A plague on pass-the-buck-parents who are driving away our teachers with their petty behaviour

You know that lurch of disgust you feel at casually vile human behaviour? From a crisp packet being thrown from a window to an A&E nurse being abused? 'Who does that?' you ask yourself. And because the answer doesn’t immediately come to you, you’re left feeling lost, more than anything – sad and disgusted.

Which is how I felt on the weekend when reading about parents who routinely swear at teachers, fail to bring their children to detentions and leave staff members in such fear of verbal and physical attacks that they try to leave their workplace “in groups” at the end of the school day. Only this time, there wasn’t the disbelief – and that instinctive “who does that?” wasn’t rhetorical.

Because I know what kind of person consistently attacks teachers and schools; it’s the same kind who blames the state and anyone else they can think of for their own failure to raise civilised human beings – pass-the-buck parents.

No wonder there’s now a national shortage of head teachers with the right experience and skill-set to tackle failing schools. In an interview on Sunday former chief Ofsted inspector Sir Michael Wilshaw explained how many had been driven out of the UK by parents’ behaviour and suggested fining those guilty of persistent offences.

Head teachers at the National Association of Head Teachers’ annual conference in Telford at the weekend echoed his concerns. One described how she was threatened with an axe by a parent. Another spoke of the restraining orders necessitated to ban parents from school when they became irate over a banned haircut or detention. “Do we need to have the death of a head teacher or the death of a senior member of staff, like Jo Cox, before we take this seriously?” asked another.

Before we take refuge in the notion that pass-the-buck parenting is class-specific, we should listen to what Education Secretary Damian Hinds had to say about the increasing number of parents using phone, email and social media campaigns to be “over-challenging” with teachers. “With some families there is a much quicker willingness…to say: ‘Why are you taking this action against my child?’”

I’ve sat around enough middle-class dinner tables to know that “quicker willingness” all too often stems from wealth and entitlement. I’ve heard mums abuse teachers for a child’s lack of progress in English – as their bright little button is plugged into a second consecutive hour on the iPad. And I’m not surprised by reports that in “high achieving” leafy catchment areas kids are coming to school with doctors’ notes excusing them from French – for “mental health” reasons.

When did parents and teachers stop working towards a common aim and become adversaries? As Hinds so rightly points out, “it used to be that when you were in trouble at school, you were in trouble at home.” And yet now parents start from the position that their child is right – and they have been wronged. Which won’t just be down to ‘little emperor’ syndrome but our blame culture.

Nanny state-ism hasn’t helped: every ill thought-out government incentive only making parents less accountable. Over a decade ago they decided teaching “emotional intelligence” in secondary schools was the answer. A few years later they added “healthy eating” and “the importance of physical activity” to the syllabus. And while those kids are being taught to say please and thank you and enjoy their five-a-day, where are the parents? On a Caribbean island sipping Mai Tais and grumbling about what a laborious business parenting is.

Because those obese children we read about at the weekend – the ones being admitted to hospital with the kind of fatty liver disease that only used to affect alcohol abusers of over 50 – can’t be the parents’ fault. They must be a failure of the schools or the Government or the fast food companies who didn’t tell us burgers and fries were bad, right? Parenting’s a muscle, and the more everyone else flexes it for you, the more deferring your responsibility becomes institutionalised.

Two years ago, a school in Portugal had the temerity to put up a poster reminding parents that home is where a school expects a child to be taught words like “please,” alongside the importance of being “on time, diligent,” and showing “the utmost respect for their elders and all teachers.” When that poster went viral, the Brits were uniquely vitriolic, I noticed. “You don’t go home with your students,” one pointed out. And that’s right: teachers don’t. That’s where their job ends and yours begins.

So while the new £10 million project launched to banish bad behaviour in schools is something, targeting the roots of that bad behaviour in pass-the-buck parents by implementing the kind of fines Wilshaw suggests is surely the key. Stick a pound sign in front of something and it’s funny how quickly accountability follows.