Detaining school parents is a bit much, but banning them makes sense

I spent years trying to stop my daughter from becoming a teacher. Sure, teaching is a noble profession. Sure, our schools need to be properly staffed. And quadruple sure, I confess my grandchildren need to get an education beyond the knee of their doting grandparents. We are doing an excellent job of numeracy mentoring using the NRL scores on Monday morning.

Teachers have their hands full with problematic students. And then there’s the parents.Credit: Marija Ercegovac

But here’s what I know about teachers – from the point of view of a parent (three kids; six different schools). Too many parents are the absolute worst. You don’t even need to go into a classroom to see how awful they are. Come with me and watch parents in action on the sideline of any school-age sporting fixture. That parent shouting, “Go yourself, Nathan”, is just encouraging their kid to work alone. That parent shouting, “I’m blind, I’m deaf, I want to be a ref”, is telling the kid that rules are meant to be broken.

Now, it turns out that teachers – particularly principals – want to leave the education sector. Why? A host of reasons, but here’s the one that stands out – parents. You can imagine being the school leaders at the UK primary school that just banned two parents. Getting the parents detained in a police cell for 11 hours was a stretch – but I’d love to have seen all the correspondence before it got to that.

We are losing a generation of school leaders because of you and the way you behave when you are in conflict with the school. We are losing a generation of school leaders because the systems – the departments of education across the country – don’t properly support them. Training is poor. Support is worse. And then you have to deal with parents whose children are unrecognised geniuses. You exhaust me.

Believe me, I understand what it’s like to be in conflict with a school. Across six schools, you find teachers who are incompetent, school leaders afraid of their teachers, and parent bodies who are true delulu. But I never poked my finger into the face of someone I disagreed with (except in my internal monologues). I never swore at a teacher. As for physical confrontation? No, thanks. I’d come off worse, and I’d still feel angry.

It’s more-or-less normal to be so deeply invested in your kids that you want the absolute best for them. Here’s the truth – teachers and school leaders also want the best for your kid, recognising also that no kid is an island. What’s not normal is going off your head at the school.

School principals and other school leaders experience all this and more. Threats of violence – and worse, actual violence and verbal abuse. Correspondence warfare. Time taken up with parents who should be booking time with a shrink instead of booking time with the principal.

Paul Kidson, associate professor of education at the Australian Catholic University, says there is a widespread failure from policy and system leaders – a “reasons to be cheerful” mode that never confronts the root causes. We don’t need Pollyannas. We need pessimists who see what’s before them and try to fix the problem.

In ACU’s latest report, the researchers surveyed almost 2200 people. That’s more than one-fifth of Australian school leaders from primary and high school leaders across the country, from each and every school system: government, independent and Catholic. Working hours? Just under 48 hours a week across every single week. No time off for good behaviour. Nearly one-quarter of those surveyed have depression. Nearly half had experienced a critical incident, such as violence, abuse and child-protection issues.

Over half reported threats of violence, another 57 per cent reported gossip and slander, and one-third are subjected to cyberbullying. I’m surprised it’s so low.

Now, before my children were in paid employment, if you’d asked me what teaching was like, I’d have guessed it was convenient with plenty of paid holidays and a manageable workload. Now, my daughter, her partner and their two kids live with us, and I see teaching for what it really is. Early mornings. Late nights. Multiple emergencies. School holidays are not holidays for the teachers. The lives of teachers – particularly those who have some kind of leadership position within schools – are filled with spreadsheets, staff management, parent management, reports, and timetabling. Begging casuals to fill in vacancies. Incident reports. And, for many, financial management. Parents contact them at all hours of the day and night.

The University of Melbourne’s Jessica Gerrard says parental expectations have fundamentally changed from one generation to the next. “Parental advocacy – that’s something that wasn’t happening. It’s a new phenomenon. It’s the parent as school chooser.”

Is it part of the fallout from the rush to private education? Do parents think they will get a better result if they choose? I don’t think so. Private school kids are not dominating the best and brightest lists. They aren’t dominating sporting achievements. As for care and kindness, far more valuable, I can promise you that the behaviour of private school kids is absolutely no better than the behaviour of public school kids, although they are much more likely to have a lawyer, engaged by their parents, to advocate for them when the going gets tough at school.

Gerrard says it’s this idea – this project – of trying to produce the perfect child.

“We have to make sure they are the best,” she says. And as she points out, we now understand we should be involved in schools. It’s what she describes as a “cemented policy aspiration and widely accepted social norm”. Yep, I ended up on three parent bodies in the same year, and seriously, I was sent quite mad. Plus, you have to be a “good” parent, or at least what the school thinks is good. There is little avenue for critique. I’m not a person who naturally sides with authority, so trying to change things from “the inside” was tough.

As Gerrard points out, parental advocacy can be so excellent – look at the huge changes made by parents advocating for Indigenous kids or for kids who have a disability, even something as simple as advocating for a wider curriculum.

But parents need ways forward that don’t include belligerence and violence. We don’t need monsters with no self-control. Sure, schools should be welcoming and supportive. Parents must be the same. And if you don’t like the school, try home-schooling. Let’s see how you go with that.

Jenna Price is a regular columnist for The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age.