to think teachers and schools do a fooking amazing job, and to be stunned and disgusted that they get such unnecessary arse-ache from ridiculous parents?

[bejeezus]

Im despairing of the amount of AIBU threads recently along the lines of- teachers shouldnt be telling my dc to go to bed early/ shouldnt be promoting 100% attendance blah blah blah

I understand there are other routes to adulthood besides main-stream education. But whilst you do use mainstream education you should understand what a difficult job it is for schools and teachers to educate groups of 30 children and maintain discipline, if those children are late/absent/tired and if the parents are constantly undermining the teachers/schools authority.

Schools have a whole diversity of families and children to accomodate including children with English as a 2nd/3rd language,social problems,SENs, disabilities and a whole range of abilities to cater for within each class. The last thing they need on top of this is spending valuable time and resources accomodating whiney-arsed parents who think the rules should not apply to them because they are in some way 'special'; ie. they are educated and rich and capable of home tutoring to facilitate an extended trip and absence from school. Ifthat isthe case, then do your home schooling and free up the schoolplace for a child that is not going to disrupt the class by extended absences/lateness and duvet days.

And, no, having your childrens lead an enriched and cultured lifestyle does not constitute a valid excuse for lateness and tiredness. Get your kids to bed on time so the teachers have the best chance of getting the best education to the most kids

There are very many countries and cultures where only1 child per family is educated (at best) because the family cannot afford more. This is almost always not a daughter

Its appalling. Education is a priviledge. What chance in hell do teachers have of getting kids to appreciate that, if the parents insisted on taken it for granted.

And finally, big-up to the teachers on here. You do a grand job, in the face of lunacy!

fwiw I have never been one for storming into the HTs office because my precious little one gets detention: I tell him to stop misbehaving instead!

But I cannot understand the argument that something couldn't happen because no teacher would do x, y and z. I have been in meetings where teachers and headteachers (no, one headteacher) have said absolutely outrageous things and watched the jaws of external professionals nearly drop to the floor. Clearly they were thinking, as I did, that they would never have believed this if they hadn't heard it.

I don't often see posters saying on medical threads that the doctor couldn't possibly have misdiagnosed you because no doctor would do that, or that the HV couldn't have given you this crap advice because no HV would do that.

At the same time, I never stop giving credit where this is due: I spend a lot of time pointing out how wonderful dd's current school are, professional and supportive and everything you would like to see in a school.

I just think one should differentiate: the people who do as they should should be praised and the people who act unprofessionally should be pulled up on it. Quite regardless of their profession.

Yanbu - parents need to trust the teachers are doing their jobs!

If parents didnt feel the need to walk into my class during teaching time, say " I need to talk to you now" ( sure, I'll just leave the 15 five year olds sitting on the carpet and leave to have an impromptu meeting with you!) so they could tell me their child told them they ate a banana, but really threw it on the floor!!! Same parent also didn't think it was important for me to know that she was getting married the next day and her son was staying at his dads for two weeks while she went overseas. She didn't think it would affect him!

Or if parents actually wrote their names on uniforms,water bottles, lunch boxes etc, so that I didn't spend 10 minutes at the end of the day trying to find who owns what, I would have a lot more teaching time. If I leave it and send them home without the items, I have several notes the next day, asking me go to lost and found to find them. I do write names when I am sure of the owner, but again, this is something that should be done at home.

And If parents read the notices I sent home every week, I would also have a lot less questions, and spend less time writing notes back reiterating the same information. More time to teach or interact with the students.

I agree that parents are parents and teachers should not be telling the parents how to parent, but I think if parents did what they should be doing, trusted the schools were doing their job and didn't intervene so much, schools would be much more effective.

I really like my job, I have a lot of great kids in my class, but also some wacko parents! Mist of the teachers I know are also quiet effective, it's a shame so many parents can't see that.

Sorry or the long post - turned into a bit of a rant.

Teachers don't tell parents to do their job, they are TOLD to tell parents to do their job. By the government. More accurately, to do it for them and then field the flak when the parents piss and moan.

Also teachers have a legal obligation to grass up on suspected/neglect which means, at the soft end, advising about bedtimes, etc. etc. et fucking tc.

We would love, yes, love to walk away from it all, get on with the shedloads of marking, and let the parents get on with. If only.

It seems to me that there is a lot of misunderstanding between school and parents as to who has responsibility for what.

