To think parents completing their childrens A level work is unfair.

[GlamGiraffe]

I dont mean helping a bit, I mean doing the coursework themselves.

DS is in the final year of a levels and goes to a school with a particularly high population of parents who are artists, designers etc by profession. He is battling to complete his work for both art and dt and despite working away at school and home is not managing to keep up to anything near the same level as a lot of the students. Recently they have been laughing and commenting about how their parents do all of their work, one girls mother apparently has written more than 80% of her history of art essay alone which comprises a significant proportion of the mark, another boys mother has produced all of his DT work and produced all the drawings etc. These are just as examples of the type of things that are happeneing).

I am aware we all try to help our children but surely there has to be a line (And we dont all have the same suitable skills). Children are not being marked against their peers any longer. A different marking system needs to be instigated. Perhaps smaller projects only carried out in school?
Am I unreasonable to think the system is now ridiculously unfair?

It’s been going on for years, (I remember my friend’s dad helping her finish her homework but he was a school head at another school.)
However, now that more parents are educated to degree level, it’s become a lot more common, particularly for GCSE students.

Funnily enough, I remember a student on my law course showing off about how he got his Barrister dad to write his Trust law essay in the first year. He got 40% for it. The dad was outraged but the tutor pointed out to the student that he hadn’t written it from an academic perspective.

Several of us enjoyed listening to that conversation.

I once asked my Dad for some help with a small bit of work I was doing (I wanted to sound him out on a political theory/history topic). He then tried to take over! I had to have a bit of a teenage strop with him to get him to back off as I wanted it to be all my own work. He disappeared in a huff!

I did have to stand up to my Dad though. Any chance the parents you mention OP are stronger personalities than the children and the children just let it happen or can't/won't argue?

I'm teaching my son at the moment how to break things down in to smaller tasks. How to plan. How to set himself deadlines. I'll read his work and say you've made a mistake somewhere within those two paragraphs (spelling or grammar) but let him find it and fix it himself.

He'll be picking subjects I won't be able to help him with but I can show him how to break a problem down and how to find a solution.

I tutored a Neighbour's child in two subjects. They did well and I'm proud to say it was all their own work.

The fees loan is not means tested. That's the bit that pays for the students' education. They are all entitled to that one (if they're home students).

Parents (unless they've elected to pay the fees) are contributing to their adult children's living costs. That isn't quite the same thing. They've been doing that all their lives - it just that it so often gets more expensive as they get older.

Yes, OP, totally unfair but I happen to know a friend of my sister's virtually wrote the whole of his daughter's dissertation and is the only reason she now has a degree (too lazy to do the work herself, I think). I think a lot of this goes on.

Slightly off topic, I can recall from my childhood (in my day we all had to write thank you letters for gifts), always receiving thank you letters from (purportedly) my best friend, written in her mother's hand and including lots of schoolgirl exclamations that my friend never used. It was a source of great (private) amusement in my family.

A friend did his daughter's masterwork her and she got a great career from it.so wrong.

Master's for her

Such an interesting thread.
My parents literally did not give a shit about homework or coursework and I simply don’t remember them ever helping me with anything of that nature. My mother was especially disinterested; not unsupportive but left me to it. I always did well at school and university and my parents were busy and as long as I kept doing well and wasn’t in trouble they went to parents evening and that was it. To be fair, they did choose to send me to very good schools.
However, I was so envious of friends at school/uni who had quite obviously been helped massively by interested and motivated parents who always made sure they had the right equipment/uniform/supplies and read proper books and had amazing conversations at the dinner table. I still feel that gulf now as a much older person. And so for that reason, I do as much as I can for my DC in this respect and have helped massively on projects and homework, although they are still some way off GCSEs etc. I would have loved someone to do the same for me. And although I’ve done well academically, I still wonder how much better I might have done with more involved support at home. It’s such a dog eat dog world of work out there now I will do all I can to help my DC frankly.

Woo, students' ability to borrow money from the maintenance loan available, is directly linked to the parents income. This means the state are expecting parents to pay specific amounts, to make up the difference rather that contributing what they want/can afford. In the 1980s university was seen as more the preserve of the wealthy, but now it's almost expected that all kids who have any capability will go and many jobs want applicants to have a degree, whether they really need it to do the job or not.

When parents are effectively compelled to financially support their dc through university, they do feel more personally invested.

aderyn parents have no obligation to contribute financially, there's no way for students to force parents to contribute even though their earnings decide how much maintenance they get. It's always been that way, when I went to uni my parents wouldn't contribute despite being able to. Grant amount I got was based on parental income, with no parental contribution you couldn't claim any additional help and that included student loans from SLC or hardship funds.

