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’m not ‘triggered’. You seem to be somewhat upset though.

What do you do @Bellyblueboy ?
would you be happy being “challenged” by those you work alongside in the threatening manner parents seem to “challenge” teachers that you seem to think is brilliant?
wonder how many of these parents would like being treated so aggressively in their own workplace? Esp the “we pay your wages/ill have your job” types!

It’s not even the people ypu work alongside. It’s people who haven’t had extensive education, training and experience in your field. Of course teachers are sometimes wrong, and some are less good than others, but they doesn’t mean anyone needs to be challenging or abusive. Polite communication is the way to go. Plus recognising that there might be skills and/or issues in play that you don’t know about as a parent.

Thank you. We are leaving in droves. Soon enough, there will be nobody left.

Someone commented earlier about HGV drivers. A perfectly decent job, reasonably paid. As is farming, plumbing, factory work. Retail and hospitality. However, schools seem to have a derogatory attitude towards these sorts of jobs. Colleges don't.
What are the occupations of the bolshie parents, what is their academic achievement? Yes, we've heard about the bratty child of a barrister, but was the barrister a nasty piece of work? He should have respect for a fellow professional. Parents with low academic achievement probably disengaged with education early on. Getting a bit psychological here - they may be taking their own educational frustrations out on their child's teachers. (Not an excuse, just a reason)
I went to a grammar school. Got 9 0 levels. Exams have been dumbed down but even average kids are now expected to achieve similar to what the top 25% were expected to achieve years ago. Everyone is expected to go to university nowadays, regardless of whether they are suitable or not. Parents are anxious. There's constant testing; phonics, sats, more sats, gcses. And now a reading test in year 8. Why??
Maybe schools need to be more diverse. Maybe those who fail their year 8 reading test should not go on to do GCSEs, or do less GCSEs and more vocational subjects. There is a place for functional skills in schools but not many of them seem to teach it. At the moment there is a stigma about vocational studies. This needs to end.
I am a big fan of lifelong learning. There should be more opportunity for adults to do GCSE at college. Plenty of opportunities for English and Maths but not other subjects.
Imagine the child/their parent, who fails their phonics test, fails their first sats, fails their second sats, fails their year 8 reading test, and then is expected to take 25 gcse exams. Just read that statement again. It is madness!

I sit on PX Panels at a local school and not once have I had a child in front of me who has been parented properly. In fact a lot of times the parents don't even bother coming to the meeting and when they do its usually only 1 of them and they are unable or unwilling to impose any kind of boundaries on the children.

With respect, a lot of what you’ve said here is just not right.
Practical apprenticeships are extremely popular and competitive. It’s not expected that everyone goes to uni. In my MC friend circle parents are actively discouraging uni due to the high costs and debt involved in going.

The SATS are being phased out and my kids had no idea what their grades were. These are not dwelled upon ime. A reading test in year 8 sounds like a bloody good idea. Everyone needs to read well, even if your job is vocational! You need to be able to read your bills and your rental contract and your workplace pension paperwork! Probably year 8 is the last chance saloon for an intervention there and get something in place for GCSEs.

there are loads of options for learning as adults. Dh did an art gcse recently! It’s just harder to do these things and also do adult life.

i do agree poor parenting just goes down the generations and lack of respect for teachers probably just gets passed along :(

I don’t find this surprising at all. But somehow it’s taboo to suggest people actually parent their children.

Sorry this was in reply to @HarshbutTrue2

i don’t think I have the hang of MN just yet

I do think that the current situation is indicative of a system hugely under strain (as well as of other societal changes).

Schools are struggling in an era of decreasing funding and increasing need, as the front line of a system in which local authorities are struggling to meet ever-rising needs within their budgets. Meanwhile, parents are also under huge pressure financially and often in their own workplaces.

Relaxed parents, comfortable in their own situations can have reasonable conversations with well-funded schools with staff who enjoy their work and are confident that the system within which they work can meet children’s needs.

Parents at full stretch are likely to have less reasonable conversations with harassed, over-worked teachers who work in schools that demand ever more of them but cannot deliver the support they know they and their pupils need.

It’s like GP patients abusing receptionists die to the absence of appointments/ slow referrals / missing test results. It isn’t the ‘right conversation with the right person’, but an overall frustration between two cogs within a system that is broken.

Really I am not - just trying to bring some balance into this. There are usually two side to every story. The behaviour of some parents is completely unacceptable. It should not be tolerated and I have never suggested it should

But not all teachers are good at their job (like in every profession). It should be okay for parents to respectfully ‘question’ decisions they are uneasy about. The homework marked as wrong when it’s right. The spelling mistakes in the printed worksheet. Years ago parents wouldn’t have raised it. Again no excuse for parents being rude or abusive and I support a zero tolerance approach to unacceptable behaviour.

i used the word challenge which seems to have caused a strong reaction. Maybe I should have said question. Different sectors have different languages. I am challenged all the time at work - I encourage it. But perhaps it means something else to teachers?

I would say (flippantly) that, in an educational landscape in which ‘pupil A showed some challenging behaviour’ means ‘A swore at me, threw a chair at another child’s head, kicked their 1:1 and then absconded from the classroom’, ‘challenge’ might be the wrong word to pick! ‘Question’ or ‘enquire about’ or ‘ask’ might all have more neutral connotations….

Well then I apologize for using that word!

