I was a full time teaching head in a small primary school. I taught the juniors in the main building where the childrens loos were. The infants were out in a terrapin. One day at the beginning of the academic year I heard screaming from the girls loos. I rushed out & left my class. There was a new, first year, infant sitting on the lavatory screaming. She had never been to the toilet alone & didn't know how to wipe her bottom. Her mother had always done it. That was how she got her mothers attention.
It was my first headship & I learned a valuable lesson. From then onward I always did a talk for prospective parents, before their little angels came to school, about the sort of skills we needed children to have to be able to participate in learning. Basic things like being able to dress & undress themselves, operate a tap & wash their hands, go to the toilet, feed themselves.....Tooth brushing didn't come into it. The assumption was that parents did this in the morning & evening before & after school. Apparently children aren't able to brush their own teeth properly until they are between 6/8 - 9/10. Before 6 they don't have the dexterity. It should be done either before a meal or about 30 minutes after a meal.
So I am wondering why there is a move for schools to undertake supervised tooth brushing in school. I know there are breakfast clubs in schools with 50% or more children in IDACI (Income Deprivation Affecting Children Index) bands A-F. A being the most deprived. Children can't concentrate & learn if they are hungry, so I'm in favour. There are lots of benefits when so many families struggle to pay their bills & feed their children.
What I don't understand is how we have reached a stage where Education is expected to take on more and more of a parental or social work responsibility. The curriculum is already very wide & it's difficult to put everything educationally necessary in the hours available. The Arts & Sport timetabling has already been reduced because of the pressures of "core subjects" & the shortage of teachers confident & skilled to teach them.
I would argue that basic personal skills should have been taught by parents before their children ever get to school. Children should also have been taught to be able to sit still & listen, to take their turn, to share with others. If you don't have these skills you cannot learn. If teachers have to teach these skills to some of their children, what are the children who are already ready for the demands of school going to do? In the case of teaching tooth brushing, do the majority of primary schools even have toilet areas where large numbers of children can brush & spit? Especially when each primary class may well have in excess of 30 children. The logistics don't stack up.
It seems to me that the fundamental problem is that some parents don't have adequate parenting skills. So they have expectations of what education can do for them that are unrealistic & in my view inappropriate. I would have thought that equipping parents with good parenting skills should be relatively easy & not hugely expensive. That could be school based, perhaps in the holidays, before a child starts school. It would benefit all the children in a family not just one.
I don't blame parents. Many have not been brought up by parents with good skills themselves. That doesn't mean they don't love their children. I do think that most parents would welcome help. Not just in this area, but also with setting goals & rules & enforcing them to encourage good behaviiour.
It's hard enough being a parent of 1 or 2 children. Teaching a class of 30 plus is very rewarding, but can be an uphill struggle.
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