Calum Henderson

Parents are the people that will see the students in your class more than you will, and they will have a much greater influence over you students then you ever will.

Recently in the Public vs Private series, I have done two posts on parents. One on parents who care too much, and one on parents that don’t care enough. This is the final post on parents, and will cover why they matter in deciding where you will be teaching.

As a teacher, you will be interacting directly with your class for up to 4.5 hours a day, or 22.5 hours a week. These interactions will be mostly in the classroom and in a formal setting, and you will be expecting a certain level of interaction from your students. That is that you will be expecting them to show up to class, and to do homework, and to have the materials available for them to do these things.

Parents will be interacting with your students for significantly longer than you will be. If the parents of students don’t care about education, then it is highly likely that the students won’t care about education. And therefore your interactions with your students will be scared by this.

Parents matter in deciding where to teach, before deciding to teach at a school. Try to gauge what the parents will be like, and take this factor into consideration.

Parents will have the greatest influence on your students, so you need to consider them.

Read more posts in this series at Public vs Private | Main Page.

Parents matter in deciding where you want to teach.

Recently I wrote a post about parents at schools that care too much about their child’s education (here). This is the opposing post, about those parents who don’t care enough. Here are some characteristics of parents that don’t care enough.

Parents who don’t care enough

• Students may not value education as their parents don’t.
• This may lead to students not showing up to class very often, and as their is no support for education from home, there is no easy solution.
• Discipline is a challenge as students don’t fear the consequences and are not reprimanded by parents.
• Parents don’t give any support to students or to teachers, and so teachers can feel alone in situations.
• Parents don’t keep teachers accountable, and so teachers may be tempted to be lazy.
• Students may not have proper resources such as pens and pencils with which to work, and so learning may be compromised.

These are some characteristics of parents who don’t care. I don’t know of any private school where teachers don’t care (if you pay that much then you care). But unfortunately there is a minority of (not all) public schools in which there are some parents like this.

Stay tuned for one final post on parents, about why parents matter in making the decision on where to teach.

You can read the rest of the posts in this series at Public vs Private | Main Page.

The site allows you to type in a schools name, and then a profile for that school will appear showing statistics about enrolment, socio-educational status and academic results. The main purpose is to compare schools academically, below is a screenshot of the site.

This school is above the national average, and statistically comparable with similar schools

The issue with the academic results is that they are based of singular nation wide tests called the NAPLAN tests.

Parents are being encouraged to use the “My School” website to compare their school to similar schools, and they are also being encouraged to talk to teachers about their schools results. The website states that it aims to introduce “a new level of transparency and accountability to the Australian school system.”

If parents are encouraged to judge schools based off this one test, then this test will start to take over teaching. Instead of teachers teaching students what they need to know over the course of a year, teachers are going to be forced to teach students what they need to know to do well in the NAPLAN test.

Teaching for a test is not good for learning.

I doubt that the “My School” website will benefit education in Australia.

What do you think?

The demographics of students and parents that attend public and private schools tend to be pretty stereotypical. As in certain types of parents send their children to private schools, and certain parents send their students to public schools. Although, sometimes schools can break these stereotypes (ok, a lot of the time).

So, instead of talking about private and public schools in this post (and the next few), I’m going to be talking about two ends of the parent spectrum. Those who care too much about their child’s education, and those who don’t care enough. Of course most parents will fall somewhere between these two, but will probably lean either way. So here are some characteristics of parents that care too much.

Parents who care too much

• There will likely be a lot of pressure on the child to perform
• Students may often be forced to go to tutoring (I onced tutored a Kindy girl in maths, she was doing year 2 maths at the time…)
• The parents will put stress onto the teacher, and ask questions about why their child isn’t getting straight A’s
• Although because of this, the teachers are accountable and teaching remains excellent
• Students may be forced to do tests for selective schools when they have no chance of getting in, and therefore are under unnecessary stress
• Parents will support the teacher in learning, and students will value learning as their parents do

Most private schools have parents that exhibit above symptoms. This can be both harmful and helpful. And some parents may only be helpful, or may only be harmful. But in deciding where to teach consider the parents that you will be partnering with in educating their children.

Stay tuned for Parents who don’t care enough.

You can read the rest of the posts in this series at Public vs Private | Main Page.