Jayne Dowle: Double standards that damage respect for teachers

Not only have thousands of teachers been on strike across our region, but many schools also appear to have decided that right now is perfect timing for an “inset day”. This is a double whammy parents find hard to accept. Teachers talk about the pressure they are under at work. Yet their industrial action has reverberated into every office, company and organisation, putting countless parents under pressure themselves to find someone to look after their children while they earn a day’s wage.

I’ve actually heard teachers complain that they shouldn’t be regarded as “free childcare”. No one in their right mind assumes they are. Yet, we pay their salaries and contribute towards their pension funds through our taxes, even if we don’t have children ourselves. What has happened to the concepts of duty and responsibility? If this is the attitude in the classroom, no wonder so many young people leave school unable to see the attraction in finding a job.

My son has been at his secondary school less than a month. Already his learning has been interrupted by both strike action and his teachers taking an inset day off for training.

At the same time as I was ranting about strikes and Jack being compromised by an inset day, my sister was ranting too. Last Friday her 10-year-old daughter Hannah required a day off school to travel 200 miles from Kent to Yorkshire to attend her grandparents’ Golden Wedding celebrations

This included a vow renewal ceremony in church at 12pm on the Saturday. Her grandparents are both approaching 70 and not in the best of health. All the family was required beforehand to help get everything ready for this once-in-a-lifetime event. My sister could have lied. She could have made an excuse that Hannah was ill. Instead she decided to tell the truth. The reward for her honesty? A £120 fine for taking Hannah out of school. £120. For one day. The draconian new rules on term-time absence have kicked my sister right where it hurts. She is planning to appeal but it will probably be dismissed. It is becoming increasingly obvious that there is one rule for teachers and one rule for the rest of us.

I am trying to comprehend this. I know that teaching staff themselves haven’t imposed the new strictures on absence. I understand that headteachers have to devise a stringent policy. Surely though, there should be compassion and flexibility? There seems to be a terrible imbalance here between what our teaching profession say to us and what they do themselves.

On the one hand we parents are drilled that our children must never, ever miss a day of school or face dire consequences. And on the other, we have to reorganise our entire lives when that dreaded letter comes home informing us of yet another strike or inset day.

If you don’t have children, you might think that this is a load of fuss about nothing. It isn’t though.

It contributes towards a deeply negative attitude which puts schools and teachers in the worst light possible. This confuses and influences the most important people of all – the children who rely on these institutions.

No wonder so many youngsters are disaffected by school and “can’t see the point” when adults spend so much time either marching on the streets about its demands or complaining about its attitude. It is bad enough that our children have become collateral damage in the relentless reforms imposed by the Secretary of State for Education. It is worse than that, however.

Can you blame our children when they conclude that schools have double standards and that teachers only care about themselves and their working conditions?

For the sake of my friends, and for the sake of every child, the teaching profession should realise that it cannot and must not have everything its own way.