Quotes of the Day

Though perched on a busy corner, Beverly Hills Public School, in Sydney's south, has a cozy feel. There are covered walkways throughout. Lots of grass and trees. And many of the classrooms are new and bright. But it's also a typical Australian school in at least one way: staff are fed up with some of the parents. Last term, for instance, an infants teacher on car park duty recorded the details of a father who'd stopped in a no-parking zone. The dad charged at him with a raised fist, letting fly with language that kids would never find in their home readers. There was also the parent who couldn't understand why he'd been summoned to discuss his son's progress: "Why is this important?" he fumed. "Why is it important to have him reading?"

Schools have always collided with a small percentage of mothers and fathers. But the message from Australian staff rooms in all types of schools - primary and secondary, public and private - is that tension between teachers and parents is rising. According to teachers, parents see a world that's getting faster, more complicated and less forgiving, and figure their children's best chance of making it out there is to shine, from kindergarten onward, in everything they do. These high expectations can fuse with the view that no setback is ever just bad luck: it's always somebody's fault - though never their own, nor their child's. While parents will accept human frailty in other areas of life, says New South Wales Primary Principals' Association president Roger Pryor, "in schools they expect everyone to get it right first time, every time."

The pressure's telling. Only 10 or 20 years ago, Australia's biggest problem with teachers was recruiting them - encouraging enough brainy high-school graduates to study for a career in front of a blackboard. Today there's no shortage of trainees - high demand for places in education courses at universities has forced up entry scores to record levels. The concern for policymakers is retaining teachers, who are leaving the profession in droves. University of Sydney researcher Robyn Ewing says younger teachers are leading the charge: having studied for four years or more, at least 30% quit in their first three to five years on the job, while among those placed at remote or disadvantaged schools, the figure could be as high as 50%. In N.S.W. the most common age at which teachers toss it in - outside the retirement years - is 29.

Why are they fleeing? Australian investigators have found stress in the mix, but it's research out of the U.S. - where teacher dropout rates match Australia's - that has homed in on what the main stresses are. Asked to choose the biggest challenge they face, 31% of teachers cited involving parents and communicating with them as their top choice, according to the 2004 MetLife Survey of the American Teacher. Some 73% of beginning teachers said too many parents treat teachers as adversaries. Australian educators make the same observations: "I say to some of our parents," says Allen Brooke, principal of Caroline Chisholm High School in Canberra, " 'Can we please start this meeting with an acknowledgment of mutual goodwill?'"

The key to better relations, most teachers would argue, resides with parents, who may need to accept that their child isn't gifted, or that there are 27 other children in their darling's class, or that there aren't 45 spots on the school netball team. But teachers won't be surprised to hear that, outside of staff rooms, there seems to be little sympathy for them. A prevalent view is that central to teaching is handling - patiently and professionally - the expectations and anxieties of even the most objectionable parents. "If you can't or won't do that," says Sharryn Brownlee, president of the N.S.W. Federation of Parents and Citizens Associations, "then don't teach." In February, the federal Minister for Education, Science and Training, Brendan Nelson, directed a federal parliamentary committee to find out whether the country's universities are adequately preparing students for the demands of teaching. "The single most important challenge that our country faces in education," Nelson said, "is how do we raise the respect society has for teaching as a profession?" While the committee will report back next year, New Zealand schools believe they could give their Australian counterparts a lesson in teacher–parent harmony right now. "There's an extremely pervasive culture here," says John Grant, principal of Kaipara College, a state high school in Helensville, near Auckland, "that emphasizes schools' accountability to their parents." Perhaps the saddest part of teacher– parent breakdown - and possibly a cause of it - is that teachers start out with stars in their eyes. "Time and again," write Sydney University's Ewing and Jackie Manuel, "beginning teachers frame their expectations and their vision of teaching in ways that are redolent of the archetypal odysseys of classical mythology." Perhaps it's just too many viewings of Dead Poets Society, but many student teachers envisage altering the course of young lives: winning over the shy child with empathy and enthusiasm; spotting and nurturing genius in the most unlikely pupils; instilling a love of learning - of Keats! - in the outwardly coarse. Despite the figures on early departure, Ewing says 90% of student teachers imagine themselves still teaching 10 years hence. Asked to predict their "major challenges," almost no one mentions parents.

