The 'little prince and princesses': Generation of spoilt little children who don't know how to behave in class

These cosseted "little princesses and princes" blame others for their own failures and refuse to do anything difficult or boring because their parents have failed to set boundaries.

Amanda Haehner, the incoming president of the teachers' union NASUWT, said the children, often from middle-class families, struggled to cope in classes of 30 because they were used to being the centre of attention.

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They treated teachers with contempt and blamed them rather than their own lack of Miss Haehner's warning at the NASUWT annual conference in Birmingham is the latest in a series from teachers' leaders implicating parents in school discipline problems.

The rival National Union of Teachers produced research last week claiming that over-indulgent parents were creating a generation who thought nothing of throwing tantrums in class.

However others have blamed aggressive marketing and commercial pressures for such attitudes.

"The rise of 'the little prince' and, increasingly, his female sidekick is a cause for concern," Miss Haehner, from St Mary's High School in Croydon, South London, told the conference yesterday.

"The little prince never has to do anything he finds difficult or boring, he does not have to take any responsibility for his actions.

"Anything negative that happens is someone else's responsibility and if this right to a stress-free existence is questioned, a doting relative will appear immediately to sort everything out.

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"Or at least they will until the little prince stops being cute, turns into the household bully and the protector turns up at school, wringing their hands and begging for help."

She said such children were often "desperately unhappy" and wanted someone to lay down some rules to "make them feel secure".

"Creating boundaries takes time and effort but cannot remain the sole preserve of teachers and schools," she said.

With their parents bowing to every demand at home, such children tend to believe they don't have to follow the same rules as other pupils in the class.

"If they are misbehaving it is always someone else's fault - they don't take responsibility," Miss Haehner said.

"If they don't get the grade they deserve, it's the teacher's fault rather than their own."

She said a culture of instant gratification was partly to blame.

"Whilst good teaching is of the essence, the participation and responsibility of the learner, I believe, needs much greater reinforcement," she said.

The National Union of Teachers yesterday called for a radical overhaul of faith-based education, suggesting that state schools arrange for pupils to be given "instruction" in their own religion and time to pray and worship instead of attending assemblies.

Existing faith schools should be stripped of rights to select pupils on the basis of religion to prevent them "discriminating" against others, the union said in a paper adopted by delegates at its conference in Manchester.

NUT leaders said requiring state schools to cater for all religions would limit demand for faith schools and bring children of different backgrounds together.

General secretary Steve Sinnott said the dominance of Christian schools was "unjust and unsustainable" amid growing demands from Muslim families who wanted their own religious state schools.

'Little princesses' too spoilt to cope in the classroom

Teachers are resisting the revival of back-to-basics methods of teaching children to read.

They want schools to retain techniques discredited by a Government-backed review instead of adopting the traditional "synthetic phonics" approach.

The National Union of Teachers is to issue rival guidance to schools contradicting a Government order to use the phonics method.

The back-to-basics approach teaches children to read "from the ground up" by first learning the 44 letter sounds of English and then blending or synthesising them to make words.

But it fell out of favour during the 1970s and 1980s in many Labour-run local authorities, amid claims it was too rigid.

Labour included some phonics in its flagship literacy hour programme but also borrowed from the strategies of the 1970s, including "look and guess" and whole word recognition.

Ministers have since accepted the view of a Government reading inquiry in 2006 which warned this sometimes confused children.

But NUT general secretary Steve Sinnott said: "There was absolutely no need to change the old literacy strategy."