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.

This made me laugh out loud. I'm an ex teacher (turned SAHM - good excuse) and the stuff about all the little dears killed me. But this has made my day.

Of course 15/ 20 minutes can’t be magically created, but toothbrushing activities can still align with curriculum objectives for children aged 3-5.

In the EYFS I can see how there could be direct links to

• Communication and Language
•Physical Development
•Personal Social and Emotional Development

I’m not sure what I think. I can well understand for those poor little souls whose parents don’t care, it’s gives them a way to receive care that all children should have and mean they aren’t in preventable pain.

I think it’s a cheap way to mask the problems caused by a total lack of NHS dentistry. I understand that probably financially it saves the state money but it fosters a culture of entitlement and dependency which surely must cost more in the long run. Parents are responsible for their child’s basic care and yes some don’t do it, but is the answer to push the basics of parenting into schools en masse? I genuinely don’t know what’s right.

Beside the point I know, but this sounds like an infection control nightmare...how do you ensure that each child in an early primary school setting uses their own toothbrush, when faced with a rack of thirty (centrally issued and very similar looking) toothbrushes? I suspect that the combination of mingling everybody's resident oral bacteria, transient viruses, and the peanut particles from little Tommy's peanut-butter-on-toast breakfast, would cause more problems than it would solve.

No, teachers shouldn't have to teach children basic dental hygiene, but as there are a lot of incapable or inadequate parents, then it is cheaper and better for them to do so.

Cheaper, because teacher time is essentially free, of course. And infinite.

There’s a crisis in dentistry so schools have to step in. There’s a crisis in schools, who exactly is stepping in to take stuff off our plates? Nope, they’re just adding to it.

Posters saying ‘oh this can be easily slotted in’ clearly do not have any idea of the reality of schools and classrooms in England right now.

A friend of mine runs a family centre in a deprived area of a very naice town. The local library was long gone so she arranged for the parents and children to go to the nearest library ( in a nicer area but within walking distance ) . After 2 sessions where no- one turned up, she asked them why. " It's not for us". " We stay here. We don't leave this area". They had been to school there, went out with boys from the area, got pregnant as teens, went out with different partners ( who had already subjected their friends to DV and would do the same to them). That was the life their mothers had had and they simply carried on the cycle with no wish to change it. I taught at the primary school there. It was my first teaching job 35 years ago. The children had rotten teeth, no teeth or front teeth that had decayed in a circle from constantly holding the teat of a bottle filled with coke.The parents felt school should deal with behaviour, toilet training, dressing, sitting on a chair to eat ( most of the children in my Reception class ate whatever food they had on the floor and with their hands). Standing up, pulling down your filthy pants and announcing that you " Were going to go piss now" was entirely normal. I caught scabies twice from 5 year olds. Some children live in filth. Their friends live in filth. Its not bad enough for social services to get involved because every child in the class is living in that level of filth. I had 2 children aged 5 who were cousins. Their mothers were prostitutes . Both children had horrendous lice. My TA ( a young man) took them both home for their mums to sort it out. Both had clients waiting outside their flats and clients already being dealt with. In between the clients the mothers shaved their children's heads then said to my TA " Right now fuck off". He was getting in the way of them earning a living. We spent most of the Reception year trying to teach the children to sit still, to listen, to use the toilet and wash their hands,to eat without wandering about, to not call each other cunts. Teeth cleaning would have been nice ,but ultimately a waste of time. By the time they had reached the end of year 1 they had all had their baby teeth removed in hospital.

It's not a new thing unless he means for this to happen in every year if primary.
My eldest is 20 this year and I remember them having a teethbrushing session daily in nursery, my youngest as well but only in nursery.
I do agree though that wherever the powers that be see parents lacking they heap that pressure onto schools without any understanding of how and when schools would fit this into the already heavy expectations the government and generally parents have placed on them.

There are topics in primary during which teeth care is taught now, as pp’s have said. Short topics. Clearly it’s not enough to make some kids take care of themselves within their families and their families’ resources for the rest of their lives. Unless the public at large are expecting teachers and staff to basically adopt all kids (and we can’t and won’t), school alone is not enough.

Yes totally agree, is ridiculous suggestion

Yep!!!!

