Parents ‘should face consequences for their children’s behaviour’, says union
https://www.thetimes.com/uk/education/article/parents-children-school-behaviour-consequences-gzzl6s058
Posted by Imaginary_Abroad_330
Parents ‘should face consequences for their children’s behaviour’, says union
https://www.thetimes.com/uk/education/article/parents-children-school-behaviour-consequences-gzzl6s058
Posted by Imaginary_Abroad_330
24 Comments
Couldn’t read the article as behind a paywall. But heck yes, parents should face the consequences for their children’s behaviour. They’re the fully responsible adult in this, any bad actions their child does is both the child and the parent’s responsibility.
Is this because there is a lack of specialised schools that deal with extreme behaviours and children are in mainstream schools?
Do teachers get taught how to recognise and manage children’s behaviour? There’s usually signs before an individual stabs someone else in the eye with scissors.
Put a mobile phone signal blocker around schools during school hours.
Edit: autocorrect
Yep. I’ve always thought that we should do what they do in the Netherlands and some other European countries and make parents civilly liable for the actions of their children.*
Child smashes a window? Parents either pay for a new one or get sued for the money. Child stabs someone? Parents are on the hook for the personal injury lawsuit. Etc etc.
Would go a long way to encourage parents to do their job properly and actually parent their kids
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*I’m aware that it is technically possible to hold parents civilly liable for the actions of their children in the UK, but it’s far more difficult, and the legal hurdle to do this is extremely high, to the point where it’s so unlikely to be possible that it’s practically impossible in the vast majority of cases.
This quote gets to the crux of the matter for me
> To this end, it would seem that the right of every child to an education needs to be more robustly followed up by taking responsibility away from the small minority of parents who are abdicating this responsibility for their offspring.
Yes it is important all children get an education and just ejecting troublesome pupils from the school system isn’t going to end well for them but an alternative of everyone in a class having a lackluster education because of a minority misbehaving is also terrible. They also have a right to an education and are actually willing to utilise it.
Do parents even face their own consequence for their own behaviour?
Truth of the matter is, parents themselves often have the same trait. It’s why their child developed in such a way.
Depends on the behaviour and the age of the child. A 16 year old kid who refuses to listen to their parent is much different from a 9 year old having a meltdown because they’ve never heard the word no or had to share.
I think it would really help to make parents see that their parenting or lack of has consequences. There seems to be a shift in parents expecting schools to parent their children for them with children starting school in nappies, unable to use a knife and fork, not owning a book and I heard this week not recognising their own name??
I think if there was some kind of compulsory parenting classes where parents were taught the responsibilities of having children such as basic skills, teaching manners and disciplining bad behaviour, there would be less messed up feral kids attacking their teachers.
Disclaimer- I know it’s a minority of children, many parents are doing an amazing job and when I use the word discipline I don’t mean physical punishment I mean teaching right from wrong and having consequences for bad behaviour.
Sort of. Parents can mess a child up. But some children are awful for no apparent external reason. The parents might prefer to abandon them either way. A difficult policy.
Former head of year in a secondary school here. Here’s my opinion, whatever it’s worth.
The behaviour that the unions are referring to is unmanageable repeat offenders of extreme behaviour. The key point here is the repeating factor. If those students who disrupt daily and make the other students’ lives complete hell went to their detentions & served their exclusions, there’s a chance of deterring that behaviour.
The behaviour is perpetuated by parents refusing to adhere to school policy when it comes to detentions or other sanctions so those same students have nobody saying “your actions have consequences” at home. In those situations, of which I’ve seen **many**, yes there absolutely should be consequences for parents.
Not prison. Not criminal consequences. But mandatory programs to help their kid(s) reconnect with the purpose of education, discipline & empathy for others. If they attend and the kids are still making shit choices, the school should have the contractual option to then request a managed move to another school.
The unions are not talking about the odd detention here, the occasional late to school there. They’re talking about the epidemic of students going to school, deliberately disrupting the learning of other students for a few hours until they get their own way and get excluded.
It’s needed. It might just be me, but kids seem to behave worse these days. I’ve noticed it during the break the last few weeks, they have no respect for anything.
The criminal age of responsibility is 10. Just send them to juvie.
I 100% agree that parents should face consequences for their children behaviour.
But I do have to ask, when are teachers/schools going to take some consequences for the pathetic lack of teaching in general and willingness to remove disruptive children from the classroom.
I have two kids in school at present. Eldest is 14 in secondary school. Youngest is 11 in last year of primary school.
My eldest regularly complains that most of her lesson are extremely difficult to learn anything from because most of the lesson is disrupted by unruly kids. She also complains that several of her lesson like French and English consist of spending several lessons a week every week for the past several months watching movies in class. How ok earth is that teaching?
