Dear Parents, Your Child May Lie To You

When I first started teaching all those moons ago, most parents were pretty supportive. I remember one particularly challenging child refusing to stay for a detention so I rung home. His parents (you wouldn't want them on your Trivial Pursuit team, I hasten to add) brought him back and sat there whilst he washed the tables that he'd spent an hour defacing. I couldn't ask for any more, and after that had few problem with that child - a punishment that worked!

Nowadays however, it's a little different. Approximately the same amount of children misbehave (I personally think that it's more, but I'm probably kidding myself) but parents actually believe the yarns spun by their offspring.

What parents have to bear in mind is the following:

• Teachers don't really want to set detentions as they are essentially detaining themselves. Ok, that teacher may be hanging around for that time,  but you get far less done when you have a detainee darkening your classroom.
• Children, in fact most people, will tell a lie to get out of a tricky situation. It's a survival mechanism, so parents shouldn't be surprised that it happens.
• When you enrol your child in the school the teachers become "in loco parentis", meaning that essentially the teachers can do what they like to punish a child who has done wrong - within reason obviously.
• A teacher has absolutely nothing to gain by making up stories about a child. I repeatedly get children in my tutor group telling that such-and-such a teacher hates them. Believe me, teachers have far better things to do with their time than make a child's life difficult. It's far too much time and effort.

As I've said in a previous post, I've had to endure a torrent of abuse down the phone from a child I was only keeping in for 15 minutes for not doing her detention, but have also received a letter from a "well-to-do" parent saying, and I quote, "I'm sure you would put a child in detention for not understanding the work". Now let me put this into context:

• The child had a week to complete the homework.
• This meant that they'd seen me 3 or 4 times that week.
• I had actually done about a quarter of the homework (workings and all) to help out those who didn't "get" it. This child failed to take down the answers.
• This child is in my tutor group, so had actually seen me on 5 extra occasions when they could have asked for help.

Basically the child couldn't be bothered - CBA in text speak (they can't even formulate proper sentences now).

Since children don't get punished as their parents won't allow it, misbehavior cannot be dealt with and the classroom becomes anarchic.

It really is a sorry state of affairs, education in England at the moment. And it's only going to get worse as those who hated school in the first place breed (it's their meal ticket after all) and poison their offspring (the politest word I could find) against school too.

What a terrific career choice one has made.