Are you allowed to be friends with parents of your pupils?

[GunpowderGelatine]

I've seen different policies in different schools - what is your School's policy on befriending parents of your pupils? And not already being friends with them, but making friends via school and going for drinks etc with them?

My DCs go to the school that I teach at and due to birthday parties and to facilitate friendships I have inevitably ended up socialising with some parents due to play dates etc. I’ve been very careful to keep things professional at all times and keep my distance and never gossip about colleagues or children/bitch about work etc. I also have very cordial and affectionate relationships with some parents of the other children I teach just simply through getting to know them and seeing them every day for years however I don’t ever socialise with them outside school or contact them privately as I feel this would cross a line. Work life is work life, home life is home life.

That's a bit like me unicorn my DC also go to the school before I started working there. Though I will never teach my DD! it's also a small town and I went to school with some parents. I did disclose this at interview and they said it was fine but the unwritten rule is "don't purposefully make new friends who have kids you teach" as it can be seen to be favouritism. Which is fair enough (though some colleagues flout this). TBH I can always do with an excuse to make no more friends i just hate to be seen as unsociable I guess, Some parents have invited us for drinks and I've had to say no, but haven't said why.

I don’t think we have a policy at my school but I make sure I use common sense. As DS goes to my school I sometimes see parents at parties etc but I let my line manager know about it and I’m always professional. I would never meet up with other mums for coffee or anything like that. And if a friend of mine moved their child to my school I would declare the friendship and try to avoid teaching that class if I could.

DD was best friends with the child of a teacher at her school when she was at primary school, I was also secretary of the PTA.
We met socially a few times but we absolutely did not talk about school or other parents. We kept it light and talked about our children/tv shows/holidays. It was a bit of an unspoken rule between us.
Now the girls are at high school the friendship has waned and they don’t really see much of each other so it’s less of an issue.

It is so hard to get the right balance, to be friendly without crossing a line or professional without being standoffish. I’m actually leaving my current school at the end of the summer term and sending DCs to another school. The pros of all being together no longer outweigh the cons and I am very nervous about completely new starts for all but happy that things will be crystal clear and I will just be ‘a parent’ rather than ‘Mrs Unicorn’.

I am good friends with someone, then got a job at her child's school and ended up with her child in my class. We stayed good friends, but I made sure not to discuss anything about the school with her, and we had an unwritten policy of not discussing her child's education outside of a formal meeting in the classroom. For the first little while, she often popped in after school and wanted to hang around for a chat, but I would say that I had a meeting to go to, or a parent coming in, and that soon stopped.

I now live in a very small community, and if I didn't make new friendships with people with a child/grandchild at the school, then I'd never be able to speak to anyone at all. Common sense rules apply in a small community.

I teach the older siblings of several of my DC’s friends, and I am friends with their parents. The difference is we were already friends before, and our friendship is through our younger children not through me teaching their older children. We just keep things very separate, at parents eve we talk about the older kids, on nights out we don’t talk about kids at all!

I’m very careful what I share on social media as if, for example, I shared a picture and one of them commented on it, that could be seen by their DC and then their DC friends etc.... I also never talk about work with them!

It’s a small community so I think this is pretty common though.