(UK) Express: Op ed piece slams parents of students not potty-trained by school age

Dec 5, 2018, Express: Teachers should not take on the role of parents, says STEPHEN POLLARD https://www.express.co.uk/comment/expresscomment/1054528/teachers-ofsted-parents-potty-trained-pupils THERESA MAY might well not agree, but in my view the most thankless job in public life is Chief Inspector of Ofsted, the body that inspects schools. The role is vital – we need a strong, independent body to report on school standards. But whenever a chief inspector opens his or her mouth, a row always follows The incumbent, Amanda Spielman, has been in the post since January 2017. Yesterday she published her second annual report. Much of the focus has been on the report's damning findings that provision for so-called SEND (special educational needs and disabilities) pupils is "disjointed and inconsistent", and that thousands of pupils are disappearing from the system as a result of being removed from school rolls. But it is the report's comments about some parents that has sparked controversy. Too many parents, she argues, expect schools to act as a form of alternative parent - to potty train their child, to teach them how to use cutlery and to tie a shoelace. As her report puts it: "Schools are being expected to pick up roles that should fall to the family." … As Miss Spielman puts it, it is "startling" that parents are letting their children continue to wear nappies for years: "It is something that, until very recently, would have been taken as an absolute matter of course that any child, unless they have severe special needs, would be toilet trained before they started school." It is simply not the job of schools or teachers to potty train children. How can we expect schools to focus on teaching if some parents refuse to carry out their own most basic task? Not that it is just potty training. Too many parents abdicate responsibility for other essentials of parenting and behave, for instance, as if they have no role in educating their children over the food they eat. A quarter of children arrive at primary school obese and a third leave obese. It is not schools who give them breakfast and dinner and it is not schools who give some of them a packed lunch. … Michelle Doyle Wildman, the acting chief executive of Parentkind, (formerly the Parent Teacher Association UK), responded to Miss Spielman's words with this fabulously stupid comment: "The vast majority of parents are doing a terrific job. I'm not sure that berating them will lead to a positive change for our kids." But Miss Spielman isn't criticising parents who are doing a terrific job. Her point is that there are too many who aren't. …