Dr Reva Gudi is GP and healthcare leader in Hayes, Middlesex, she is also a former Conservative parliamentary candidate, and serves as a local school governor and charity trustee.
What do we expect of parents?
In a discussion on law and order, raised by a member of the audience on BBC Question Time on 8 October, the panel considered causes, prevention and consequences of anti-social behaviour, and weighed how much falls to the state and how much to families.
It is a question I encounter regularly: are we still clear about what parents are responsible for and are we prepared to say so?
I am a parent, and far from a perfect one. Alongside that, my work as a GP, my role as a junior school governor and growing up with a mother who was a schoolteacher have shown me how profoundly children’s health and development are shaped at home. Over time, family structures have changed, as has the world in which our children grow up. Regardless, parental responsibility remains.
Most parents instinctively accept this and meet that responsibility, even in difficult circumstances. But where this is not happening, we have become reluctant to talk about it, and children are paying the price. Nowhere is this clearer than in the growing list of tasks that we now expect schools to take on.
In September this year, the government announced tougher school food standards. Free breakfast clubs are being rolled out. Staff in thousands of nurseries and reception classes are funded to supervise daily tooth brushing. Toilet training is becoming a regular feature in schools.
Each measure has a rationale. The evidence is sobering. More than a third of children leave primary school overweight or obese, and tooth decay is the leading cause of hospital admissions among five- to nine-year-olds. School staff surveyed by Kindred, estimate that around a quarter of children now start reception not toilet trained, and the charity says teachers lose the equivalent of a day’s teaching each week as a result.
I welcome measures that protect children’s health and well-being. But school provision can reinforce family habits; it cannot replace them.
Habits are formed at home
Children spend roughly six hours a day in the classroom. Evenings, weekends and holidays bring the other meals, bedtime toothbrushing and the example we set as adults.
Shared family meals are associated with healthier diets. Yet an AXA Health survey of 2,000 parents found only 43 per cent of families ate together daily, and 61 per cent had technology at the table. The kitchen table is often where children talk, difficulties are noticed and routines take shape.
Government guidance does mention families, suggesting cooking activities with parents and supplying materials for brushing at home. But I would argue that there is less emphasis on parents as the people primarily responsible for their children’s everyday health.
And it is not just physical health.
Schools are increasingly expected to manage behaviour, establish boundaries and teach children the basic expectations of everyday life. In my surgery, I see firsthand how difficult some children find waiting, listening and accepting boundaries. These skills develop over time, and while schools have a role in reinforcing them, their foundations are usually laid long before a child enters the classroom.
The blurring of roles
Some will regard clear expectations of parents as unwelcome state interference. The opposite is true.
The expansion of school provision is not in itself evidence of declining parental responsibility. But it should prompt us to ask whether we are maintaining clear expectations of parents alongside of it.
The state is already taking on tasks incrementally in classrooms across the country. Every task a school absorbs makes the next feel normal; what begins as a stopgap risk becoming a permanent expectation, and responsibility shifts away from home.
This is not an argument against supporting families who struggle. Some parents face considerable difficulties, and children should not suffer as a result. But there is an important distinction between helping parents fulfil their responsibilities and quietly taking over those tasks on their behalf.
Poverty matters and is serious. Some children depend heavily on school meals, and healthier food costs more, per calorie. But in my consulting room I also see barriers of time, knowledge, confidence and habit, with or without financial pressure.
Expectations, alongside support
Schools should reasonably expect children to arrive having had breakfast, at home or at a club; to have their teeth brushed; and to bring packed lunches consistent with school policy, with sensible exceptions. Toilet training should be expected before school entry, recognising developmental and medical conditions.
A teacher recently told me she had her daughter at 19, with very little support, yet saw toilet training before school as her responsibility. Her point was not that it was easy, but that some responsibilities were hers regardless.
The early results are striking. In York, sending parents toilet-training advice with their school place offer, alongside workshops and training, nearly halved the proportion of children starting Reception not toilet trained, from 11 per cent to 6 per cent. That was not the state taking over. It was the state helping parents do their job.
Where families need more help, difficulty is a reason for support, not lower expectations.
When routines break down, schools should meet the immediate needs of the child, with direct conversations with parents about what is getting in the way. Where support is offered but persistently declined, and a child’s health is suffering, that should be followed up through existing safeguarding routes, rather than quietly absorbed. Teachers need backing from school leaders and governors when they uphold expectations, especially if faced with hostility, and clear routes to health visitors, school nurses and early help.
Put families at the centre
A stronger approach would put families at the centre of prevention and protect and strengthen universal health visiting. It makes little sense to keep expanding schools’ tasks that begin at home, while health visitors, who support parents of young children, are stretched so thin.
A family-centred approach would also give schools clear national backing to set and uphold expectations of families, with referral routes when difficulties arise; make essential support accessible to parents and children together; and put healthy family routines and habits, including sensible screen time and clear boundaries, into mainstream child public health messaging.
Shifting ever more responsibility onto our schools and the state while expecting less of parents is in no child’s interests, and it is unsustainable.
That is a balance we must all work to restore.
