Top ten tips for parent

Education should be a partnership between caring parents and a caring school says Simon Carder, Headmaster of Eagle House School and Chairman of IAPS. Here he gives his top ten tips on being the model parent

As a parent, and especially if your child is just starting school or a new school, you want to do what is best for him or her and to be a model parent. Here are my ten top tips to help you to help the school do the best by your child.

Your child does not have to have a problem. Don’t go searching for syndromes, allergies, disorders, -isms, phobias that aren’t there. Let your child be normal and don’t feel that you have failed if you cannot find anything wrong.

Schools have to be run in a businesslike way but they are not merely businesses. Don’t expect the same sort of relationship that you may have with a travel agent or an accountant or a shop assistant. Like them, we provide services but, for us, it is a vocation not a business. We genuinely care about your children. We don’t charge you by the minute for the time we give them or you. We give that time freely – or at least as freely as our commitments allow. We don’t see the children and you as customers and consumers although, of course, in a sense you are. We see you rather as friends and partners, even as family. Our interest in your family is not a commercial one. Yes, of course, you pay fees (an unfortunate necessity, I fear) but the teachers themselves don’t teach for the money. If they were concerned about money they would not go into teaching – they would go for jobs like yours!

Be active in supporting the school. Get involved. Don’t be too busy to turn up for the concert or the netball match. Support the PTA. If you are too far away to do that regularly then contribute in some other way. If you cannot make the annual ball, send a donation towards the charity or project that the ball is fundraising for. Arrange for an interesting speaker or celebrity to visit the school. Organise a trip out for the leavers after their exams, perhaps to your place of work (especially if you work in the Caribbean!).

Read the information we send you. Put dates in your diary and then you won’t be in the embarrassing position of having to telephone the overworked school secretary to find out what time the parents’ evening is or whether the 2nd XI cricket match is at home or away. Or worse, turning up for the start of a new term a day early or a day late.

Say thank you. There will be times when we get things wrong and deserve a rap on the knuckles – but don’t forget to express gratitude when things go well. Don’t wait until your child is about to leave before you drop a note to the headteacher or to a particular member of staff who has made a positive difference in the development of your son or daughter. We all like being thanked but for teachers a thank you note can mean so much, out of all proportion to the time and effort it takes you to put pen to paper.

Behave nicely at school matches. Cheer your team on and applaud good play from both sides. Don’t scream for blood. Don’t criticise the referee. Don’t mock the occasionally feeble efforts of the opposition or indeed your own team. I know it’s an old cliché but winning really isn’t everything. There is no more painful sight on a prep school playing field than an hysterical parent making a spectacle of himself or herself.

Don’t take holidays in termtime. Apart from the fact that you may now be fined or sent on compulsory parenting courses, think of the effect on the children – both yours and the ones who are not going on holiday during termtime. Yours will miss lessons and the others will be let down in the cricket team or the concert or the play. Nothing is better designed to send a teacher potty than the letter that comes saying: ‘Marjorie will be away next week. Please set her work to take with her so that she does not miss anything important’. She will miss being taught – that is what is important.

Know the person who is specifically responsible for your child. In most schools that will be the form teacher. Make contact with them as soon as they take on that responsibility and keep in contact. Not in a fussy way but a friendly, chatty way so that if and when there is a problem you already have a rapport. It’s a shame if the only time there is contact between you is when there is a complaint or a concern – not a good way to start a relationship.

Don’t believe everything you hear. No matter how honest your children are, do not accept unquestioningly everything they say. They may have misheard or misunderstood something they have been told. They may have heard something from an unreliable source or drawn an incorrect conclusion from insufficient evidence. Many children have vivid imaginations! I think it’s called creative reporting.

I always think that parents and schools should make a contract: you promise not to believe everything that your children tell you about school and we promise not to believe everything they tell us about home.

Be loyal. Always support the school and the staff publicly. When you have complaints express them in the headteacher’s study not in the car park. Spread the good word, not the bad one. By showing loyalty to the school you will set an important example for your children to follow.

Act on these tips and you will be model parents and, more importantly, you will find that your children will flourish as if by magic.

Reprinted by kind permission of David Tytler, Editor of Prep School magazine

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