Parents to blame for problems in UK schools

[Amey]

Any opinions on this article in the Observer. Mumsnet's Justine Roberts gets a name check and makes some sensible comments.

Personally, I think it tough to expect kids to be fully socialised and ready to learn at 4 years old!!

indeed, Kerala!

I think deadlines should be deadlines..my DH has had to extend GCSE coursework deadlines times and again for lazy kids - he got some emailed to him at 11.30pm on Friday as he said he wouldn't mark it if its after 12am - the original deadline (which has been known about for weeks) was Friday morning last week - he still hasn't had all the work in despite numerous discussions with parents promising it....

oh and he instigated all the phone calls/emails and spent hours and hours chasing up kids...why - cos of league tables - to get the best results for the dept

agree with Justine - teachers aren't going to make their jobs easier by pointing the finger at parents, are they? Why not come up with some imaginative ways of working with parents rather than this extended version of bitching in the staff room?

Yes I wonder how they think this will actually help?

Or perhaps it was a press release that was just sexed up and sensationalised by the meejah?

Justine was just on Radio 5 Breakfast talking about this - anyone hear her?

Message withdrawn

EffiePerine, Why should they come up with imaginative ways to work with parents! They are employed to teach children!
Through work I know the following case. Kid gets told that she's not wearing school uniform, she persistently breaks the rules.
She has a break time detention. In that time she phones mum. Mum turns up in teachers class and punches her in the face. NOW! How do you work imaginatively with that?
When she was arrested she continues to have a potty mouth and behaved as if she was in the The Big Brother house or MTV shouting show! She thinks it's okay to behave in that manner.
Bring back the cane but for the parents!

Oh! and to add. Is it so hard to teach your kid at 4 to do his own buttons and wipe his own bum! Sorry, that's my job and I've done it! I was also capable at 4 to do that for myself!

I think the issue of bad behaviour in school is a different issue to the readiness for total independence at age 4. I think it's unreasonable to expect every 4yr old to be able as yet to do up buttons for example. 4 is still very young. I think it entirely reasonable to expect children of any age not to assualt or insult teachers, and even more so to have the same expectations of their parents.

I do think parents are largely to blame.

I also think that parents have their priorities totally mixed up, in that they want to baby their children, i.e. not teach them to dress themselves/do up buttons/eat with a knife and fork because they are too young, while giving them seemingly unlimited access to things which they are clearly too young for, i.e televisions in bedrooms/computers/games consoles.

I know plenty of parents who don't read to their children because they "don't have the time" I know parents whose children tell them to shut up (these are five year olds), I know of a parent whose child is refusing to learn and despite the school's constant attempts to encourage him she refuses to do anything with him because "he's only six and shouldn't have to learn to read/do maths/write yet." The same parent has recently had a baby which has led to a major deterioration in the child's behavior, yet she refuses to acknowledge that arrival of new baby could have anything to do with it and instead has chosen to blame the school.

I also think that Southeast's comment of "bring back the cane" is potentially valid. And while perhaps bringing back the cane isn't the answer, I certainly think that schools should have more power to discipline children.

Effie, with respect, you obviously have no idea.

I was a teaching assistant for 6 years and saw so much abuse from parents that I would have found unbelievable before working in the field.

Did you know that in perfectly ordinary schools, children are taught by their parents to stab teachers in the legs with a sharpened pencil if they think the teacher is picking on them? Sometimes it's really hard to bring a child on in their reading when they take every opportunity to spit in your mouth. I wish I were joking.

Try to set up a nurture group to work on empathy...get cursed roundly at home-time by parents who think their patently troubled children are little angels and then find your car keyed in the car-park. It's an endless round of poorly socialised parents bringing up poorly socialised children.

I feel really very sorry for the small intake of ordinary children we get. Those children are frightened and scared in their first weeks of school and go on, if they stay, to become accustomed to awful behaviour.

I really feel for teachers.

They are talking about this again on radio 5 after the news at 9 - don't know if Justine's going to be on again. Someone did make a link between what she said about parents not having enough time and the news about extending the right to ask for flexible working to parents of older children - could be interesting if they added that to the discussion, but I suspect they'll go for the more sensational aspects....

Bugger me! Some of these stories are really frightening . We live in quite a deprived area but I have never heard of anything like this in the primary schools round here. Thankfully!

A neighbour of mine used to work in a secondary school.

One day she gave a child detention and he told her to f off. The parents were brought in, and the father stood there and said "good. I'm proud of him."

Tbh I don't think it's a majority of children. In fact it was said that it was approx 25%? But I do think that it is enough to make a real difference.

