Teachers are not nannies

They shouldn't have to clean up after negligent parents

A recent survey revealed that a third of teachers said their school was helping children with teeth brushing – and a record number of children are going to school without being toilet trained. Many teachers are now being forced to spend precious time and resources feeding, changing and cleaning youngsters – making them even more overworked and unhappy.

And who can blame them? How many teachers on the cusp of their career dream of picking up the slack of parents flagrantly shirking their responsibilities?

It’s time to face up to the fact that negligent homes are making teachers’ jobs a nightmare.

This issue has been steadily creeping up on our education system, and we can no longer ignore it.

And then there is the uncomfortable intersection between child poverty and increasingly careless and state-dependent homes.

One such school highlights this trend. At St Nicholas Church of England Primary Academy in Boston – one of the most deprived parts of Lincolnshire – there are high levels of migration (71 children moved in and out of the school during the last academic year).

For nearly 70% of the children, English is not their first language. Just under half of the school’s pupils are eligible for free school meals, and children regularly turn up with left-over takeaways, or just chocolate and crisps.

Sadly, if you speak to teachers, the story of St Nicholas is common around the country. In fact, the survey commissioned by the BBC showed two-thirds (66%) of senior teachers say their school provided food for pupils to eat outside school hours in the last 12 months.

It’s true that many parents are getting poorer – both in time and money. A stagnant economy and dependence on welfare can be felt at all levels of society. And the data shows that, as of last year, 4.3 million children, or 30%, were living in relative poverty. Of that number, 44% of those children live in single parent homes.

But there is an even greater cultural shift that must be addressed. And it’s an uncomfortable one. We are living in a society where expectations of decent child rearing have slipped.

So much so that up to 90% of teachers are now reporting having dealt with children aged from four to seven who still aren’t toilet trained. No matter your financial circumstances, when did it become okay to not toilet train your child?

In the past, that would have been a source of great shame. But today’s parents are flagrantly shirking their responsibilities – blaming being ‘too busy’ to teach their children basic human functions such as using the toilet or brushing their teeth. That is simply unacceptable.

We are seeing children being raised in increasingly fragmented homes and the pressure on public services to safeguard them has become unsustainable.

Tooth decay is now the most common reason for children aged between six and 10 to be admitted to hospital. Figures show that 42,000 children went to hospital to have teeth removed in 2021/22 – 26,700 for whom decay was their main diagnosis.

Labour’s plan for supervised toothbrushing in schools is also missing the point entirely. We need better parenting, not to absolve parents of fundamental responsibilities like this.

Up to 90% of teachers report having dealt with children aged from four to seven who still aren’t toilet trained. Should Labour mandate supervised nappy changing too?

The point is that teachers shouldn’t have to do the job of parents. It’s about time to speak up for Britain’s children. All too often, people are shouted down because “they don’t know how hard some parents have got it – so it’s not their place to judge”.

But that excuse is lazy and irresponsible. Should we continue to fail our children for fear of irate parents who feel that they’re beyond reproach? Parents are not judged by the amount of perceived effort they put into childrearing, but by the products of their homes.

What good is ‘trying your best’ if your child turns out to be a maladjusted, social misfit with poor hygiene and no respect for others? We must of course support parents and equip them with the tools to raise productive members of society.

But that cannot be done in an illiberal, censorship ridden vacuum where the truth is curtailed for fear of causing offence. Teachers are not nannies. And yet we are losing tens of thousands every year because of high stress levels and burnout. We have the largest class sizes in Europe and yet last year we lost 43,522 teachers from the profession.

Enough is enough. It takes a village to raise a child, and society is part of that village. Schools must no longer fill in the gap for children growing up in increasingly negligent and impoverished homes.