Are schools eroding the role of parents?

A recent ‘Times’ article* discussed the evolving relationship between parents and schools.? A key element of the writer’s contention was that schools are encroaching steadily into areas of influence that were once the preserve of parents.? Examples of this trend towards ever greater regulation include specifying the acceptable contents of children’s packed lunches and encouraging children to regularly discuss their emotions in the classroom.

This is a compelling narrative, there is little doubt that schools do indeed intervene in aspects of their students’ lives that would not previously have been the case. I would like? to offer a perspective on why this might be.

How did we get here?

State funded education in the UK has long had purposes which stretch beyond the remit of teaching children academic subjects.? For example, casting right back to the early 20th Century and beyond, school holidays were based around? summer factory closures in towns and cities and the needs of bringing in the harvest for agricultural communities.? Intervention in social and wellbeing aspects of young people’s lives has been ever present.? What we are encountering now may be more than before, but it is not new.

With the move to a fully fledged welfare state from 1945, combined with an education act which saw more children in school for more of their time, the opportunities to push the boundaries of what schools were for grew significantly.? Some salient long term factors came increasingly into play:

• The inability of governments of all political persuasions not to meddle in schools
• A long term, growing mistrust of the teaching profession by government
• A failure to gain real consensus, within political parties let alone between them, of what education is for and what the school curriculum should contain
• The temptation of all governments to add more to what schools do without taking anything away - a trait clearly visible across the public sector generally over the last few decades
• Changes in family circumstances and the nature of parenting
• A range of agencies and organisations using schools as convenient vehicles to get a message across to a young captive audience
• The perceived creep of the nanny state and an ever more litigious and regulatory culture?
• The evolving narrative, accentuated by the Covid lockdowns, which sees schools as the one point of stability in young people’s lives
• A tendency on the part of school leaders to see themselves and their colleagues as overworked but still be willing to take on more.

Schools and wider society?

It is also worth stating the general point that schools do not stand independently from the rest of society, though some commentators seem to think that they do.? Schools reflect our collective competence, concerns, moods and passing interests.? Nor incidentally are schools often at the centre of our national priorities- one need only observe the peripheral importance of the education secretary to most governments to recognise this.

All of the points made above are important, though they rarely all appear in the same list.? Some are well rehearsed, though all would still benefit from more evidence based, frank and open minded discussion.? I would like to draw out just a few to reflect on in a little more depth now.

The failure of consensus?

Those of us in education intermittently berate ourselves and society in general for our inability to agree what education is for and, as a consequence, what schools should teach.? Arguably, in a wealthy, technologically advanced democracy we should be able to reach some consensus.? However, it is clear to me that we cannot.? The range of factors at play; finance, philosophy, technology, tradition, politics, to cite only those which come to me first, is just too great.? Even a broad agreement on what children should learn in schools is beyond us.??

This essential and perpetual lack of focus leaves schools prey to all kinds of unplanned and unpredictable change.? One of the stock responses to wider societal challenges (British Values is a fine example, as is poor eating habits amongst children) is leave it to the schools.? It is important to recognise that while schools are responsible for delivering content on these topics with our children, they are not initiating the discussion.? Schools are simply doing what they have been told to do.? If you are unhappy with what is being taught, your local MP is usually a better outlet than your local headteacher.

Changes in family circumstances?

Our educational and social discourse is not sufficiently transparent about what is happening in the nation’s families.? As a consequence, we lean towards schools as vehicles for social change rather than leaving the responsibility to parents and carers, with general or targeted support for them when they need it.

There is a widespread (often unspoken) perception that the capacity of parents to do a ‘good job’ with their children has changed. You can see it in the actions of people working with children though less often in their words.? Many children don’t see much of their parents so this narrative goes.? The necessity of long working hours and the fragmentation of ‘traditional’ nuclear families make this scenario inescapable.? Even when parents and children are in the same home, changes in eating habits, media access throughout the home and the ubiquity of mobile phones mean that time spent communicating together is limited.? The gradual erosion of boundaries of authority between parents and their children has made it more difficult for parents to assert themselves.

These factors have led to the perception that parents have less influence upon their children’s opinions and behaviour than they had previously.? Schools, partly through choice, partly through direction and largely through accident, have stepped into this apparent void to ensure that the ‘right’ messages are getting across.??

Incidentally, in my experience, anyone who thinks that school teachers stand a better chance than parents of communicating messages effectively to children is usually mistaken - if by ‘effectively’ we mean that the children go away and act upon what they have been told.

School leadership?

I was a headteacher during the lockdowns of? 2020-21.? When able to detach myself from the day to day for a while, I was intrigued by the attitude of some of my peers.? Burdened by an ever expanding list of responsibilities relating to children’s home education, school education, mental wellbeing, diet and much more, heads were often keen to make known the pressures they were under.? Simultaneously however, these same harassed headteachers willingly took on ever more, usually without any significant objection.

The Covid era experience highlights a phenomenon which is seemingly ever present in state sector education.? Schools are given ever more to do, but despite ongoing real concerns about workload, there is rarely any serious pushback about this from school leaders themselves - by which I mean saying ‘no’.? There is a range of factors at play here.? To cite a couple, school leaders want to be seen as ‘can do’ and nobody wants to be the first to say they can’t manage in a culture where not managing is often a career wrecker.? Also, there is no doubt that school leaders have a strong sense of social justice.? Whatever its causes, such a culture is fertile ground for ever more functions traditionally associated with parents to be assumed by schools.

Some important things to talk about?

In this piece I have endeavoured to set out some points to think about around the broad topic of the roles of parents and schools in society.? In my attempt at brevity I will inevitably have cut corners but hopefully the essence of the points I wanted to make comes across.? Striking an ideal balance between the responsibilities of parents and schools is of course impossible.? However, to make things better and gain a greater sense of mutual understanding, I think we need a more open debate:

-about what schools are for and what should be the limit of their social remit

-about how we identify and support parents who need help?

-about whether giving a social responsibility to schools actually means it will be met in any way more effectively than if it had remained unambiguously in the home.

By Michael Whitworth

*Joanna Williams : Hey, teacher, leave those kids alone : The Times 12.10.24

Civitas Dr Eliza Filby Paul Litterick Family Education Trust

https://www.thetimes.com/comment/columnists/article/hey-teacher-leave-those-kids-alone-and-let-parents-do-the-parenting-5tm90vdvp

https://cieo.substack.com/p/hey-teacher-leave-those-kids-alone