By Rory Edwards
Rory Edwards is a local parent, teacher of 29 years and a school governor. He offers us an insight into certain dilemmas parents might face throughout the school year.
About 6 weeks ago, I was asked a question that teachers have been asked by students for a very long time. As I was teaching my Maths lesson, a girl asked: “Sir, why are we learning this? When am I going to use it? Why don’t we learn useful stuff like mortgag-es?” I replied, “Well your parents should be teaching you about mortgages and you’re learning this because 1) if you’re planning on doing A-levels, you’re going to need this eve-ry lesson and 2) you may never use it again but you need it to pass your GCSEs so you can get to the next part of your education.” Now you may or may not agree with my re-sponse but the mortgages part got me thinking about when things changed from schools teaching just the academic stuff to where it now teaches a whole load of social issues as well. Where does school responsibility end and where does parental responsibility start?
Looking back at the history of schools in my lifetime, it was in the 1980s when the Nation-al Curriculum started. Schools now had to teach certain subjects and it was also when CSEs and O-levels changed to GCSEs. I started teaching in the early 90s and when I went into teacher training, blackboards and chalk were changing to whiteboards, pens and overhead projectors. This was also my first experience of PSE or Personal and Social Education.
This was introduced because it was identified by the government that parents were no long-er teaching certain skills to their children, for example, safety (now mainly online safety), community, and of course, sex education. In the schools I worked in, the form tutor was the one who tried to teach this to their form group. I say tried to teach, as teachers were-n’t trained to teach PSE and there were very few resources at the time. The internet was still a few years away! Imagine being a 21-year-old, with very little life experience, now teaching teenage boys and girls about the birds and the bees!! As teachers had only been trained to teach their subject, I suspect a lot more harm than good was done whilst teaching PSE in those early years. Over the years, PSE became PHSE (H for health) and other letters have been added in different schools that I have taught in. One school had PHSCEE lessons!
In the 00s, Curriculum 2000 changed A levels to a modular course, OHPs morphed into electronic whiteboards, chalkboards were a thing of the past and teachers were using computers to teach. The 00s was also the time of the biggest change in education. In 2003, following the sad death of Victoria Climbié, the Every Child Matters green paper was published and set into motion the safe-guarding world that we have in schools today. Whether it’s right or wrong but from this point, schools took on more responsibility for students and unfortunately in some cases, parents have left schools to it. Now don’t get me wrong, schools and teachers were looking after children’s welfare long before this but this was when schools became accountable for almost every part of a child’s life.
So where does school responsibility end and parent responsibility start? Nowadays, it’s difficult to say as it should be more of a part-nership. Good parents will always do the right things by their children but if parents are struggling, know that the schools will always be on hand to help.