However I would also respectfully say that some awareness that while the word ‘challenge’ may have developed a different meaning in an educational setting it doesn’t have the same negative connotations elsewhere.

i was in a meeting this morning were someone (yes using irritating corporate speak) thanked someone for their helpful challenge. People regularly say ‘can I just challenge that assumption’ and no one has a strong reaction to it. So when I say a parent should be able to challenge a teacher, I of course don’t mean a parent should be able to throw a chair at the teacher!

I would also, given your examples, ask whether the error you spot might simply be a lack of time for the task, not a systematic weakness?

If there’s a spelling error in a spelling list, consider whether it’s in line with everything else you see - does the teacher routinely mis-spell in these lists; in class communication; in their reports; in their comments in your child’s book; in their displays; in their worksheets? If so, yes, definitely worth politely raising either with the teacher themselves or as a potential CPD need with the next level up. If it’s a one-off, might it be a mis-type late at night or early in the morning of an overwhelmingly busy day?

Similarly marking an answer wrong. Did the teacher mark it, or is it a peer marking / YA marking / self marking? Is it a clerical error, or a genuine misunderstanding (eg 241 x 0 = 0 marked incorrect likely to be a misunderstanding, one question out of 25 in a times table test accidentally marked incorrect, probably clerical). How many questions were set, what was the turnaround time for you to get the work back, does it happen every week?

😂 I surrender. Teachers are perfect and parents should stay silently in their lane!

The thread is about abusive parents though. You have repeatedly tried to shift it to be abput teachers you found poor, and though you keep saying people shouldn’t abuse them it does inevitable read as justification for abuse. Nobody on here is saying teachers are perfect. It’s purely about abusive behaviour from parents.

No, teachers are not perfect, they are human. I can make mistakes when writing on the board, or my slides may occasionally have typos on them, so I actively encourage my classes to be on the lookout for this and to raise it respectfully if they spot an error.

However, I would also expect awareness from parents of when something is a human slip, and when it is a systematic error that needs to be raised.

Nobody has suggested that. Again, you are substituting questioning teachers about serious or less serious errors for the abuse people on this thread are discussing. It’s an odd bit of deflection.

If a teacher sends home an incorrect spelling list once, then cross out the mistake and help your child to learn the correct version.

You might encourage your child to briefly mention it at an appropriate moment in class so that the teacher has a chance to re-issue or correct it for everyone.

IF it is systematic and occurring every week, raise it.

I clarify again - polite enquiry at an appropriate time, appropriate place and in an appropriate manner proportionate to the size of the issue (accepting that sometimes ‘let it go’ is proportionate) is something that no teacher would have any problem with.

Abusive and aggressive language, body language and behaviour is NEVER ok, regardless of the issue and regardless of how good or not the teacher is at their job.

Good Luck with the apprenticeships. I taught in FE. The kids lusted after apprenticeships. They all wanted to do one. They are like gold dust. Although the government is reforming apprenticeships, they are making it increasingly difficult for employers to take on youngsters. NIC contributions, employment law etc. Retail, hospitality, construction and manufacturing are all on their knees and making people redundant, not taking on young people.
I know someone who desperately wants to do a degree apprenticeship. The company he wants to work for cannot guarantee the funding until September. What if they cannot guarantee the money in September??
When are SATs being phased out? I was unaware of this. I was aware of kids in our local schools having complete meltdowns on SATs days. Their mothers were very busy on class wattsapp. The mothers were hysterical, blaming the school. The kids who had worked hard and done their homework took it all in their stride.
I know there's lots of options for adult learners. I used to teach them. There should be more options. Many disengaged teenagers engage with learning when they are older. Many adults change their careers.
I have also worked in colleges where they boasted that 97% of their A level students go on to university. They deliberately made sure of this in order to tick a box. The things we did in the days of coursework, just to ensure that kids ticked the box. Many of the kids that we sent to uni simply weren't up to it; buy hey ho, we'd ticked a box. Teachers were in trouble if the box wasn't ticked.

People have much higher expectations than ever before. In contrast to some previous posters I think the standards in school have never been better.

When I started primary in 1993, we had one computer in the whole school, one textbook between 3-5 kids in some subjects and no school library. Oh and my school was burnt down due to arson from a child at the school!

By year 6 6/30 kids could still barely read and I could barely write.

Meanwhile in my kids' primary school they have a well stocked, large library, the quality of the work on the walls is incredible, each class has a teaching assistant in the lower years and, as a parent, the availability of school based afterschool/breakfast clubs is amazing, and just didn't exist when I was a kid. Almost all the Year 2s in my son's class are free readers, let alone the Year 6s.

Yet despite all this, the WhatsApp groups are still full of complaints, the behaviour is policy is too mean, the kids watched 5 minutes of numberblocks, not enough screens, too many screens, why was my child in this playground etc. etc. I've decided to defend the school on every occasion, even when I actually disagree - as I continually point out to other parents, even if you are right on the merits, the ongoing impact on the school of complaints is really negative and we risk driving away good teachers.

I'd rather put up with some screen time and keep my children's fantastic teachers.

In the early 2000s a family member was a junior doctor in an and e and said calming “if anyone swears at me or is otherwise rude they won’t get treated”. Improved behaviour markedly. Wouldn’t be allowed today but teachers need to have the power to do that.

@HarshbutTrue2 However, schools seem to have a derogatory attitude towards these sorts of jobs.

Not any school that I've worked in. Maybe it depends on the area? The HT in my final permanent post had a son who was taking an apprenticeship as a joiner rather than going to university.

I'll add that if we had someone who wanted to gain their HGV licence we encouraged that goal.