Clearly, early in the piece, disillusionment can strike. "Chloe," 22, started this year on a kindergarten class in a well-to-do part of Sydney. Blonde and attractive, she sensed straight away that some parents doubted she was up to the job. "We're just concerned," one told her, "that you don't understand (five-year-olds) because you don't have children yourself." Within days of taking on 22 kids - and still trying to memorize names - it seemed to her that some of the parents expected she'd already know the idiosyncrasies of the entire class. "One step outside the classroom and I'd be bombarded," she says. "Always, the focus was on their own child. Morning and afternoon it was, 'How's he or she doing?' The same as six hours ago, I'd feel like saying."

Chloe, who's cried at school over parents' comments, hadn't realized how much school has changed, even since she wore pigtails. Not so long ago, most kids walked or rode to school; mothers stopped at the gate. Nowadays, parents are a feature of school life - and often for the good. They assist teachers by taking reading groups and tagging along on excursions. For no money and not much thanks, they organize the band, canteen and sports teams, sit on various committees and throw themselves into fund-raising ventures that ultimately improve the school.

Teachers know all this, but . . . "For too many parents, dolling up and then rolling up in their SUV is a big part of their life," says a Melbourne Year 6 teacher. "School is where they show off." A primary school in Sydney's south has asked its cleaners to pay special attention to the windows of the kindergarten rooms - on the outside they're usually smeared with parents' hand (and nose) prints. In return for their help - and sometimes high fees - some parents want power. Ascham, an exclusive private girls' school in Sydney's east, endured a public row earlier in the year when a group of its high-flying parents demanded a greater say in the school council's choice of headmistress. Elsewhere, some teachers admit that when school captain/prefect elections are close, the candidate with the ubiquitous mother or father is more likely to get the nod. Parents who test teachers' nerves come in various types. Principals will often meet the demanding parent before the child is enrolled. This mother or father will have 20 questions along the lines of, Why should I entrust my precious child to you? "Just once," says a Sydney primary-school principal, "I'd love to say, 'Oh, and before you go, I have some questions for you. Are there any learning difficulties we should know about?

Marriage problems? Any history of mental illness in the family?'" Parents would be aghast, he says, yet it wouldn't occur to them that their own questions might be insulting. It's these same parents, schools say, who think nothing of demanding one-on-one interviews at 7 a.m. or after dark, whatever suits them. Their tone at these meetings can be accusatory - if my child is struggling or misbehaving, it must be your fault. "The crux of the issue is that teachers are nice people," says Anne, a Sydney Year 1 teacher. "We're nurturers. We like children. We respond to courtesy, not cutthroat corporate behavior." Fionie Stavert, an organizer with the N.S.W. Teachers Federation, says she's cynical enough to believe that in certain parts of Sydney parental complaints about teachers peak during rainy spells - the mothers have missed out on their tennis so they gossip about teachers over coffee instead. Stavert credits most teachers with enormous restraint: one, she recalls, barely flinched when told by a mother: "You are a public servant and I expect you to serve." Some of the most challenging parents come from the ranks of those whose child is brilliant - or who think their child is brilliant. Even moderate giftedness is quite rare. In an average classroom, there might be three children with an IQ over 130; they'll learn more quickly than their peers and need less repetition. (Profoundly gifted children - those with an IQ over 180 - are a 1 in 500,000 to 1 in a million phenomenon.) Yet teachers joke that parents have their own definition of giftedness: 2% of the population - plus their own child.

"Children who say they're bored are guaranteed a great response from their parents," says Year 1 teacher Anne. Convinced the boredom is a sign of the child's cleverness (rather than inattentiveness), they can't wait to pass on the news to the teacher. "I might reply, 'That's interesting,'" says Anne. "'because he talks all the time, can't follow instructions and hasn't completed a single task.'" Other parents consult child psychologists, speech and music therapists and sundry other specialists, desperate to unlock their child's potential. "Sorry," says Anne, "no therapist can fix an average IQ." Parents tend to retreat a little once their child reaches high school, though subject choices in the senior years can fire them up again. "It's often dads who will be absolutely determined that their daughter do (advanced) maths," says Vicki Waters, principal of St. Margaret's Anglican Girls School in Brisbane. When staff know that a subject will be beyond a girl's capability, "We do strongly counsel the parents as to what we believe is the best option for their daughter."

Competition is intense for places in the Ku-ring-gai Unit for Gifted and Talented Students, based at St. Ives North School in Sydney. Parents of children who've sat the test and been rejected often won't go quietly. "I've come out of many conversations with my head reeling," says unit coordinator Tina Howard. Not that parents whose children are accepted necessarily relax. Many Year 6 parents become agitated as the entry test for selective high schools approaches each March, "because the fear of not getting into one of these schools after being in a program like this is high," says Howard. "Some of these children are hothoused to the hilt."

