it's time to brush your teeth'.

We’re in Scotland so my children had supervised brushing at nursery, but don’t now they are at school.

I wonder if it is trying to close the gap in dental health between the most deprived and least deprived areas. We’ve had the Childsmile program here in Scotland but they’ve sadly not made much impact on improving dental health in the most deprived areas. The kids from these areas are far far more likely to be visiting hospital for extractions.

It's just neglect, isn't it, kids under 11 with rotten teeth.

Perhaps if it were viewed that way, and there were some legal consequences to not actually looking after your kids then we wouldn't have this policy idea.

Yet another hair-brained idea from people who have absolutely no idea what pressures are on teaching staff these days.

We're told to get the children in and registered within a ridiculously short time-frame after lunch 'to avoid losing learning time' and yet we'd be expected to supervise 30 children brushing their teeth with 3 basins for boys and 3 basins for girls? So that in itself, is 3 members of staff. One to supervise boys, one to supervise girls and presumably the teacher to provide some sort of shoved together activity for the children that are back in class and waiting for the others to come back.
Oh and that's without the kids that need the loo too!
Absolutely ridiculous!

Which lesson shall we scrap? Maths? English? PE?

Or we could teach that in a one off PHSE class (I'm talking infant kids here) and expect/hope the parents to actually parent?
Of course I know there will be numerous parents who won't bother but do we then single children out who we don't think brushes their teeth at all?

Ludicrous.

It's like a SATs style question:

A class has 30 children in it and 2 available sinks. If each child has to be supervised for the recommended 2 minutes of brushing, how long will this take?

And for an extra challenge:

If the teacher is supervising the children who are brushing at the sinks, who will be supervising the rest of the class?

And further up the school, they share toilets/sinks between several year groups, so there's even less capacity there.

We already need to provide breakfast, some paid, some not, there are multiple washing machines, dryers, clean socks, underwear, spare uniform, soap, deodorant - why not enable them to learn about dental hygiene and more importantly, to be able to access it when nobody else is going to?

And this is my point.

I haven't said that there isn't a problem that needs addressing. Teachers supervising kids brushing their teeth would help with the crisis in dentistry.

The question is whether this is an appropriate request to be making of schools.

Should schools be washing kids' clothes, making them breakfast, supervising their teeth cleaning?

If yes, this is an appropriate thing for schools to be doing then it need PROPER FUNDING AND RESOURCING. It needs to be explicit that schools are now now longer centres of academic education, but children's centres for raising children.

We're doing this stuff as add-ons, and buckling under the weight.

It's neglect. So push this to social services, who actually have a remit to intrude on families where that's required.

This is more and more being dumped on teachers, while the state gains a way of creeping further and further into parenting. It's a hard no from me.

Where I am, dentists advise that parents brush their childrens' teeth for them until age 7? At 6 I started letting them do the morning brush, and I continued doing the nighttime one til age7, by which time they are supposed to have sufficient fine motor skills to take over...

I’m an SEN teacher and toothbrushing is done every day with every student in the school. I don’t see this as a big deal if it improves the dental health of students, being in good health and free from pain is fundamental to learning, no child is going to retain a numeracy or literacy lesson if they have toothache or if they are off school for a week following dental surgery. Obviously in an ideal world it wouldn’t be necessary and parents would be monitoring tooth care but the sad reality is for many disadvantaged children that’s not the case, even if it’s only benefiting a minority the benefit to those children will be greater than any disadvantage to the majority. Children whose parents already support them with dental hygiene aren’t going to fail their exams because 5 minutes of the school day were dedicated to toothbrushing whereas children from disadvantaged backgrounds will have better outcomes if they are free from dental pain and don’t require time off for dental treatment.

And THIS is yet another reason they shouldn't have closed Surestarts.

I don’t see this as a big deal if it improves the dental health of students, being in good health and free from pain is fundamental to learning

Where does the abdication of parental responsibility to schools end, in that case? Why don't they just come and live in school?

Ohhhh no no no!!! I’m not going to comment on that on MN where conservatives are evil baby killing monsters who hate disabled people and the poor and Labour are the bestest most wonderfulest party in the whole wide world and fart unicorn dust. I was just agreeing with the PP that it doesn’t matter if you put services on people’s door steps, if they don’t want to use them, they won’t so saying “parents should do it or be supported to do it” doesn’t help.

Hilareeeee 😂😂😂

i just need to pipe in and say it is possible for a child’s teeth to rot even with excellent dental care. We did everything right, “brushed” DD’s teeth from the minute they came in, started specialist pediatric dentist visits at a year because of a family history of problems, and by age 2, dd was still having her several teeth replaced in an operating room at a hospital. Thank goodness we had the money because I know many children end up dealing with gaps and then speech issues. My sister had the same problem. we do dentist visits every 3 months even now that she is a teenager and her adult teeth seem fine just in case.

In our neck of the woods, all the various Sure Start activities had existed before there was a dedicated building. And continued after the building had closed. Reverting back to using a variety of community halls - which was a good thing, as it gave a better spread of services across the borough, rather than everything being in a single point.

I was a teacher for 15 years and until COVID we had to do this every day in eyfs and ks1.
It was a local initiative as we had a particularly high level of tooth decay and extractions in our area.

I hated every minute of it.
The kids are meant to swallow the toothpaste but half of them spit is all over. I could never blame them as the thought of swallowing toothpaste makes me 🤢
But it was really bloody unhygienic.

What should have taken 5 minutes, in reality took at least 20 as I then had to sanitise the tables after. Usually without any support staff available so the kids went wild while I was focussing on clearing up.
Such a lot of lost learning time and such a fuss trying to resettle them.

The toothbrushes and containers had to be soaked in Milton at least weekly. Which always ended up being yet another job for me to do after school as there was no time to do it in school.
Ignore that budgets were so stretched that I ended up buying the Milton myself half of the time.

You really could not pay me enough to tempt me back into teaching and all of these little 'extras' that teachers are forced to do are a huge part of the reason why.

I think it's a good idea and would be happy to do it.

If it was introduced I would want children to brush at lunch time, after they have eaten so it doesn't cut into lessons.

I work in a very deprived area and it's definitely needed. Saying 'parents should do it' is all well and good, but so many don't and lots of children are suffering as a result.

If it was introduced I would want children to brush at lunch time, after they have eaten so it doesn't cut into lessons.

You'd be happy to do it for free in your unpaid lunchtime?

@MolkosTeenageAngst I was a special school teacher for over twenty years and yes, supporting with tooth brushing was something I regularly did along with my team of TAs. I'm now a SENDCO in mainstream and am very opposed to supervision of tooth brushing in a mainstream setting unless the child has a particular need, in which case support would be planned and offered. In terms of the other children why are we infantalising parents by schools doing a basic part of their duties for them? It's ludicrous.

🤣

I agree. Some parents want "someone else" to do everything for them these days.

People love to blame under funding for not being able to get dental appointments, but for years/decades, dentists have been trying to raise awareness that dental treatment wouldn't be necessary for most children if their parents would actually take responsibility, i.e. ensure kids brushed their teeth and didn't give endless supplies of sugary drinks and sweets.