Are parents to blame for bad behaviour in schools?

Education experts have told MPs that many parents set a bad example to their children, for example, by encouraging them to 'hit back'
Parents set a bad example to their children, say experts. Photograph: Rex Features Rex Features/REX FEATURES

Parents are undermining teachers' efforts to improve children's behaviour by setting a bad example, MPs heard today.

Education experts told the cross-party commons education select committee that parents were increasingly in conflict with teachers over what constitutes good behaviour.

"If you go into any shopping area on a Saturday, and you watch parents interacting with their youngsters, you can see why the youngsters behave they way they do – they model the behaviour of the adults," David Moore, an education consultant and former senior schools inspector, told MPs who were discussing behaviour and discipline in schools.

Some parents tell children that if they have been hit by another pupil in the playground, they should "hit them back next time", Christine Blower, general secretary of the National Union of Teachers, said.

"Of course that won't be, for the most part, the discipline and behaviour policy that operates in the school. There are very basic misunderstandings or differences of values.

Blower added: "The difficulty for us in schools is to make the bridge so that those parents who might have values at variance with what the school is trying to do buy into the values."

Ian Toone, from the teachers' union Voice, said that while persistent low-level disruption in classrooms was probably not getting worse, incidents of "extreme aggression" were more common.

"Although these are rare, they are increasing in number," he told the MPs. "Disability-related disorders, like psychiatric disorder or attention deficit disorder … I think that is where we are seeing a deterioration in behaviour."

Are the experts right? Are parents really to blame for bad behaviour in schools or should teachers be taking a different approach?