Couldn’t agree more about parents and teachers actually having shared interests hence very deliberate decisive tactics to prevent them working together to lobby the real power (and purse) holders.
There was one point when teachers and parents were actually on the same page, and it was during the school cuts campaign, where parents could see exactly how cuts were affecting their own child’s school. It is thought that that campaign was a major influence in Theresa May losing the election and her majority.
Since that happened, support for teachers and schools has just disappeared again. While there were lots of threads about education during the previous election, it was a tumbleweed topic during the last one. Even though nothing’s got better, and tbh things are getting worse (certainly in terms of teacher recruitment and retention), people on MN just didn’t seem to give a shit. I think that schools do too good a job at pretending to parents that everything is just fine. Parents are too oblivious to what goes on in schools and their kids don’t tell them.
Certainly the government have gone all-out during lockdown in smearing teachers in tactics we’ve not seen since Michael Gove and ‘The Blob’. They know that they’ve totally fucked up on the education front and they are trying their damnedest to make sure that they don’t get the blame.
Any parent should look at the free school meals fiasco and wonder what the fuck was the government thinking? That level of competence and care for children pretty much extends to everything they touch.