A significant number of teachers have had their careers affected and sometimes ruined.”It’s a social disease It’s not just schools It’s a disease of a lack of respect. And that goes into every organisation and every institution.”She believes the time has come for schools to follow hospitals and railway stations in putting signs up saying that abuse of staff will not be tolerated.Drugs are a major issue too, and not just the “wacky baccy” they can smell on the breath of the teenagers in class. Like all customers, educational consumers are defined by their rights, not by their responsibilities and like all consumers their main concern is to make sure they get their money’s worth. Now our politicians have redefined education as a commodity, parents see their relationship with their children’s school as one of supplier and customer.
Schools dream up ever-more-fanciful advertising slogans and call them “mission statements”, while the politicians crank up parental expectations with the illusory promise of choice. Whether either judgement is true or the rhetoric is appropriate is a matter of opinion. But his remarks at least draw attention to one fact that contributes to the selfish stroppiness of parents. David Hart said that allowing irresponsible parents to become school governors was like “putting an alcoholic in charge of a bar” and that governing bodies were “overloaded” with parents more interested in the needs of their own children than those of the school.
Excluding individuals for extreme behaviour might be a necessary evil, but it won’t solve the much wider and deeper problem of poor parenting in general. Nor will keeping all parents safely beyond the school gates.To read some reports of the NAHT conference you might think that is just where heads want them. They don’t like admitting that they can’t.But chucking out the “small minority” that rock the boat and threaten to sink it is one thing; getting the rest to row together is something else. Heads and teachers choose their profession because they want to help people. He’s dead right there, too, though one would hope that they would only ever use such a power reluctantly They probably would.