On the other side of Sydney, at Beverly Hills, principal Debbie Sutton, a robust, straight-talking 47-year-old, has noticed with alarm the same trend. "Years ago," she says, "parents used to think that their image in society was measured by their house or their car. Now, I think, it's whether their kids get into a selective high school." Recently, Beverly Hills surveyed its 420 pupils and found that less than a quarter played sport outside of school. "I get really concerned about the number of our kids who don't have lives," Sutton says. Adds assistant principal and Year 4 teacher Matt Ackerman: "Where I grew up (not far from Beverly Hills), Saturday was sport day. Here, Saturday is tutoring day." Everywhere, teachers fume about parents who think their child can do no wrong. Faced with overwhelming evidence of bad behavior over many years at several schools, some parents won't budge, screaming victimization instead. In his days as a principal, it would reach the point, says P.P.A. president Pryor, where he'd say to a parent: "Do you really believe that this teacher, when he's showering in the morning, thinks to himself, 'Today I'm going to make life as tough as possible for your child?'" A high-school teacher in Wollongong chided a boy who'd been ducking classes. The boy's mother complained to the principal that the teacher had acted out of racial prejudice - the boy's family are Pacific Islanders. To the teacher's delight - many teachers feel their bosses cave in to parental pressure - the principal told the mother that prejudice would have been exposed had the teacher done nothing.

Discipline is becoming ever trickier for teachers. In the aftermath to trouble, some high-schoolers use their mobile phones to spin a version to their parents before the school does. Many find it easy to paint themselves as innocents, and the next thing the teacher knows, the student's handing over a phone with the words, "My dad wants to talk to you." When an incident warrants suspension, says St. Margaret's Waters, "it's often at this point that parents have difficulty supporting the school's decision. That's fairly sad, because when they opt to support their daughter they're condoning the inappropriate behavior. On those occasions the best outcome, for the school and for the parents, is to part." Then there's the proliferation of recognized psychiatric disorders. By attributing naughtiness to conditions like Oppositional Defiance Disorder, says organizer Stavert, parents can "absolve themselves of responsibility. They'll say to teachers, 'How dare you discipline my child!' That's intolerable when there are 30 kids in the class."

Being told by a school, perhaps for the third time in a term, that their child's a troublemaker can push a small percentage of parents over the edge. The informed estimate is that there are as many as 2,000 cases a year in Australia of parents punching, pushing, threatening or verbally abusing school staff. Violence can haunt teachers even when they're not physically harmed. "After the bell one afternoon," recalls an infants teacher formerly based in inner-city Sydney, "a dad asked me how his son was going. I said he was a little restless, but it was near the end of term and all the kids were. The stepmother rang the school the next day and asked that we not speak to the father about these things - the boy had got a beating the night before over what I'd said."

The fact that some parents are bullies shouldn't cloud the issue of what decent parents might reasonably expect of teachers. Dissatisfied with the local primary school, Sydney mother-of-three Rachael withdrew her eldest daughter, now 10, and enrolled her in a private school. Her daughter's very bright, Rachael explains - with an IQ in the top 1% - but has a condition that interferes with her reading. So Rachael makes a point of meeting her daughter's teacher at the start of each year and regularly thereafter. "I make sure they've got all the literature on her - the IQ test, reports about the syndrome. And I make sure I tell them where she can and can't sit in the classroom. I'm constantly on top of them." Rachael's speech is clipped, abrupt. It's easy to imagine teachers tensing up at the sight of her. And yes, she says, she does expect a lot of them: "I expect them to know the kids. I expect them to know their strengths and weaknesses, and to help them with both." Nothing unreasonable about any of that, says Geoff Riordan, associate dean in the faculty of education at Sydney's University of Technology. Though other states and territories don't do so explicitly, N.S.W. positions parents, by way of the 1990 Education Act, as the primary educators of their children. "That means," says Riordan, "that the parent, not the state, is responsible for the child's education . . . therefore the parent, not the state, is the arbiter of quality."

It's a right not all parents take seriously. While teachers curse the parent who's forever in their face, they're saddened by the parent they never see. "Teachers go out of their way to let parents know what's going on," says Warren Poole, the immediate past principal of St. Ives North School, "but the message that can come back is: we don't care." A high-school technology and language teacher in Wollongong says parents have greeted her with, "I give up on this child - you make him behave."