Dr Reva Gudi is GP and healthcare leader in Hayes, Middlesex, she is also a former Conservative parliamentary candidate, and serves as a local school governor and charity trustee.
What do we expect of parents?
In a discussion on law and order, raised by a member of the audience on BBC Question Time on 8 October, the panel considered causes, prevention and consequences of anti-social behaviour, and weighed how much falls to the state and how much to families.
It is a question I encounter regularly: are we still clear about what parents are responsible for and are we prepared to say so?
I am a parent, and far from a perfect one. Alongside that, my work as a GP, my role as a junior school governor and growing up with a mother who was a schoolteacher have shown me how profoundly children’s health and development are shaped at home. Over time, family structures have changed, as has the world in which our children grow up. Regardless, parental responsibility remains.
Most parents instinctively accept this and meet that responsibility, even in difficult circumstances. But where this is not happening, we have become reluctant to talk about it, and children are paying the price. Nowhere is this clearer than in the growing list of tasks that we now expect schools to take on.
In September this year, the government announced tougher school food standards. Free breakfast clubs are being rolled out. Staff in thousands of nurseries and reception classes are funded to supervise daily tooth brushing. Toilet training is becoming a regular feature in schools.
Each measure has a rationale. The evidence is sobering. More than a third of children leave primary school overweight or obese, and tooth decay is the leading cause of hospital admissions among five- to nine-year-olds. School staff surveyed by Kindred, estimate that around a quarter of children now start reception not toilet trained, and the charity says teachers lose the equivalent of a day’s teaching each week as a result.
I welcome measures that protect children’s health and well-being. But school provision can reinforce family habits; it cannot replace them.
Habits are formed at home
Children spend roughly six hours a day in the classroom. Evenings, weekends and holidays bring the other meals, bedtime toothbrushing and the example we set as adults.
Shared family meals are associated with healthier diets. Yet an AXA Health survey of 2,000 parents found only 43 per cent of families ate together daily, and 61 per cent had technology at the table. The kitchen table is often where children talk, difficulties are noticed and routines take shape.
Government guidance does mention families, suggesting cooking activities with parents and supplying materials for brushing at home. But I would argue that there is less emphasis on parents as the people primarily responsible for their children’s everyday health.
And it is not just physical health.
Schools are increasingly expected to manage behaviour, establish boundaries and teach children the basic expectations of everyday life. In my surgery, I see firsthand how difficult some children find waiting, listening and accepting boundaries. These skills develop over time, and while schools have a role in reinforcing them, their foundations are usually laid long before a child enters the classroom.
The blurring of roles
Some will regard clear expectations of parents as unwelcome state interference. The opposite is true.
The expansion of school provision is not in itself evidence of declining parental responsibility. But it should prompt us to ask whether we are maintaining clear expectations of parents alongside of it.
The state is already taking on tasks incrementally in classrooms across the country. Every task a school absorbs makes the next feel normal; what begins as a stopgap risk becoming a permanent expectation, and responsibility shifts away from home.
This is not an argument against supporting families who struggle. Some parents face considerable difficulties, and children should not suffer as a result. But there is an important distinction between helping parents fulfil their responsibilities and quietly taking over those tasks on their behalf.
Poverty matters and is serious. Some children depend heavily on school meals, and healthier food costs more, per calorie. But in my consulting room I also see barriers of time, knowledge, confidence and habit, with or without financial pressure.
Expectations, alongside support
Schools should reasonably expect children to arrive having had breakfast, at home or at a club; to have their teeth brushed; and to bring packed lunches consistent with school policy, with sensible exceptions. Toilet training should be expected before school entry, recognising developmental and medical conditions.
A teacher recently told me she had her daughter at 19, with very little support, yet saw toilet training before school as her responsibility. Her point was not that it was easy, but that some responsibilities were hers regardless.
The early results are striking. In York, sending parents toilet-training advice with their school place offer, alongside workshops and training, nearly halved the proportion of children starting Reception not toilet trained, from 11 per cent to 6 per cent. That was not the state taking over. It was the state helping parents do their job.
Where families need more help, difficulty is a reason for support, not lower expectations.
When routines break down, schools should meet the immediate needs of the child, with direct conversations with parents about what is getting in the way. Where support is offered but persistently declined, and a child’s health is suffering, that should be followed up through existing safeguarding routes, rather than quietly absorbed. Teachers need backing from school leaders and governors when they uphold expectations, especially if faced with hostility, and clear routes to health visitors, school nurses and early help.
Put families at the centre
A stronger approach would put families at the centre of prevention and protect and strengthen universal health visiting. It makes little sense to keep expanding schools’ tasks that begin at home, while health visitors, who support parents of young children, are stretched so thin.
A family-centred approach would also give schools clear national backing to set and uphold expectations of families, with referral routes when difficulties arise; make essential support accessible to parents and children together; and put healthy family routines and habits, including sensible screen time and clear boundaries, into mainstream child public health messaging.
Shifting ever more responsibility onto our schools and the state while expecting less of parents is in no child’s interests, and it is unsustainable.
That is a balance we must all work to restore.