Parent Expectations And Roles

Well, parents are an important part of the team, but I'm always careful to emphasise that we need to be careful about what we're asking of parents. It's not the job of parents to teach children how to read. That's the job of schools. The accountability for reading outcomes sits with schools. Some parents like you and me are able to really lean in and contribute to that. to that because we have high language and literacy skills ourselves we value reading we've got lots of books in our lives and so forth not all parents are in a position to do that so we need to be very careful about not running a parent blame agenda here we do need parents to understand that yes it is explicit it is structured because we're teaching five and six-year-olds to do something that they're Their brains weren't wired to do on their own. Their brains were wired to acquire oral language, which, of course, the vast majority of children do in the preschool years, and that's a joy to behold. But they've got brains that can learn to read, write and spell if they're exposed to high quality instruction. And the reality is, if we don't get children where they need to be after three years of a formal teaching we are forever playing catch up those children invariably end up on struggle street and we don't have the resources needed to catch them up and the gap just becomes wider and wider and then they develop psychological emotional adjustment problems as well that we then have to find additional resources for