UK teachers report rise in problem parents

[Tabitha005]

Rude and disrespectful parents were a big issue when I worked in education ten years ago and, from this article, it seems to be an increasing concern.

Who’d be a teacher, eh? The shit they have to put up with is awful.

https://www.theguardian.com/education/2026/mar/13/teachers-mental-heath-parents-behaviour-education

I do agree that there are a lot of parents causing a lot of added stress for teachers. It’s awful to hear of parents swearing at teachers often over things the teacher can’t control. But I’m not sure why? Is it entitlement? Easy access via email ?

Having said that there is definitely a ‘them and us’ narrative that’s being pushed which makes both sides feel animosity towards the other. And the voices of parents who have genuine concerns or complaints are lost within the belief that most parents are pains in the arse. That troubles me because we as parents do need to play some role in keeping our schools to account.

But that is definitely not by complaining about behaviour points or detentions! That’s just part and parcel of school life.

I had a solicitor parent threatening to sue me for catching her accusing her little darling of plagiarising. (This was a state secondary, Scotland.)

I was easily able to prove the plagiarism - the kid had taken an entire essay from the internet and bookended it with a couple of badly written paragraphs.

Solicitor Mummy's response: "She didn't think she'd plagiarised, because she'd copied it by hand." [Actually, she hadn't - it was a copy and paste job, but...]

Oh you are back! FWIW, I don't think schools should be dealing with such nonsense. No one is born in the wrong body, if that was the case my body should be taller, I would be a natural blonde, etc, sadly I got the body that my DNA dictated. As do we all.

1. Teachers don’t ‘decide’ on school uniform, they just have to enforce it, it’s a right pain.
2. You cannot catch a cold from getting wet, it’s a virus 🦠

Please retrain and come and join us working in schools if you think we’re doing a terrible job - we need teachers, after all! For some reason, there’s a recruitment and retention crisis, can’t think why!

I was a teacher and couldn’t have cared less what the kids wore. However, there was a uniform policy that I, as a teacher in that school, had to help uphold.
Please don’t blame teachers for these rules. I just wanted to educate children in my subject and get them the best grades they could, but as part of this I had to follow SLT’s rules around ensuring students followed the uniform policy.
Teachers get a lot of hate about the school rules around uniform, toilets etc, but it’s not us who create these rules.

I was the teacher who let kids take their blazer off if they were too warm and let them go to the loo in lesson time if they needed it. I got told off A LOT for this by SLT, believe me!

PS I’m a teacher with perfect attendance for the year. I’m currently lying on the sofa, face streaming, throat burning, glands aching, because I caught a cold from a pupil in school. I’ll be back in on Monday, because who’s going to do my job?

Ditto, the generational thing. One of my husband's early problem pupils was the father of a couple of mine. He and a friend actually followed my husband down a side street after DH had retired and offered him 'a square go'. (What? Two middle-aged men against a retiree? Really?)

The day that DH's brown belt in karate was in the sports listings in the local paper was the day that all the hassle from that family stopped. I was teaching the daughter at the time and she asked whether the Mr Weary named in the list was my Mr Weary. (I've told the story of what happened when he got his black belt elsewhere.)

I still see various family members in the local court reports. The funniest one was the young man who was convicted of fencing stolen jewellery after he gave his real name and address to the jeweller who bought the stolen goods.

Re: complaints

I had to take my dad to an important appointment at a hospital at the other end of the county from my school.

The nurse waited for the consultant to pop out and then complained in front of my father about the teacher in charge of her idle son's certificate course. She went on to tell me that she was doing bank work at the hospital to buy her son a lavish Christmas present.

I tried to be as professional as possible, not to discuss school matters in front of Dad and reminded the mother that she could contact me at school.

I then complained to the consultant in private. Sod that. I would put up with a lot, but that was just too much.

What do you mean that I’m “back”? Weird.

Oh Lord.

My husband's only grandchild attended an international school, courtesy of his daughter's work.

The parents gushed about the school teaching 'beautiful manners'. (I did notice that the child was now using cutlery...)

They weren't best pleased when DH said "Isn't that YOUR job?". (DH, his ex and I were all teachers.)

Oh yes, even worse, i know a family where the DCs regularly lose bits of equipment like football boots or calculators. The DCs refuse to look for them because it is “embarrassing” and they’re “too shy” to ask any members of staff. Instead of the parents insisting that they look for their lost possessions, they rush out and buy brand new replacements so the poor little DCs don’t get detention.

I know that our Scottish LA sent headteachers over to an Irish education college to recruit young teachers there and - during my last stint as a supply teacher - the woman who took over one of the classes that I'd been covering was a woman who had come over from an African country via England.

She was excellent. The children were so pleased to have their 'own' teacher after being farmed out to cover and supply. (I only worked two days a week.)

I had that when I was a middle manager in secondary.

I have a friend wbo is also secondary SLT. I’ve heard much the same from her. She can’t take it any more. She is giving up teaching and does not have another job to go to.

The Irish teachers that I know did their probationary period /NQT time in Scotland and got their PGDE here. (I'm not au fait with the most recent nomenclature.)

More than 20 yrs ago, a parent came to me at parents' evening and complained that my newly retired husband had said that her sons were lazy...

(I don't know whether he'd been quite as blunt as that, but it would have been accurate.)

"If he were here, I'd put him through that wall!"

Said parent was a minister of the cloth.

No parent should be disrespectful, but you need to appreciate that works both ways, and also applies to teaching staff.

I could start a whole new thread on several teachers i'm aware of who have abused their positions of trust - including a popular teacher who accompanied my childrens year group on a recent residential trip, and has now been suspended pending an investigation of misconduct. (Nothing connected to any of my children personally.)

Keep an open mind please. Stop putting teachers on a bloody pedastal.

Because we had this on another thread.

My kids are in their twenties now but I can count on one hand the times I spoke to the teacher - always politely and the issue was normally miscommunication. I've got colleagues at work who seem to be constantly emailing the schools about really trivial things . I'm surprised the teachers have any time to teach if the other parents in the class are the same.

Yep. Never heard of this actually happening in real life.

Or is the problem the fact that so many schools now are huge institutions, offered as one size fits all, 8 form and higher entry, and identity and community has been lost and with it mutual respect. Neither children nor teachers want to be there an positivity has disappeared.

When we removed our dc from the local church primary it was due to poor teaching, lack of excellence and the adoption of woke, even then. There was little respect for children or parents and respect behets respect.

Email has much to answer. Old fashioned letters were more measured.

That's a completely separate issue

DH was a headteacher at a school in a ‘difficult’ area. This involved excluding pupils. When a pupil is excluded, all supporting documents have to be sent to County Hall, including a complete record of all conversations with child and parents.
This frequently involved foul mouthed and obscene rants and threats. DH recorded these in graphic detail and with total accuracy.
He was later told by a member of County Hall staff “When it’s cold and miserable and we are fed up, we get out the XXXX School file and read it. It’s always good for a laugh”.

adoption of woke,
🙄

A parent complained because I looked at her daughter over the top of my glasses. I didn't have varifocals at that time and it was the only way I could look at each child's face while I did the register wearing my reading glasses.

So go start that thread then, because this one is about teachers fed up with how they're treated by entitled parents and the fact you felt compelled to leave that comment is part of the problem.