Hostility between parents and schools has grown since Covid

Diana Samuels', a CPC member, comments on this interesting insight from The Guardian Thursday 23rd November 2023
The social contract between schools and families is broken, according to an ofsted report released last month.

There are so many implications of this for the education of the next generation, but as a child and adolescent psychotherapist, I am drawn to think about this in the context of the work I have done in schools over the years.

For many children whose home lives are chaotic, school can be their secure base, the place where they can feel safely held. Families who might have struggled with other boundaries, prior to the pandemic would have had an acceptance that school was to be attended. Whilst attendance may have not been perfect, it was, as the report suggests, an accepted social contract that children attend school between the age of 5 and 16. For the children in these families, where the contract has now been broken, I fear that they have lost their refuge, their place of sanctuary.

Whilst the Covid inquiry continues to explore what decisions were made when, by who and who is to blame, it would be good to think about the cost of breaking this contract for the young people of the United Kingdom, and how to go about repairing it.