Five-year-olds in nappies, unable to talk and swiping at books as if they're iPhones - and the parents aren't much better: Teachers reveal what they REALLY think of modern parenting in our no-holds barred special report
Nestled alongside the toys, books and felt-tip pens that form the cheerful backdrop of Sarah Watson's* reception classroom is one equally vital piece of equipment. A stack of nappies.They're needed because six of the children in her class – all four and five-year-olds – still arrive at school wearing them.Of course, changing nappies was not part of the job description when Sarah, 45, trained as a teacher more than 20 years ago.Yet now, on a bad day, she can lose an hour of teaching time at her school in the North-West, dealing with accidents and changing clothes.As she puts it: 'It feels like I've become more surrogate parent and social worker than teacher.'Indeed, nappies are only the start.'A massive number of the kids hadn't used cutlery before they came to reception and couldn't dress themselves,' Sarah explains. 'From what I could see, one child had literally never opened a book – he genuinely didn't know what to do with one.'In these circumstances it's little wonder that traditional teaching barely gets off the ground. 'It takes all my time just to get basic functions sorted,' she explains.And if this sounds like an extreme case, it is anything but.In January, a report revealed that Sarah's experience is being echoed in classrooms across the country, as teachers grapple with a spiralling crisis in what is known as 'school readiness', meaning the basic skills children are expected to have mastered by the time they start reception. 'A massive number of the kids hadn't used cutlery before they came to reception and couldn't dress themselves,' Sarah Watson explains Felicity Gillespie says: 'Teachers who started two decades ago are telling us very clearly: it wasn't like this when we started out'The annual survey by early years charity Kindred Squared found that around a quarter of children now arrive at school not toilet trained.More than one in four cannot eat or drink independently and 28 per cent are unable to use books properly – instead trying to swipe or tap them like a phone or tablet.Moreover, the situation is worsening, not improving.In 2024, teachers reported that a third of children were not school-ready. Last year, that figure rose to 37 per cent.As Felicity Gillespie, chief executive of Kindred Squared, puts it: 'This is only our sixth annual survey, so our data doesn't go back decades. But it goes far enough to show expectations have changed. And teachers who started two decades ago are telling us very clearly: it wasn't like this when we started out.'It's a view echoed by many teachers I spoke to this week, regardless of where they work.Take Beth Allerton*, an early years lead in a West Midlands primary school, where 30 per cent of pupils are eligible for free school meals.She has been teaching for more than 30 years, says the decline in standards has been steady and unmistakable, and has no doubt about some of the reasons why.'In my opinion, technology is hugely impactful on pre-school children,' she says. 'Most of my class have their own tablet at home and several have their own phone. Parents are constantly distracted by their phones and I would imagine most of our children have no limit on screen time.'But screens are only part of the picture: many of Beth's pupils already have televisions in their bedrooms, while few sit down to eat as a family. Only around a quarter of her cohort are read to regularly at home.'All of this deprives children of a language-rich environment,' Beth says. 'A third of my class cannot communicate effectively.'Beth also sees children arriving without routines, boundaries or clear expectations.'A lot of parents seem to avoid taking charge,' she says. 'They don't have consistent boundaries in place, so the expectations at home and at school don't match. Poor sleep routines, screens in bedrooms – all of that affects learning readiness.'And not just learning: as Beth explains, in her classroom children are expected to share toys, follow instructions, tidy up after themselves, put on their own shoes and coats, and eat properly at a table.'If parents don't have those expectations at home, the child is suddenly having to adapt to two completely different worlds. It's confusing and destabilising,' she says.Three hundred miles away in Somerset, Laura Whiting*, another reception class teacher of 16 years, echoes Beth's sentiments, believing that the basic social contract between home and school, and the shared understanding of what children need to thrive, has disintegrated.'I increasingly feel that I'm working to unravel what happens at home whereas, when I started out, I felt supported by parents who wanted to work with me,' she says.Like Sarah Watson, Laura has a classroom stacked with nappies, spare clothes and baby wipes – paid for out of the school budget.More than once Laura has had to deal with a child who has arrived in her classroom with a soiled nappy.'I sometimes wonder if we have made a rod for our own back,' she reflects. 'Parents know we have them and so there is this attitude of 'well you can sort it', which is effectively saying 'it's your problem now'.'She points out that even in her 'reasonably middle-class school', children still arrive in reception trying to swipe the pictures in books, as they are so used to electronic devices.'If the kids aren't on devices, the parents are,' she says. 'I see them at pick-up, scooping up their kids then going straight back on their phones. Then they're the first ones to kick up a stink if they think their kids' needs aren't being addressed.'Her sentiments are not unfamiliar to Grainne Hallahan from Teacher Tapp, an app visited by up to 11,000 teachers who respond to daily surveys about school life and educational issues. 'It means we really get to see into the heart of the classroom,' as she puts it. Laura Whiting says children arrive in reception trying to swipe the pictures in books, as they are so used to electronic devices Laura explains: 'I increasingly feel that I'm working to unravel what happens at home whereas, when I started out, I felt supported by parents who wanted to work with me'And what they see is dispiriting: in a survey conducted last September, Teacher Tapp asked reception teachers how many children in their class were reliably toilet trained. Overall, teachers reported that 15 per cent of children were not – but, in schools serving the most deprived communities, nearly half said they had five or more children in a single class who were still in nappies.'You can see what a difference money makes,' says Grainne. 'But deprivation isn't the whole story.'As the mother of three daughters aged 12, ten and eight, even in the time I've been a parent, I've noticed a big shift in attitudes around toilet training. There's a growing sense that this is the school's job, not the parent's.'An increasing number of children now need extra speech and language support, too.'When we polled teachers on this recently, a massive 92 per cent said the number of reception kids needing support had gone up in the past two years,' says Grainne.Moreover, teachers are now fielding issues linked to social media even among the youngest pupils. 