Something troubling is happening in Britain’s schools. This week, the government released its findings from the first national survey into pupil behaviour in classrooms. The results are a hard lesson to learn. But, as a teacher who has witnessed chairs being thrown and pupils urinating on teachers’ cars, it doesn’t come as a surprise.

Over 40 per cent of students say that they feel unsafe each week because of poor behaviour, according to the survey. Students have the lowest perception of how well behaviour is going in school. This suggests that teachers and school leaders have normalised lower standards and expectations, to the point that roughly six weeks of lesson time is lost due to disruption a year.

Poor behaviour also seems to have worsened in recent years. A poll of 500 primary school teachers found that, since the pandemic, 84 per cent believe attention span has shortened and 85 per cent have seen an increase in low-level disruption, such as shouting out and not being able to take turns.

This is a problem. 40,000 teachers left the profession last year – the highest since records began – and yet the government failed to meet its recruitment target by 40 per cent. Those who are in the profession are struggling; workforce data from the Department of Education shows a 60 per cent rise in teacher sick days this year.

By constantly shaming schools we overlook the most important factor in a child’s life: the role of the parents.

I know all too well the burnout that comes with constantly fighting fires in a classroom. I worked for two years as a Teach First trainee on the outskirts of London for a school that had an ‘outstanding’ Ofsted rating for its behaviour, but the reality was anything but. Kids brought knives into school. One time I asked a girl who was being incredibly aggressive to leave; she refused, so I got the head of department, but she still refused, and so we had to move the entire class to a different room because it was unsafe to keep the rest of the pupils there while she was kicking off.

These were (relatively) extreme examples, but I was still sworn at on a near daily basis, and worn down by constantly battling pupils over the basics: sitting down in a chair, not talking over each other, writing down the date and title. It was exhausting and left very little time and energy for actual teaching.

These burgeoning behaviour problems are often blamed on schools’ shortcomings; for example, an article in the Times this week blamed rising cases of aggression in Scottish schools on the use of ‘restorative practices’ such as ‘constructive conversations’ over traditional punishments like detentions. School policies and culture undoubtedly matter. But by constantly shaming schools we overlook the most important factor in a child’s life: the role of the parents.

Teachers can try all they like, but unless they have the support and engagement of the parents or guardians their authority will always be limited and undermined. At my previous school, I was lucky if I got 50 per cent turnout at parents’ evenings; one boy, heartbreakingly, used to come on his own because his parents couldn’t be bothered to show up. At my current school, I only have to suggest an email home and the students generally acquiesce.

Schools do not exist in a vacuum, and we can’t expect teachers to be substitute parents as well as subject experts, role models, data crunchers, pastoral mentors, mental health professionals, counsellors, and, according to Bear Grylls, guides to all aspects of life. Too often we absolve the roles and responsibilities of parents and place the burden on teachers instead, and expect them to do more and more for less and less pay.

Of course, parents are also under pressure themselves. But ultimately, so many of the behaviour problems schools face come down to two factors: inadequate parenting and increased screen time.

A friend who works at a primary school tells me that more and more children are coming to school socially underdeveloped: unable to dress themselves, unable to use the toilet properly, unused to eating at a table, lacking the verbal and social skills to be able to take part in lessons and behave well. Screen time is relied on as a constant pacifier, suppressing genuine interaction and creating this expectation of constant entertainment. 57 per cent of teachers say that children are more likely to complain about being bored since lockdown, when screen time rocketed.

Screen-obsessed children and tuned-out parents means behavioural boundaries are never properly established, and as children get older and harder to discipline, parents often minimise or even deny the severity of their behaviour because it is so hard not to. So many children never learn to properly respect teachers because their will always overrides the authority of the adults at home, or because their parents never instil in them the value of education.

If we are going to even begin to tackle the crisis in teacher recruitment and retention, we must first tackle poor pupil behaviour – and remember that education begins at home.