Balancing work and family life
Government recently announced that nurseries should open for up to 10 hours a day to provide high-quality early education; just days later Sir Michael Wilshaw, the head of Ofsted, said schools should be teaching children aged two or three the basics of literacy and numeracy to give them a solid foundation for full-time education.
However, a survey of more than 1,300 teachers warned that long days in school or childcare result in children who do not talk, fall asleep and lag behind their peers.
Most teachers polled by the Association of Teachers and Lecturers (ATL) felt families spent less time together now, with 94% believing the main reason for this is parents working. For many parents, staying at home with their children is simply not an option, with both parents needing to be in work for financial reasons.
One mother told us, “As a mum of four children I know how hard it is to bring a family up now. My husband works two jobs to keep us. I want to go back to work but my kids are too young, I can’t afford the childcare costs and I have no family near to help with the kids. It’s tough but unfortunately the kids do suffer, mine rarely see their father, but it’s either that or we don’t feed them!”
Balancing work and family can be incredibly difficult, and at ParentMail we do our best to help busy mum’s and dad’s keep in touch with what their children are doing – and make it quick and easy for them to see and deal with the many things they have to do for their children whether they are in nursery, childcare or school.
This could be through an important text message, an email update or making it easy for them to make payments or complete permissions and forms online, our services helps parents keep in contact with their child school right from the day they start at nursery till the day they leave secondary school.
This means, even if parents can’t be with their child all day, they can at least be in contact at any time with the person who is. To find out more about how ParentMail can help your nursery or school, take a look around our website, or send an email to enquire@parentmail.co.uk