Parents are 'dumping' children on schools as Labour pushes for longer working hours, say teachers

A head teachers' leader warned that plans for a massive expansion of childcare and a 50-hour week in schools encouraged parents to hand responsibility for bringing up their children to teachers.

Mick Brookes said: "Some parents do abdicate responsibility for their children. They dump their children early in the morning at school and are late picking them up at the end of the day."

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He said a better balance needed to be struck between allowing parents choice over childcare and encouraging them to accept their parental responsibility.

"It's getting that balance right," he said. "I am not sure we have got it. If you choose to have children, of course there's a responsibility in the early years to look after them."

Mr Brookes, general secretary of the National Association of Head Teachers, said he backed schools that had already introduced dawn-to-dusk schooling but added: "We also hold the view that the vast majority of parents want to see their children after school.

"We echo the shock expressed from some of the Eastern European parents that rather than promoting the importance of quality childcare at home, our country advocates a back-to-work culture that may well prove to be counter-productive."

He claimed that a minority of parents are unable to say no to their children and have 'lost control' of them, prompting them to leave the task to schools.

Speaking at the association's annual conference in Liverpool, he said: "The Government must stop displacing blame and loading all the ills of society onto the backs of schools.

"There are parents who lack the ability to say no. They need help and

support. They need to be shown how to turn that around at a young age."

He said there was too great a focus on providing care for children in their early years, handing parents with an 'excuse' to shirk their responsibilities.

Ministers have said they want all schools to be 'extended schools' by 2010, offering childcare and activities from 8am until 6pm to help parents fit work around schooling.

After protests, they now accept that not all schools have to offer tenhour days and are allowing some to direct parents to facilities in other schools or the local community instead.

The Government has also presided over a big increase in places in full and part-time day care.

More than 800,000 places are now available.

Children's Minister Beverley Hughes, who had earlier addressed the conference, described his remarks as 'unhelpful' and said 'there won't be many' children in school for ten hours a day, five days a week.

"What most parents need is the choice," she added. "The research tells us that certainly for toddlers and beyond, high quality early years provision makes a measurable and long-term positive difference to their ability to shine at school, to their social development."