I don't think this is a labour thing, it's happening already and has been going in for years in some areas.

In the areas I know about, it is not the teaching staff supervising the teeth brushing it's the MDAs, they bring the kids in 10 mins early from their lunch break and do it before entering the class.
It's probably not a thorough 2 minute brush but it's better than some kids not having access to toothbrushes or toothpaste at home at all.

The issue here is years of underfunding for all services and loading onto schools and its staff, should it be their responsibility, absolutely not, is it the thing that would annoy me the most absolutely not, could it be the straw that broke the camels back for some...absolutely.

@AngelinaFibres

😪😪😪

Me too.

I remember the teeth brushing lesson but that is as far as this should go. It is not school's responsibility. Perhaps if we hadn't lost so many NHS dentists, they could be available to teach kids to brush their teeth,

I take your point about teachers being overstretched but as someone who has a toddler who absolutely refuses to let me brush his teeth and is s bit unreliable with his own technique, I did think this would be s great things for nurseries as I expect if they were all doing it together the kids would be inclined to tow the line.

So would teachers have to take responsibility for every child's tooth health? I wouldn't want our FS staff being sued by parents accusing them of not brushing properly and the child needing a filling...

Who cleans the sinks afterwards?

Yes, we lost our NHS dentist and no others are even taking on children. DS was never offered a dental hygienist, I didn't know they did that on the NHS?

Completely free alternative way to improve dental health : stop children / teachers giving out sweets at school (whether that's to celebrate a birthday / as rewards / any other reason). I'm horrified at the frequency my primary aged children come home with sugary treats. No amount of supervised toothbrushing will help those kids who eat these items straight after school each day

I'm sure I've seen a report somewhere of teachers reading bedtime stories live online to students...

@noblegiraffe You're completely right, of course. We must also remember that this is being put for a minority who won't look after their children properly while the vast majority won't need this, so why generalise and make brushing in school compulsory for all?

And, as someone else pointed out, what happens if a child still needs fillings - will parents want to complain to us about that, too?

They already do this in wales and teachers there report it's just become part of the routine of the day and the state of the kids teeth is notably improved. I dont think teachers are going to be marked down by ofsted if some kids teeth aren't clean-it's just a way of collectively teaching the kids about something important that not all parents do unfortunately.

Where I live, they just closed them. And we're seeing the results, back to a lot of kids who have mental health issues because the parenting they received when very young has not set them up very well for the world. My daughter's supposed to be SEN support in a mainstream high school. She spends most of her time dealing with kids who aren't neurodiverse, they just can't do school because they can't do simple things like sit down, be still and listen. My mother worked in Surestarts and knows they set a lot of parents who would have had difficulty on the way to decent parenting.

YOU need to brush your toddler's teeth. A toddler doesnt just get to say no to that. Parent better.

It's the responsibility of parents not teachers, who have enough to do teaching sometimes up to 30 children at the same time. Another crackpot Labour idea.

I haven't said that it wouldn't improve the state of kids' teeth. It likely would.

The problem is that it is not currently an expectation of teachers in England, and Labour want to make it an expectation.

We are in a crisis situation in English schools and politicians shouldn't just be blithely adding to teachers' workloads with a 'it can just easily slot into the school day' or 'they should care enough about the kids to want to do it', or 'it would help the crisis in NHS dentistry'. None of those reasons are good enough right now.

Any proposed extra addition to teachers' workloads should be workload assessed and then if it is that important, something should be removed to make way for it.

And in addition, as has been noted, this is a health/parenting initiative, not an education one. There needs to be a discussion about what the role of schools is for the future.

I take your point about teachers being overstretched but as someone who has a toddler who absolutely refuses to let me brush his teeth and is s bit unreliable with his own technique, I did think this would be s great things for nurseries as I expect if they were all doing it together the kids would be inclined to tow the line.

It is your job to brush your toddler's teeth, whether he wants you to or not. Do you honestly think it will be easier for one teacher to get 30 children to reliably brush their teeth with good technique than for you to get one child to? Trust me - nothing is easier with a 1 adult to 30 children ratio than with a 1 adult to 1 child ratio. Teachers aren't magic.