'Key Stage One teachers tell us they're dealing with problems around YouTube and WhatsApp,' Grainne adds. 'That would have been unthinkable a few years ago.'It contributes to a generation of reception teachers more frazzled than we've ever seen them. They're dealing with more social work, more parental demands, and more admin.'For some, the pressures have become too much: between 2021 and 2025, nearly 115,000 teachers left the profession for reasons other than retirement, citing workload, stress, pupil behaviour and dealing with parents.Karen Simpson, from Inverness, was ahead of them: she quit the classroom in 2019 after 16 years teaching primary aged children – including a number of years in reception – after becoming dismayed by the changing nature of the job.'When I started in 2004, children came in recognising their name, hanging up their coat, opening their own snack, holding a pencil properly,' she recalls. 'That was true in schools in more affluent areas and in more deprived areas. You had a solid starting point.'By the time she left the profession in 2019, she says, that was no longer the case.'More and more time was being spent on basic needs – the teaching part was shrinking,' she says. 'And, from talking to teachers since, I know it hasn't improved. If anything, it's worse.'Karen, a mother of two, went on to set up tutoring business My Primary and Secondary Tutor, and believes that while the reasons for the shift in pupil readiness are complex, structural changes to childcare have played a role.'Wraparound nursery care expanded because both parents now work full-time. That was necessary,' she says. 'But it also moved away from structure and towards freer play, without the same focus on developing basic skills. More than one in four children cannot eat or drink independently and 28 per cent are unable to use books properly 'A lot of parents seem to avoid taking charge,' says Beth Allerton. 'They don't have consistent boundaries in place, so the expectations at home and at school don't match''There are often not enough nursery staff and they are told children must be left to choose what they want to do.'As a result, children are arriving at school without the foundations they need – and teachers are expected to compensate.'In tandem, she believes there has been a fundamental change in how adults respond to schools raising concerns.'When I was at school, if an issue was flagged, parents were often more furious with their kids than the teachers,' she says. 'Even when I started teaching parents usually supported the teachers.'That's not the case now. There's more defensiveness, more expectation that the school will just cope.'There is a cumulative impact to all this, too. 'Teachers tell us that, on average, around 2.4 hours a day are being lost to catch-up in physical readiness and independent life skills,' says Felicity Gillespie.'That's the equivalent of a whole day of teaching every week,' she says. 'That doesn't just affect individual children but the whole class.'Imagine if the Treasury issued a press release saying Britain's economy was losing a day a week of productivity – there would be outrage. But that's effectively what's happening in reception classrooms.'Yet parents appear largely unaware of the extent of the issue: In Kindred Squared's survey, which polled parents alongside teachers, 88 per cent of parents considered their child to be developmentally ready for school – contrasting sharply with the 37 per cent of children cited by teachers as not ready at all.'That gap in expectations is huge,' Felicity says. 'And it suggests a lack of shared understanding of what school readiness actually means.'Lack of understanding or otherwise, the long-term consequences are profound: time and again, research shows that the early years matter more than any other stage of development.By the time children start school, much of the gap that will later appear in exams and employment outcomes is already baked in.'Forty per cent of the attainment gap we see at GCSE is already evident at age five,' Felicity says. 'The early years are completely foundational. As our grandparents used to say, a stitch in time saves nine.'Nonetheless, she counsels against simply blaming parents. 'I think the line taken by some commentators that this is a problem of 'feckless parenting' is unhelpful,' she says.'We have to recognise that the way we live has changed: Life is more pressured.'More families have two full-time working parents. Many are living far from extended family who might once have offered support,' she says. 'Rather than pointing blame we need to look at what we can do to help as a wider society.' Similarly, Covid had pulled the rug from under children and parents alike.It's no coincidence that the toddlers presenting at school now are the cohort whose early years were spent in lockdowns, says Eli Gardner, a Clinical Child Psychologist and Co-founder of the charity Kids Matter.'Covid meant a massive drop in the support services available to parents before their children go to school, and we saw a decline in parental mental health and confidence,' she says.'This group of parents might only have seen a health visitor early on with little other support before they're supposed to be getting their kids ready for school.'So we've lost some of scaffolding that used to exist organically in the community, which has had a huge impact.'The damagaing effect of lockdowns on child development was laid bear only this week, with new research suggesting those who started reception class in 2020 have gone on to display less cognitive growth than expected.Read More As Stacey Solomon toasts £10m empire, the 'begging' new move from her struggling nurse sister University of East Anglia researchers conducted a series of mental acuity tests on 139 children measuring impulse control, memory and concentration, and found 'much slower growth in key self-regulation and congnitive flexibility skills'.Nonetheless, having been both a teacher and a parent, Karen Simpson believes that ultimately responsibility has to lie with parents.'Schools aren't miracle workers. You're not paying your taxes for one-to-one care. You have to be realistic about what schools can provide,' she says.Back in Sarah Watson's classroom, the nappies are still stacked neatly in the corner ready for tomorrow's intake. She's at pains to admit that despite the challenges, she still loves her job and her pupils, but she worries about what will happen if nothing changes.'We're firefighting every day,' she says. 'And while we're doing that, something else is being lost.'Back in the West Midlands, meanwhile, Beth Allerton wonders if the solution might be a complete rethink of when our children start school.'It's interesting that most European countries seem to begin formal learning around the age of six or seven, while I have children who were still only aged three a week or so before coming into school,' she says.'Against this backdrop we are expected to achieve a huge list of requirements around things like literacy and numeracy by the end of the school year.'With the best will in the world, this is not going to be achievable for a child who comes into school unable to speak, sit on a chair, listen to a story or grip a pencil.'*Names have been changed