Universities simply refuse to help in those circumstances. Parents can choose not to help, and sadly, outside of the MN bubble they don't.

Sorry, refused it may be different now.
I no longer work in higher education.

It's not very good for kids really, constantly being given the message by their parents that their own work isn't good enough. Not to mention the cheating against other kids. Sad and pathetic.

@Aderyn19 it's still only the maintenance portion they're expected to contribute to.

All students can claim the full loan for fees.

Parents are contributing towards their children's living costs. The actual education is covered by the fees loan.

If your working adult child still lived at home (so you were paying for their upkeep in various ways) would you feel entitled to phone up their boss to complain that they were being asked to complete a project on time?

Actually WooMaWang that's not completely true. There are some private institutions which have a cap on the fees loan that doesn't cover the full amount. Or at least that was the case when my DD was studying. Her fees were over £11k per annum but she could only get a £6k loan. Obviously this doesn't apply to many people but it is certainly not true that all degree students can fully fund their fees via a loan.
I still don't think that gives parents the right to micromanage their adult offspring's lives though.

Err I don't think I used the word "chat" woodchuck99 . I said they phoned. No mention of what response they got.

You said most parents were on the phone regularly to the tutor. That suggests they phoned more than once and talked to the tutor about their child rather than being told that the tutor couldn't speak to them for data protection reasons.

Well that would be at private institutions. So you would expect that to be a bit different.

I'm not saying parents didn't help in the past, but there wasn't the direct correlation between parental income and level of financial assistance required.

There was a direct correlation. I didn't get any grant in the 80s because my parents had over a certain income. They were expected to give me the whole lot.

In the 1980s university was seen as more the preserve of the wealthy, but now it's almost expected that all kids who have any capability will go and many jobs want applicants to have a degree, whether they really need it to do the job or not.

It wasn't the preserve of the wealthy at all in the 80s. DH came from very deprived background and received a full grant and obviously there are no tuition fees. It was easier to go then if you were from a low income family if anything.

are no tuition fees were no tuition fees

No, woodchuck that is what you assumed. I didn't suggest anything about the nature of the conversations because I don't know what they involved, only that the parents phoned. DD introduced me at graduation saying "See, I really do have a mother" and the tutor laughed and replied that she had doubted it because I was one of only a few parents who hadn't phoned her regularly over the duration of the course. I have absolutely no idea what she said back to the parents because she didn't offer that information and I didn't ask. Which is why I neither implied that she chatted, or that she told them she couldn't speak to them.
Not that it is really relevant, because the point is that the parents were trying to interfere, whether they succeeded or not. And that, in my opinion, is wrong.

No, woodchuck that is what you assumed. I didn't suggest anything about the nature of the conversations because I don't know what they involved, only that the parents phoned.

You said that most parents regularly phoned their children's tutors. Why would they regularly phoned them. Why would they regularly phone if they had been told that the tutor couldn't speak to them?

Most people are not really poor or really rich. And in the past there were grants for the very poor and loans which the individual student could choose the amount of, based on personal need. There are a hell of a lot of families in the middle, who still struggle to pay what the govt expects. And it is an expectation - if you don't do it, chances are your child can't go to university, unless they are fortunate enough to find a job, which pays enough and fits around uni lectures.

It's not comparable to an adult child who lives at home and works ft, since their wage is entirely independent of their parents and isn't set according to what mum or dad earns. For university, the state doesn't view your adult child as an adult, but as a dependent. That distinction is why parent feel entitled to get involved in university teaching.

Most people are not really poor or really rich. And in the past there were grants for the very poor and loans which the individual student could choose the amount of, based on personal need.

You said that universities were only for the wealthy in the 80s. There were no loans in the 80s that alone loans student to choose the amount of. The amount student got as a grant was based on parental income. Most people got some grant and the parents had to contribute the rest. As I said my parents had given me the whole lot. Therefore your assertion that parents didn't have to contribute in the past is not correct.

that let

Woodchuck I.Don't. Know.
Maybe they are fucking lunatics who won't take no for an answer? Maybe the tutor was behaving hideously unprofessionally and talking to them? Maybe they had genuine concerns and believed that to be the best course of action? I haven't a clue.
Why would anyone phone their child's University tutor once never mind on multiple occasions? I find it odd. That is the whole point. But it happens.
Or no, obviously it never happens and the tutor is a pathological liar. Do you prefer that explanation?