To think parents expect too much of schools?

[Arbel]

We all know state schools are desperately underfunded, with big class sizes and kids with English as a second language and unmet SEN needs lumped into mainstream.

I have a son in year 2 and a daughter in year 5. Last night on the year 2 WhatsApp, several mums were bemoaning the fact that their kids don’t know the days of the week in order, can’t spell their own middle names and have illegible handwriting. Surely as parents, you care enough to educate your own kids on such basic matters?!

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.

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.

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

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.

As if it's only one meal...

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.

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.

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?’

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?

I think there are parents who are great at having children but dont have to mental capacity to raise them properly we see examples on here daily, they want schools to do their job for them

Let this be a warning to those who lumber their DCs with multiple names. Quite often 2 or 3 middle names. You will he the one teaching then how to spell it all!

I agree with you overall OP. Maybe not specifically though.

Parents have responsibility to teach all kinds of day to day things. I would expect a school to spend time on days of the week, for example, but I think lots of kids learn it at home. Many other things people seem to want schools to do aren't really effectivly taught at school imo.

Handwriting however - I actually think schools should be doing this for the most part. The problem is many have almost entirely stopped teaching handwriting, by which I mean printing. They show the kids the letters and let them form them any which way, and don't give them practice time.

Then they are surprised when they struggle to write.

I've long thought this, they've done their part by contributing to the dwindling population, maybe they see that as being enough.

I’d expect school and home to both teach days of the week and support legible handwriting- but middle names? Why would the school teach a child to spell their middle name? If my child didn’t know the days of the week in order in Y2 I’d not be shouting about it in a class WhatsApp group, but I would think it strange my child hadn’t learned the days of the week and months of the year songs in school.

Not the case here (London) - my kids’ primary is obsessed with handwriting and correct letter formation, to the extent that my DC2 was in tears over not getting a bloody handwriting pen. I would rather they focus on legible writing than perfect letters!

But more broadly I absolutely agree that parents’ expectations of school are way too high and of themselves way too low. There are parents at my children’s school who ask teachers “what are you going to do about their weight” when the child eats only five meals out of 21 per week at school and those meals are small portions and designed to be healthy - of course the fact that the parent collects every day proffering a massive bag of Doritos has nothing to do with the fact their child is overweight. There is a mother with three children at the school plus a toddler, who is expecting another baby but struggling so much a teacher plus TA is having to bring the school aged kids home. Why have another baby then?! Schools are there to teach, not to cover basics like potty training and teeth brushing. I feel so sorry for the overloaded teachers - how on earth are they supposed to ensure every child makes progress educationally when they are effectively parenting some of them too?

@metellaestinatrio and do the teachers say "that is your responsibility, not ours". If children aren't regularly collected, that's a social.services issue.

I do agree but I think many teachers/heads/schools have fallen into this by going along with all the Blair initiatives that shifted the emphasis from education to basic parenting. Nobody would say their children's pastoral/health/social stuff was the parents' responsibility. At my dc's school they started teaching table manners to largely middle class children with professional parents. It would have been less laughable if the SLT had known how to hold a knife and fork!

Don't start me on school.counsellors to address mh and the fact that camhs now require referral/reports from the school counsellor. Our young people are entitled to confidentiality and access to care shpuld not be subject to school referrals.

Posters saying it’s too simplistic to say parents need to get off their phones (and get their children off phones!) but sometimes it is that simple! Yes there are families with challenging circumstances but there are lots of parents who can’t be bothered. There is no shame seeing a young child in a buggy glued to a phone and it should be shameful.

I work in a school. A few years ago we had an email from a mum that went pretty much like this "my child was rude to me last night and I want to know what the school is going to do about it".

DD started at 4y 13 days and was ready to read.
Ds started at 4.10 and could read because he'd started refusing preschool at about 4.4 and when I asked why it was because they wouldn't teach him to read. He went in next day very happily to ask his teacher if she would teach him to read.

They were read to daily though and had been since they were born. They also saw parents and grandparents with books.

Reading is a cultural thing rather than an age thing.

I have 4 children with a 20yr gap between my eldest and youngest. I have two different lived experiences. My eldest dd started school nursery when she was just gone 3 years. No one was allowed a place unless they were toilet trained, so she was. She could count, knew days of the week, colours ect and we had started practicing writing her name. I was a SAHM and had loads of time to spend teaching her. She stayed in nursery 2 years so by the time she started year 1 she could read, write, count was totally independent put on coats, shoes everything.
20 years later My ds started reception at age 4. By this time I was a full-time working mum. Had to be to pay my bills. He was toilet trained but it was touch and go. He could count and knew colours but definitely couldn't read or write. He no where near had the ability of his sister years before and this hindered his progress through the first few years of primary school.
I do believe that both parents "having" to work full time is detrimental to little people in those early years but I also don't think the responsibility of teaching those skills sits with teachers and schools.
Parents are now in an impossible situation.

@RosesAndHellebores to be fair I don’t know the background of how the school handled the situation, just that I have seen the teacher and TA taking the children home. I assume two people are required to do it for safeguarding reasons. The teacher should be using that time to plan / mark etc. and the TA is presumably being paid for the extra time out of an already stretched school budget! It’s madness.

the cursive handwriting thing is such a waste of time. DDs teachers comments on her handwriting were printed.
Shes doing a levels and most of her friends handwriting is horrible. Better to be writing clearly for exams.

Again in secondary it’s not unusual for parents to think school should get involved with issues at home and sort them out for them. Or they have totally checked out and are just not interested, they usually have small children from new relationships as well and have lost interest in the older ones.

To be fair, when ds went to a state nursery aged 3 and came home and said "I'm going to piss on my shit", I raised it with the early years leader and was told "well, he didn't learn it here". I can still see her face when i said "well where do you think he learnt it, because those words are not used at home?.

He didn't stay there for very long. The little Montessori up the road had a place just after the first half term.

School teacher standards of behaviour were not the same as mine and, honestly, I think the low school standards and expectations have much to do with it. The teachers have not stood up to nanny state governments and spken much common sense

Standards academically and behaviourally were far higher in the independent sector.

Yes I also read to DS daily and we have about 500 books in the house, DH and I are huge readers, I teach primary and his grandmother who looked after him once a week is a children's librarian. He still didn't start school able to read though. It does vary from child to child! I'm not worried about him learning to read. He is working his way through phonics snd lots of European countries teach their kids a lot later.