Jayne Dowle: Save me from this campaign for pushy parents

He says that heads should visit recalcitrant parents at home to “drag” them into taking an interest in school. We’ve got to “engage” more with what happens in the classroom, apparently. And there was me thinking we lived in a free society. Surely it is up to the individual parent to judge just how much interest they wish to take? And surely over-burdened headteachers already have enough to do without adding to their responsibilities? They went into teaching to teach, not to join the police force.

It’s all part of the Minister’s drive to encourage us all to become sharp-elbowed “pushy parents”. Save me from the moral superiority, please. I support my children. I help them. I have built Egyptian pyramids and rehearsed plays and designed posters for business enterprise and scratched my head over Year Seven maths.

However, I want them to make progress through school on their own merit – not because I have played the game on their behalf. When they leave, I’d like them to be fully-equipped to stand on their own two feet. I don’t want them to be ringing mother to write their university essays.

In an ideal world, all parents would take a hands-on approach to education. We would all have the mindset, the time and the energy to devote to our children’s educational well-being and progress 24/7. Unfortunately, as anyone who goes into politics should know, we don’t live in an ideal world.

Has this Minister not thought through the consequences of what he recommends? Teachers would need danger money, at the very least. Imagine a timid primary school Miss being forced to drive to some far-flung corner of town to hammer on a door. And let’s not forget the children. Imagine how mortified your son or daughter would be if their headteacher turned up on the doorstep.

It would set children and teachers against parents, and parents against each other. Who would choose the parents to be picked on? Would there be a secret bunker where Government spies beavered away on a hit list? What would be the criteria for a visit, and who would set it? Would certain postcodes be targeted in dawn raids? Would homework be inspected every Sunday night and pencil cases turned out for contraband sweets? Sorry if this sounds like something out of 1984, but I can’t help but think it’s all going too far.

Let’s get some perspective then, shall we? Whatever way you look at it, it is first and foremost the responsibility of schools to teach our children. I’m not saying that parents should shove them through the gate at half-past eight and forget about them until home time, but still. We pay our taxes to train our teachers to teach our children. If they can’t do their jobs effectively, it’s the system that should be looked at first, not parents who should be targeted.

Anyway, getting involved with school might sound simple on paper. In reality, though, it’s a process fraught with politics, riven with allegiances and alliances more complex than the European Union. Some parents have the time and leisure to go in and help out on a regular basis. Some parents have to work three jobs just to put food on the table and have no time to do anything else except sleep. It is sad but inevitable that children are already judged according to which category their parents fall into. And schools can be intimidating places, even for the relatively confident. I’ve done all kinds of jobs, but the thought of becoming a school governor, for instance, terrifies me. I lack the tact. I lack the patience. I am afraid to say that when it comes to my own children, I think my time is better spent talking with them than sitting in committee meetings.

Some of us are “joiners-in”. And some of us prefer to do things quietly in the background in our own way. No disrespect whatsoever to the many parents who work hard as volunteers, help in the classroom, raise school funds and contribute to after-school activities. I appreciate that this level of involvement can demand the diplomacy skills of Ban Ki-Moon, nerves of steel and the skin of an elephant. Not everyone is cut out for it.

And, let’s be honest. The kind of parents who have to be bullied into taking an interest are never going to be the kind of parents who turn up bright and early every Monday morning volunteering to help with guided reading. Frankly, this wrong-headed notion sounds like a colossal waste of time and political effort. Better to let headteachers get on properly with the job they are paid to do, and leave the rest of us to scratch our heads over Year Seven maths.