Sitting in a family’s living room last September, I watched my school’s reception teacher force a smile. We were on a home visit for a soon-to-be student and the mother asked, “Is there anything I need to do before he starts?” A sensible question with an obvious answer as the child on her lap was wearing a nappy and drinking from a training cup.
This wasn’t the first home visit that had left us mentally replanning our early years curriculum. The day before, we’d helped one desperate mother rescue her child from climbing on top of the kitchen cupboards and conducted another meeting in whispers because the child was still having her afternoon nap. These represent part of a growing issue my primary school is contending with: an increasing number of children are not “school ready”.
Not being school ready doesn’t mean the children are too young – let’s be clear about that. It refers to children being sufficiently trained in basic life skills to survive a day in the classroom and engage in meaningful learning experiences with their peers. Of course, all children develop at different rates and have a variety of individual needs, that’s not the issue. It’s parents who subconsciously – or intentionally – delegate their parenting responsibilities to teachers. We’ve had several children start school in nappies or – even worse – without them for the first time. Some parents assume, in the words of the mother above, that “school will sort that out”. It’s now April and I still have two children who regularly arrive in pushchairs.
It’s not an issue limited to children just starting school either. A colleague once received an evening call asking them to discipline two children over the phone. Last year, I took a child, who had never fallen asleep unless it was in front of the television, on a residential trip. The result? Five nights of uncontrollable sobbing and a ruined experience for his classmates at a cost of £300 per head. I’ve had to ask parents not to send in cold Happy Meals for packed lunches, and known several children who have been put on school dinners so that we can “make them eat properly” (one notoriously having eaten nothing but potato waffles until the age of nine).
Home visits for new starters are a relatively new phenomenon. They were introduced as an opportunity for parents to meet their child’s teacher and discuss any concerns either party may have to make the whole process a more positive experience. In reality, they allow us to suss out the extent of a problem before it arrives at our door.
I feel proud that we are a “good” school, but overwhelmingly concerned by how increasingly difficult it is to maintain those outcomes given what we have to contend with. Each year we take more drastic measures to cope: I employ nursery nurses who support children with the basic skills usually acquired before school; we run interventions for children as young as four who cannot play or who need anger management; teachers take on roles which were traditionally the responsibility of parents, filling gaps in basic skills instead of delivering the national curriculum. It’s a role we are not trained for and did not sign up to. Last week I received a note saying: “Yesterday Jessica came home with nits. Please can someone make sure this is dealt with before she comes home today?”
The vast majority of parents do a wonderful job. But they would be horrified if they could see what impact other children, whose parents leave it to schools to raise them, have on their child’s education. Unfortunately, in a group situation you have to meet the basic demands of a few children who are not coping, rather than the learning needs of the silent majority. This year, four families withdrew their children from our reception class after their first visit, citing the behaviour of other children as the reason. I didn’t blame them.
The same parents who don’t prepare their children for school are often the ones who later don’t read with their children, help with their homework and show an interest in their learning. At our last parents’ evening one such father told me he wouldn’t listen to his son read as “that’s what the teachers get paid for”.
It seems wrong that, in the government’s drive to raise standards, the pressure is solely on schools and little responsibility is afforded to parents whose role is so crucial. Parents arguably have far more influence on their child’s development than a class teacher, yet the government attributes a child’s progress almost entirely to their teachers’ performance. So much so, that our pay progression is now based on it. Yes, school is a big factor, but we’re only part of the story.
There are measures being taken to promote good parenting and there are also (thankfully) many wonderful parents who work tirelessly to do the very best they can in the world’s toughest job. They’re the ones who allow us teachers to do our jobs effectively by bringing us children ready to learn – and we salute them. But, for those other parents, please keep your end of the bargain. We are teachers, not supernannies. We care about your children but some jobs just aren’t in our remit – and toilet training is one of them.
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