Teachers say people who wouldn't dream of telling their mechanic how to fix their car don't hesitate to tell teachers how to school their children. Riordan questions this, saying it sounds outdated. More than ever, he notes, we're questioning authority - scoffing at politicians' rhetoric, seeking second opinions on our ailments. To the argument of many young teachers that they should be given some space, Riordan says: "Professional people who hear that will fall about laughing, because no one in society is afforded that level of autonomy."

In New Zealand, it seems, teachers don't even want it. In teacher-parent relations, says David Begg, principal of Waihopai School in Invercargill, on the country's southern tip, "My impression is that New Zealand schools are ahead (of Australian ones)." During a recent fact-finding trip to Australia, he says, he detected some "negativity" in teachers' attitudes. One western-Sydney primary principal "was actually quite distant from her parents . . . she seemed to regard them as a nuisance."

A Kiwi principal with that attitude wouldn't last till Friday. Compared to the highly centralized education systems of Australia's states and territories, New Zealand schools - though owned by the national government - are largely independent, each governed by its own Board of Trustees on which, typically, parents occupy seven of 10 spots. Teachers - and the principal, for that matter - all know who their real bosses are. But parents don't abuse their power, says Kaipara College principal Grant. He and his deputy Brigitta Bravery struggle to remember a single time a parent has sworn at them in a combined 50 years' teaching. "We would never say to a parent, 'Look, we're the professionals,'" says Grant. "It wouldn't occur to us to say that."

In whatever ways Australian society is changing, it stands to reason that teachers will be critiqued more pointedly than other professionals - all adults, after all, were once school kids. As parents appreciate the value of a fine teacher, they also know the damage that can be done by a poor one. The system claims to weed out the latter, but even teachers admit that - in the government system, at least - only the stupendously incompetent get fired. Those aside, "There are, in the teaching profession," says N.S.W. Secondary Principals Council president Chris Bonnor, "a reasonable number of people who don't have the fire in their eyes." Should parents just cop it when their child lands one of these? Good teachers know their curriculum, maintain order and enjoy the company of children. "But at the end of the day," says P. & C. boss Brownlee, "those children belong to a family." Just as nurses in pediatric wards must be constantly reassuring the relatives of the sick, she says, teachers are obliged to accommodate parents, even those lacking in tact and good manners.

It's clear one reason many teachers loathe this part of the job is that they're not ready for it. Sydney University encourages role-playing by students, who take turns posing as parents, but this isn't the norm. Dosed up on theory, graduates are "unprepared for the real environment," says Brownlee. Confronted suddenly by parents, "they feel defensive and don't want to hear questions." Unfortunately, parents tend not to make allowances for callow teachers. "If someone is new within our walls," says St. Ives–based Howard, "they virtually have to prove themselves to parents. Teacher bashing is one thing, but young-teacher bashing is something else. Parents will put the pressure on to make sure their child gets the best of absolutely everything . . . the experience can be quite destructive for young teachers."

Most observers expect that the federal inquiry into teacher education will find that beginning teachers need more help than they're getting, starting with a beefed-up practical side to their training, then more support from colleagues. Dutch research suggests that mentoring - where schools assign experienced teachers to guide beginning ones - slashes attrition rates among the latter. Most Australian states and territories have dabbled in mentoring, but the practice isn't yet as widespread as it probably should be, says Sydney University's Ewing, who points to research indicating that up to 75% of beginning teachers in N.S.W. don't have a mentor.

In the search for more harmonious teacher-parent relations, interested parties are brimming with ideas. Some parents are less concerned about raw teachers than about older, jaded ones. "Education departments need to give these teachers options to move on and do something outside the classroom," says the P. & C.'s Brownlee. "We're too narrow in our thinking." Some schools issue to parents written guidelines on how to approach teachers, explicitly forbidding bad language and threatening behavior.

Other approaches are subtler: having identified the school's most demanding and exacting parents, schools invite them to address students in class on their field of expertise. The logic is simple: the kids will learn something, and so, hopefully, will the parents - about the challenges of teaching. A primary teacher wrote two pages of grievances against parents before concluding: "As a self-confessed smother mother, I've been guilty of several of the above transgressions." When steam's not pouring from their ears, even teachers will concede that parents act in nearly all cases out of passionate concern for their child. What they wish parents would understand is that teachers do, too.

• Daniel Williams
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