I also don't think that the lack of time has anything to do with it. The parent I know who claims she doesn't have time to read with her child is a sahm. Her excuse is that "it's impossible with two children." Well perhaps parents should be seriously considering whether they should be having more children if they don't have the time to spend with the ones they already have.

I also know of children who are unable to fall asleep unless it is watching a dvd.

And the child I know who tells his mother to shut up is allowed to play 18-rated videogames because "it's the only thing that will keep him quiet." And the mother is a seemingly inteligent, elequant woman who, if you didn't know her child, you would never in a million years guess that this was the way he behaved.

I love Justine's comments, too. About supporting rather than haranguing parents.

Would any teachers reading this care to estimate, in their experience -- what % of children or parents are as bad as the Teaching Union described? 1/10? 1/20? 1/100? I don't know how to react to the claim without some idea of proportions.

I agree with the posters who point the blame at poor parenting.

My sil is a teaching assistant, she told me a tale recently of a very bright but very disobedient child in her reception class. When the class teacher told the little girl to sit on the mat and stop throwing things around the little girl screeched "How dare you tell me what to do you can't speak like that you are only a teacher!"
When the incident was reported to her mother the mother replied "I don't blame her for talking like that, it sounds like you deserved it, she is only 5 she should be able to do what she wants!"

I know of someone else who refuses to do any work whatsoever with her dd outside of school but berates the school as her dd is not progressing as quickly as she would like.

A 13 year old relative of mine falls asleep at school because she has spent all night on Bebo, takes time off when she feels like it with the permission of her mum. Her mum blames the school because they aren't making tthe lessons interesting enough.

There are far too many parents who expect teachers to bring up their children and think that educating their children stops when the school bell rings.

on the news they said it was 1/4.

I'm not sure it should be about support, because most parents I know who are like this (and tbh there aren't a huge amount among the parents I personally know) don't think that they have any responsibility - they will blame everyone but themselves. The school, the current teacher, another child in the class even, but never themselves. And there really is no reasoning with people like that.

and, contentious I know, but how many parents take their children out of school during term time for holidays. Thus reinforcing the message to children that education is not important...

KingRolo might have a point - as someone who isn't a teacher or TA I can't tell whether this is the equivalent of adults moaning about 'the youth of today' as every generation has since the Romans. (And probably earlier, only they didn't write it down.)

When it does happen, I bet it isn't class-related. There are middle class parents have a snotty attitude to schools, believing their precious cherubs couldn't possibly do anything wrong. Those who educate their children privately as much, if not more, than those who use state schools. Friend of mine in the private sector says if you work in the state sector, you get difficult kids, in private, you get difficult parents. Gross generalisation of course but some truth in it.

I agree with the article. You now have a generation of feral people dragging up children who have no interest in education and see school and teachers as free babysitting.

You have a justice system which allows murderers to walk free in no time at all, so kids see there's no punishment for crime at all.

You have a society that glorifies porn, being thick and taking the easy way out.

This shouldn't come as a surprise to anyone.

We reap what we sow.

hmm not sure I agree with that wannabe, I personally wouldn't do it because in our area we are told in no uncertain terms that it would be unauthorised absence. I do have relatives that take their holiday in term time, if they didn't they wouldn't be able to afford a break and they do take education very seriously.

I agree it's not just state sector

My brother works in a highly regarded public school & has had problems with both kids & parents - okay not usually effing and blinding, much more eloquent & (so far) no threats of physical violence, but the underlying thoughts of some parents & kids are the same

From the parents you get "My little Johny couldn't possibly have...(insert any bad behaviour)...it's the school's fault" and "It's your job to ensure Tarquin gets an A* in his GCSE and I will hold you personally accountable if he doesn't..."

One boy told him that he (my brother) HAD to do his GCSE course work for him as his Daddy had paid the school a lot of money to ensure this happened.... My brother of course pointed out that it didn't quite work like that to the boy (and his mother who turned up the next day to "resolve the issues he (my brother) had with her son"...)

My SIL works as a teacher in the state sector, they've both been teaching for about 30yrs and both say it's getting worse every year.

This thread is depressing.
I feel so sorry for the children who are brought up to respect people having to live with this 6 hours a day and despair that they would fall in with the rest and think that bad behaviour is the way to go.
I feel sorry for teachers who must at some point come to consider their students as the enemy and possibly tar other children with the same brush when they don't deserve to be.
And everybody blaming each other.

Wannabe taking children out of school during term-time doesn't necessarilly mean reinforcing the message that education isn't important. It might mean that some aspects of school are not as important as they are made out to be and that there are other things that can matter more. But that's been done to death on other threads.