Teachers potty-training rather than teaching – Ofsted

Teachers potty-training rather than teaching – Ofsted

Headlines like this have appeared this weekend.

Do you send your child to school to play with children who are carrying their excreta around with them in their pants? Potty training in schools is not simply a distraction for teachers and teaching assistants but may well present a health hazard.

Of course schools can no longer insist on meeting parents before their children join a schools – Tony Blair saw to that, after his boys had benefitted from a school which insisted on making sure that the parents of the boys they admitted were co-operative and supportive.

A simple test for parents – before your child attends school with other people’s children – can the child distinguish between yes and no, please and thank-you, yours and mine, and is the child able to dress itself? Except in exceptional circumstances a child of school age who is incapable of doing these simple things is suffering from neglect bordering on abuse.

It is parents who bring children into the world with all the opportunities that presents, for good or ill. If they do not bother, teachers and schools are troubled by dirty bottoms and then later by bullying on line and weapons. Adults should know twelve months before the birth of any child that much more will be expected of them should they become parents, for the sake of the child and for the sake of the rest of us.

Over two generations the OECD shows that educational standards have declined in this country. Among the thirty developed nations monitored the standard of literacy and numeracy among young adults in the UK has plummeted from top to bottom and today there is  more news of a teacher shortage; no longer can we keep teachers in the classro0m. If we want the best from our schools we must have the courage and determination to demand more from parents. Why, we should ask them, why should they bring a child into the world without being prepared to do their uttermost for him or her?

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