Don’t assume your children are being taught well at school, warns social mobility tsar

THE social mobility tsar has warned parents not to assume their children are being “taught well” at school, adding that parents must make up any shortfall in learning with lessons home.

Katharine Birbalsingh said there has “never been a better time” for them to teach their children at home.

“Don’t assume they are being taught well at school. You might get lucky. Great! But don’t assume it,” she wrote on Twitter. “Teach them after school. Daily. Always. Other parents do. They just aren’t telling you.”

Ms Birbalsingh, who was appointed as chairman of the Social Mobility Commission last October, has been labelled Britain’s “strictest” head teacher.

As the head and founder of the Michaela Community School in Brent, north London, her rules see pupils earning a detention for offences ranging from turning up to class without a ruler to breaching the silence policy by speaking in corridors.

She told her social media followers that “just eating dinner together and parents talking to their children makes such a difference to the development of a child”.

While schools can try to make up for this, she said, there is “only so much a school can do”. Ms Birbalsingh advised parents to carry out one-to-one instruction which could be revisited before bedtime.

Last month she claimed that private school pupils’ learning is “stunted” and they are having to rely on parents to hire personal tutors.

She said she pities children who are educated at fee-paying schools because they are “not being taught properly” during lessons.

“I look at those private schools and think gosh they could be so much better. And they could be pushing children so much more and teaching them so much more,” Ms Birbalsingh said.