My DD is in the French system, where the apportioning of responsibilities is very different to the UK but, IMO, equally as opaque. If schools had documents setting out very clearly where their responsibilities lay and where they ended it would make life a lot easier for everyone.

A good point LeQueen.

It's the balance between knowing less and trusting more v. knowing more and trusting less.

What happens is more expectations of the teachers and less trust when they fuck up under the pressure of doing the parents' jobs for them while still doing their teaching job. Kind of thing.

Try convincing a parent of a child with sen that teachers and schools are so fucking fantastic OP

YABVU

Jeez- piss-poor subject/verb agreement there.

Becaroo - what's your point?

That is a wild generalisation Becaroo-some are utterly fantastic.

Have nothing but praise for our teachers. As a governor I am staggered by the amount of paperwork, meetings, training courses etc our head has to do...and she does it brilliantly, despite having a teenage daughter who has been very ill and 10 yr old twins. She is a teaching Head and has only 1/2 day per week to run the school and yet I would be hard pushed to remember a time that she has made a mistake. Our school was inspected recently and I was gobsmacked at all the stringent protocol that must be adhered to. The stress must be unbelievable. As a SAHM who can't face going back to work I sincerely take my hat off to her.

Is it?

Check out he sen boards and come back and tell me that!!

People write on sen boards if they are not satisfied. I have known many in schools who are very happy-they wouldn't bother writing.
It is like MILs-on MN you think they are all dreadful because no one bothers posting about nice ones.

The problem is teachers are increasingly expected to be social worker, parent, village bobby and a hundred and one other roles that have got nothing to do with education.

That is exactly the problem and the "teaching" quality is suffering as it naturally would.

My son is now in a "nice" school ef and yet I still think a worryingly large number of schools are pretty dire and that some teachers are crap (the ones who cant spell or use grammar correctly, for example) and dont get me started on bloody SENcos!!!

Btw, people write on the sen boards for a vast variety of reasons ef not just because of "dissatisfaction"

My DS is in his 5th placement due to each one fucking up his education.

Despite this I have NEVER seen a SMART IEP,

He is 5 btw.

I'd say the truth is that teachers differ. Some are wonderful in spite of pressure from dreadful parents. Some are less wonderful even with supportive parents. Most are good at their subjects, some are not.

Dd's French teacher for the first two years of secondary taught her a dreadful Franglish accent that I have had to spend months of hard work eradicating. I never complained, but I did not instruct dd to trust her either: I would ideally like her to learn French that other people will understand and trusting her teacher would be unlikely to achieve that. (and yes, I had heard the teacher, not taking dd's word for this)

The teacher who set ds' spelling lists in junior school was clearly quite poor at spelling. (again, I saw the lists, didn't take his word for it)

Why should I trust these teachers against the dictionary and my own knowledge of French just because the majority of teachers do a wonderful job?

Imho every individual professional should be judged on their performance, not from some general perception of their role in society.

Doctors also perform a wonderful role in our society and no doubt have some bloody awkward patients. The one who diagnosed my dd's perfectly obvious connective tissue disorder as trauma following abuse was still an idiot. Thousands of wonderful doctors doing a highly pressured job doesn't make any difference to his performance.

I have posted extensively about dd's junior school elsewhere. This doesn't reflect on all teachers or schools or headteachers, but otoh there is no way these particular people, who acted illegally against this particular child should be able to hide behind our general perception of how hard teachers work: 50 000 other parents being difficult elsewhere would not make any difference to that.

If I write a bad book or give a poor lecture, I don't want to be excused by the fact that most of my colleagues write very good books and give inspiring lectures.

Well said cory

trying to imagine my mother's fury if it was suggested to her that some of her colleagues's piss poor performance should be excused because she and others did such a wonderful job...

At their best bad teachers are just a waste of time and a child will not make much progress whilst in their class.

At their worst they can leave children with major self esteem issues and cause irreparable damage to their future educational prospects.

The Y1 teacher who caused my 5 year old son to exhibit symptoms of clinical depression is a case in point (after I took my son out of saud school I later found out they made this teacher the SENco)

becaroo, your individual case does invalidate the general point made by the OP.

Wine overload: does not.

Are we only allowed to respond to the OP now?

Obviously misunderstanding MN t&cs

I think one of the problems is that there is no SEN specialism for teachers to train in; most SEN teachers have had to learn on the job, and this serves to perpetuate bad practice.

I think SEN provision needs a huge shake up.