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. Addressing these crises is necessary. But parents should be part of the solution. Labour’s proposed strategy instead reveals a worrying instinct to shunt them to one side.

‘Use it or lose it,’ is what is often said about muscles. In the UK, the parenting muscle is already being forced into inaction. This should worry us all: when we sideline families, the state must step in. Given the present condition of state-run services, this spells disaster. Think, for example, of child and adolescent mental health services, whose waiting lists stretch to over four years in some places. Or the NHS, lurching from crisis to strike to crisis. That’s not to mention schools themselves: the Education Policy Institute has found that the gap in attainment between disadvantaged pupils and their better-off peers has grown steadily since 2019. Meanwhile, a Children’s Society survey last year found that 14.5 per cent children aged 10 to 17 reported being unhappy with their school experience.

So no, the state is in no position to act in loco parentis. Nor should it ever aim to.

Of course there are some parents who may not be able to perform their duties towards their children. But they should be supported, not replaced. This is where schools can, and should, step in – as Bridget Phillipson had urged.

Research shows that when schools engage with parents, children’s outcomes improve. Lee Elliot Major, the country’s first professor of social mobility, has argued repeatedly that what happens in the classroom is a small part of a child’s story: the home and family environment wield far greater influence. It’s a question of quality as well as quantity. The love of parents for their children cannot be compared to even the most dedicated teacher’s; children also spend far more time at home than in the classroom. An education system that pretends home doesn’t exist and parents don’t matter will inevitably fail.

When over one in four parents have said that schools are unnecessary for their child, as a CSJ survey earlier this month revealed, engaging parents is a matter of urgency. This is why a national parental participation strategy must be set up, that clearly tasks schools with drawing in parents rather than vaulting over their wishes. It was for this reason that Caroline Haines, chair of the City of London corporation’s education board, commissioned the charity I founded, Parenting Circle, to develop the City of London Corporation’s parental engagement toolkit for the schools in its trust: ‘We know parents are key to upward social mobility,’ she explains, ‘and want to ensure our pupils, along with their families, are well supported.’

‘Well supported’ means clear and regular communication between school and home, explaining what schools expect of mums and dads but also what they will deliver. A recent CSJ survey of parents found that they felt in the dark about their child’s progress and even day to day activities because schools failed to keep up even the most basic flow of information with them. Fathers felt the most frustrated of all. Too often, especially when they are non-resident parents, teachers leave them out of any conversation. As one father told the survey: ‘They do not engage with me at all. Even though I have joint custody and shared parental rights everything is communicated through my ex-wife.’

Further support can be ensured by introducing parents’ peer to peer group discussions. These groups allow parents to share their experience and their advice, rather than be pushed aside as ignoramuses who can’t be trusted with their child’s welfare. Schools can employ an attendance mentor, too, to assist parents or carers in getting a child to school. Truant officers, who used to police parks and roads for stray teens bunking off lessons, may no longer exist, but their role has never been more necessary.

These practical steps would invite parents to have a stake in the education system. They may go some way in reassuring them that teachers and all staff recognise mothers and fathers as essentials, not disposables.