LETTERS Parents' role in schools
From Mr Jonathan Hulme Sir: Yet another article about education (`The enemies of learning', 28 August) has appeared in which the author, sickened by his own experience in a particular school and wallowing in despair about its prospects, has been allowed to extrapolate from his limited knowledge sweeping judgments about the state system as a whole and the dire consequences of its politicisation (as if this were something new!). The system is not failing, although parents need both foresight and luck if their children are to be educated effectively in a sympathetic school. Educa- tion is too complicated and subtle to be bought as easily as a consumer product, and parents who will not spend plenty of valu- able time planning and supporting their chil- dren's education fail them.
As a still practising, still optimistic com- prehensive school teacher who acknowl- edges the limitations of his experience, I hold the view that the key factor in a child's success at school is interested parents ideally both, still married — who support their children and demand good results without driving children or the school to distraction. Contracts institutionalise the importance of parents in education. They are not about socialism; they are about standards and the maintenance of good dis- cipline, without which education cannot happen. If, like me, your readers and writ- ers were educated at a traditional indepen- dent school with class sizes in the mid-teens at most, they cannot imagine the challenge to the teacher in managing and inspiring a class of 30 13-year-olds unless that funda- mental discipline is in place. Contracts can help.
Jonathan Hulme
63 Demier Road, Tonbridge, Kent
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