Sunday 31 October, 1.45pm until 3.15pm, Café
The relationship between teachers and parents is increasingly under scrutiny. Schools are already judged by Ofsted on the effectiveness of their engagement with parents and carers, and from September 2010 it will be a legal requirement that all secondary schools are able to offer parents access to online reporting about their children. Parents will be able to access information including school grades, attendance, special needs information, and home and class work schedules online. Parents are also encouraged to use the system to communicate ‘frequently and freely’ with teachers.
With parents increasingly treated as consumers of school services, to be consulted at every turn, it is perhaps not surprising there has been a rise in parental complaints about everything from the content of the curriculum to pedagogic methods. The internalisation of the ‘pupil-centred’ model of education can mean parents have little regard for the authority of teachers. Parents at the school gate complain, ‘That teacher doesn’t have the right to say/do that to my child, just because they can’t control the class’. At the same time, many a staffroom conversation about badly behaved pupils ends with the teacher saying, ‘Well, what do you expect? Have you met the parents?’
It is now assumed that engaging parents in their child’s education is the way forward. But is it? What is it a way forward to? We have a very confused situation. For example, it is a widespread view that parents need ‘expert help’ to bring up children, yet they are also expected to do more work educating their children. Teachers are encouraged to ‘outsource’ parts of their core work to parents, whilst simultaneously being given more powers to refer to the council families they think may ‘benefit’ from Parenting Order. This is ‘the naughty step’ writ large – but with no obvious Supernanny in sight! Both parents and teachers seem to be defensive, neither fully trusting the other to do their job properly. But what is the proper job of parents and teachers today? The 2004 Children’s Act put the responsibility for children’s happiness and emotional well-being with teachers, while home/school contracts are used to encourage parents to read with their children and help with homework. It seems that the roles have been reversed, or blurred at the very least. Can this lead to an improved partnership between parents and teachers? Or is it undermining relations of trust, without which neither teacher nor parent can do their work of developing the new generation properly?
Listen to session audio:
 | Alka Sehgal Cuthbert educator, writer, doctoral researcher |
 | Dr Hilary Cremin senior lecturer, Faculty of Education, University of Cambridge; author, Peer Mediation: Citizenship and social inclusion revisited |
 | Julian Stanley chief executive, Teacher Support Network |
 | Dr Eleanor Updale author, award-winning historical novels for children and adults; Royal Literary Fund Fellow, Queen Mary, University of London |
| Chair: | |
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Sally Millard
co-founder, IoI Parents Forum |
Podcast of the recent Battle Satellite on Free Schools, held in conjunction with the IoI Education Forum
Education Forum, 4 October 2010I think every child should be entitled to a universal liberal education. At a time when “local” is the new buzzword, I want to argue for a common standard in terms of curriculum provision and assessment.
Kevin Rooney, Independent Blogs, 2 October 2010Listen to Education Forum member Toby Marshall interview fellow member Shirley Lawes. With university-based teacher training increasingly under attack from the UK Coalition government, Toby asks: what makes a good teacher?
Toby Marshall and Shirley Lawes, IoI Education Forum, 20 September 2010
Parenting isn’t a bunch of skills that can be taught
Frank Field’s proposal to have a GCSE in parenting would denigrate both what it means to be a parent and the purpose of education.
Frank Furedi, spiked, 11 August 2010How schools and families can work better together
Julian Stanley and Jeremy Todd, Teacher Support Network, 2010Dr Updike has had some bad experiences with homework and has lost faith in it. She fears that teachers are setting “pointless tasks” purely for the sake of satisfying school and parental demands and she describes homework as blighting family life: “To pollute lives with the values and anxieties of the classroom is a mistake”
Julie Robinson, Julie Robinson writes, 31 May 2010Children's author agrees with her former headteacher that learning should remain in the classroom
Eleanor Updale, TImes Education Supplement, 7 May 2010Julie Robinson writes about ‘pushy parenting’ versus supporting the development of children and getting the pressure right
Julie Robinson, Julie Robinson writes, 13 January 2010Parents and pupils were today given full details of the currently existing and new guarantees they can expect from schools, as Ed Balls launched a consultation alongside the second reading of the Children, Schools and Families Bill.
Department for Children, Schools and Families, 12 January 2010
Education is praised for its potential contribution to economic development, as a central instrument for encouraging social inclusion and mobility. Increasingly, the promotion of education has little to do with learning as such.
Frank Furedi, Continuum, 30 September 2009
Being a parent has to be the hardest job in the world but can also be the most rewarding. Jill Berry, President of the GSA, explains why children do want – and need – boundaries to reassure them that they are loved.
Jill Berry, Attain Magazine, September 2009