My youngest has forest school 4 or 5 times a week. He says that in short his class are left to “mess around in the flower beds” and that’s about it. They aren’t growing anything, planting anything and aren’t learning about forest or the environment. Last week I took him into school on the Monday and he told me he was looking forward to have an easy day, as he had “double football” in which the kids were just left to have a kick around, Forest school, the the had math, followed be free learning time.
I have little to no faith that our schools in the UK are either allowed l or bothered enough to remove children that are stopping the ones that want to learn, from learning.
And even if they did, it doesn’t seem to me that school are interested in providing a curriculum that engages the children and encourages them to learn.
So yeah TLDR, parents should be forced to get their children’s shit together. The schools should get theirs together too.
Teaching staff here it’s a tricky one, partly due to the fact a parent can be totally supportive of the school and the kid still be a total cunt, the only direct consequence I generally support would be an outright ban on mobiles were repeat offenders have the childs mobile destroyed. Since mobiles are generally a luxury item and the loss for a parent isnt actually a critical one, this puts a non-essential cost on the parent which doesnt really have to be paid.
Look at the kids in that picture. Absolutely feral!
non paywalled version: [https://archive.is/20250418160801/https://www.thetimes.com/uk/education/article/parents-children-school-behaviour-consequences-gzzl6s058](https://archive.is/20250418160801/https://www.thetimes.com/uk/education/article/parents-children-school-behaviour-consequences-gzzl6s058)
We have somehow lost the idea that children must be taught to behave, although even if we hadn’t, many parents have no idea how to go about this. In some cases nor do the schools since special schools have been deprecated which means expertise was dissipated.
They say we cannot expect Fred to sit still because he has ADHD, say, rather than we **need** to teach Fred to sit still because he has ADHD.
At a supermarket checkout recently, a mother snapped at her daughter to stop trying to help take goods out of the trolley. Well, how the flip will the daughter learn **why** the order matters (weight and grouping items when packing) if mum doesn’t tell her? ETA turn it into a game where mum calls for the next item and daughter hands it to her.
We see the howls from the outraged middle classes when a school insists on its dress code being followed. What has the length of a skirt to do with learning how to tell the time in Spanish? Of course, the answer is nothing and yes the school is being picky but the point is that we do need to learn to obey rules even if we cannot rationalise them or disagree with them, because that is how we move more-or-less smoothly through adult society.
It might also help if something could be done about gangs but that is outside a school’s control.
Yep they should. It’s amazing how many are autistic apparently, I bet the majority aren’t autistic, just not parented. Even autistic children can be well behaved. It’s very different when you just refuse to teach your kid anything or tell them no.
It might be a reminder to more motivated parents I suppose. But I often see parents screaming at their children in the street (I live in a rough area). Consequences on those parents will be passed on to the children.
I’ve worked with just about the worst behaved children in the country. I am convinced that the ultimate behavioural management tool is the implicit threat of violence. I know that sounds awful, but the “and what the fuck are you going to do about it?” attitude when behaviour is challenged must be met with “make you comply, or hate the alternative.” This isn’t a call for corporal punishment or child abuse; it’s a call for meeting shitty attitudes with zero tolerance and granting pastoral staff the right to restrain (using pain compliance techniques if required) and detain kids who are violent and disruptive.
I think if this is tied in to proper support for parents it could be quite a positive thing. Do I think that parents are always responsible for their children’s bad behaviour? No. Do I think that some parents need support in managing their children’s bad behaviour? Yes. Do I think that some parents enable their children’s bad behaviour? Also yes.
If measures could be put in place to discourage the third thing and provide the second we might see improvements.
Yes, this should be the case anywhere.
Tired of underaged kids walking around with weapons hurting people and nothing ever happens.
Imagine if the parents get a 10k € fine for your kid doing bad shit or put the parent in jail from 1 day to 30 days.
I can guarantee you that the parents will learn to teach better and the kid will have to listen better.
Too many parents today molly cuddling their kids as if they can do no wrong. Definitely needs to be more accountability
Who is enforcing this? As in, who is making the call? Who is sending the fine? The grief you can get for setting a detention or telling a child off is crazy these days, I’d hate to have to be the one phoning the parent to tell them I’m sending a fine.
I once worked with a Mum whose three daughters all got Anti Social Behaviour Orders at the same time. From that you’d assume she was a terrible Mum but unless she was great at hiding it she seemed a little stern but trying her best. Like literally escorted the youngest to school to make sure she was there. Then ran around the school to catch the same daughter trying to leave by another entrance.
Kids unfortunately have free will.