Do you remember your first day at school? I have fragments of memories, but one memory which is vivid is crying bitterly as my mother left and being comforted by the teacher who sat me on her knees and told me that my mother would be returning that afternoon to collect me. It is moments of compassion like these that remind us of the profound importance of teachers in helping children to mature in the intellectual, emotional and moral sense.
However, teachers cannot fulfil the role of parents and guardians and neither should they. The children in their classes are not their children. They are their pupils, and that requires an objective approach from teachers rather than the more subjective attitude that parents naturally assume.
One thing for which teachers are reliant on parents is the readying of children to go to school in the first place. In previous generations, including my own, parents-usually mothers-would ensure that their children, before they started school, would know how to talk, use cutlery, play sensibly and use a toilet. Some parents even taught their children how to read. Ensuring that one’s child could do these fundamental things was part of the pride of being a parent and a manifestation of parental love. Who wants to be the parent of a child who does not fit in with his classmates because he is still wearing a nappy, eats with his fingers, can only point rather than speak, and does not understand the need to share toys at playtime?
But clearly there are some parents who, for whatever reason, do not ensure their children are prepared. A report from the University of Bristol in 2024 made available some disturbing data about unprepared children. According to the report, in 2022-2023, a third of children were not ready for their first day at school. That means that in a class of thirty, there will be ten children who for some reason cannot cope with being in a classroom for the first time. Having one very needy child in a class is challenging enough, let along ten. Moreover, according to a survey of teachers, half of those who responded said that many parents do not have a clue as to what it means to be school-ready. It is arguable, if the survey is representative, that half of reception class teachers are facing unnecessary demands because of poor parenting.
In response, the Government have announced that their target is to ensure that seventy-five per cent of children will be ready for school by 2028. That is a low target for it means that in reception classes, there will be around seven or eight students who will still not be ready for school.
Keir Starmer has not given too many details as to how this will be achieved, but there are policy pledges to make available thirty hours of free childcare for parents and an expansion of breakfast clubs at schools. Presumably, the traditional parental task of socialising children for school is going to be placed firmly in the hands of childminders and canteen staff. Heaven forfend that parents might be expected to do this work because they are, after all, parents!
But that is the message that should be conveyed by this government. If some parents and guardians do not see it as part of their responsibility to toilet train their children and ensure that they can communicate at least their basic needs, then there is something wrong with their attitude. Why should teachers who are there to teach (yes, a tautology but a much needed reminder) be hindered in that by having to change nappies? Teachers already have a big enough workload without additional duties thrust upon them.
Conceivably, there might be circumstances in which it is difficult to prepare children for school. But for the most part, parents are capable of this. Ignorance is not a defence. With the gargantuan amount of information on parenting available online, myriad books on the subject in libraries and yes, the ability of people in the real world to offer advice such as grandparents, friends, even neighbours, no one should plead ignorance of how to raise their children.
For the sake of the dignity of children, of respect for hard-pressed teachers and parents’ own self-respect, may we go back to being a society where children are ready for school and can learn without unnecessary hindrance from day one.
James Anderson is a freelance writer
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It would be interesting to know how many children begin their schooling hardly knowing the English Language at all. And what effect that would have on those with good English skills? And then there’s the ever increasing incidence of Mental Health… A high percentage I understand. I am in Australia and Teacher Training is struggling. Uni’s want to solve the problem by ‘lowering standards’ which are already low. Failed Teaching Students are being allowed to continue on into the Profession. I don’t know for sure, but my guess is that UK will be in a worse state.
”the profound importance of teachers in helping children to mature in the intellectual, emotional and moral sense’
I have vivid memories of being helped to mature emotionally and morally … Sister Eucharia had a large bamboo cane with which she regularly instilled ‘discipline’ into both hands. And Sister John Francis who had hands like hams which left large red marks on the backs of your legs. Then there was Sister Joseph who hit my younger brother so hard on his bottom with her cane that she damaged his testicles and he ended up in hospital and the RC church big guns were brought out to persuade my (stupid) mother not to get the police involved. And that was just Primary school. There was a certain Mr. Duffy who was a ‘hands on’ brutal maths teacher at St. Michael’s College in Leeds. He’d be about 90 years old if he’s still alive and I’d love to meet him on some remote path and leave his beaten and bloody body for the ravens……..
Yes, school days were the happiest days of our lives………
Perhaps if Teachers’ Unions focused on their members’ working conditions instead of interfering in teaching content and methods etc. this would be addressed by teachers being protected by banning those children whose parents haven’t prepared them adequately to be educated in a classroom setting surrounded by other children at the same level of acceptable development.