UK govt turning teachers into "social workers and surrogate parents"
7 Jul 2008, 1706 Hrs

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London, July 7 (ANI): A headmaster of one of the Britain's popular public school is blaming the Government for turning school teachers into "social workers and surrogate parents".

Rod MacKinnon, the head of Bexley Grammar School, south-east London said that schools "cannot solve all of society's ills" and should be left to teach.

His views came after the ministers published new guidance directing schools to monitor obesity rates, drug taking and teenage pregnancy as part of a new duty to promote pupil "wellbeing".

MacKinnon insisted that good schools had to focus on "learning, achievement and values", but were increasingly being asked to do parents' jobs.

He said the government was trying to manipulate the education system for the purposes of "social engineering".

He said that ministers maintained "unrealistic expectations" of what schools could achieve - pushing children towards educational "failure".

"There are those who wish to use children and schools as social engineers with a view to creating a different society but we should not even be trying to do such things," Telegraph quoted him as saying.

"Children need to be nurtured, educated and cared for, not thrown into the frontline of social reform. Muddled thinking is guaranteeing failure for the noble aspirations we all commonly hold for the education of the young.

"Teachers simply do not have the contact time to 'create' behaviours and attitudes within children," he said.

"They are not - and cannot be - social engineers and social workers and surrogate parents, as well as subject teachers, all rolled into one," he added. (ANI)