Labour’s latest proposal for teachers to supervise pupils’ toothbrushing reveals a worrying view of parenting as playing a light-touch, rather than hands-on, role in a child’s upbringing. Only a week ago, the thoroughly sensible and appealing shadow education secretary Bridget Phillipson MP delivered a speech that emphasised the need ‘for a two-way street’ in education: teachers and parents should collaborate to improve children’s outcomes and school attendance, which has reached crisis point. Yet within a day Sir Keir Starmer had come up with a proposal for teachers to oversee three to five year olds as they brush their teeth.
Sir Keir as the tooth fairy is a comical image but one that should also raise the alarm. He is proposing initiatives that would put teachers in charge of activities that have until now been the responsibility of parents.
An education system that pretends home doesn’t exist and parents don’t matter will inevitably fail
No one would deny that children are going hungry or that some are obese, and too many have a mouthful of rotting teeth.
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