Parents blamed for 'downward spiral' of discipline in schools

PARENTS are to blame for school discipline worsening because children are no longer learning moral values at home, a teachers’ leader said yesterday.

UNRULY There is a lack of respect in the classroom UNRULY: There is a lack of respect in the classroom

Schools have to provide pupils with a stable upbringing because parental skills are declining.

Philip Parkin, general secretary of Voice, the union for education professionals, told its conference in Daventry, Northamptonshire, that there had been a “downward spiral” in the quality of parenting that was likely to continue.

He said: “I am making no judgment on this but the focus on the primacy of the individual, rather than community, the changing pattern of family structures, the shortening of the length of many relationships, the creation of many more step-families, the emphasis on parents going out to work and the consequent perception of the reduced value and worth of the full-time parent have all changed the way we behave.”

The traditional sense of community and parents taking responsibility for their children has gone and it was now showing in the behaviour of children in schools, he said.

Mr Parkin, a former primary school teacher, added: “There is a problem with low-level disruption; it can disturb lessons and disturb the education of other pupils.

“There is cheek in the classroom and a lack of a sense of the importance of education which many children now come to school with.

“There is a lack of respect, which is a much misused word these days. That sense of ‘you can’t tell me what to do.’ It is very difficult.”

He said in his final 10 years at a junior school in Grimsby he saw a significant decline in parenting standards – but he was unsure how the breakdown could be fixed.

He said: “How do we deal with it. Do we build parenting skills into the secondary curriculum, which is already packed?

“Do we have pre-natal classes that we compel people to attend? I don’t think we can do that. Somehow we have got to break this downward spiral of parenting skills.”

Mr Parkin said it is “worrying” that a third of adults do not feel the moral standards of children have declined since the adults were young.

He said: “If successive generations of parents become less skilled at the job, then what is learned becomes increasingly diluted as time goes by.”

Schools are now expected to address issues including obesity and under-age drinking as well as teach the children, he said.

He attacked communities for failing to share in the responsibility for bringing up young people.

“Respect for each other and care for each other, the sense of community we had, the community which cares for its children, I think that has been significantly eroded,” he said.

“More and more people are self-centred individuals rather than community-minded and they are not prepared to share the pleasure of bringing up children.”

He said it had been claimed that “tribal loyalty” had replaced family loyalty and that gang culture is now a way of life.

But while the behaviour of a young minority may be deplorable, it is adults who have created the social climate that allows it to flourish, he said.

Mr Parkin said parenting was more difficult these days because of the commercialisation of childhood and he had “sympathy” for parents .

He said: “It was much easier when I was a parent back in the 1970s and 80s than it is now.”

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