Education Quandary: Parents have been banned from drinking lager at the school gate. What other school gate behaviour should we clamp down on?

Hilary's advice

I'd like to see parents of young children surgically detached from their iPods and mobile phones. Little children need to come out of school feeling that the person who is there to meet them will be happy to see them and ready to listen to them. If you don't believe this, just watch them.

Their eyes search for waves and smiles from the minute they spill out of the door. Parents who are electronically sealed off from them are not merely being busy and distracted, they are positively laying down the foundations of low self-esteem and poor future literacy.

Second, I'd shoot out the tyres of all parents who park on double yellow lines or across narrow pavements to drop their children as close to school as possible. I know the temptation, I've done it often enough myself, but there are no two ways about it – it's dangerous, illegal and selfish – and should be stopped.

Third, I'd like to ban all parents from careless and damaging school gate gossip. Any problem with a teacher should be taken up with that teacher or the head. Any problem with another child should be sorted out with that child's parents.

Malicious and often untrue rumours whip around every school gate like eddies in a thunderstorm and cause enormous upset and distress. It's really hard, as a parent, to stand apart from this. Gossip is fun. But everyone at the school gate should think twice before opening their mouths and becoming part of the rumour mill.

Readers' advice

I would like to see parents banned from pushing their children with extra tuition and homework. In my area we still have the 11-plus and many children are given special maths classes and private tutors from the age of about seven. We don't want to go down that road, but know we will to be forced into it because we don't want our daughter left behind. It's a kind of mass frenzy that parents stir up.

Jane Allen, Kent

I'd ban parents who never support school events or even bother to buy a raffle ticket. In our school it is only a handful of parents who are active in the PTA, and who organise all the fund-raising efforts. Friends say it is the same in their schools. But there always seem to be plenty of parents with the time to go up to the school if there is something they don't approve of.

Michele Cann, Essex

I would ban parents who threaten my staff with violence as well as parents who demand to see me, the school head, about a pair of lost trainers. I'd ban parents who send their children to school with flu, parents who never remember to sign permission slips, those who turn up an hour-and-a-half late to collect their children from school... These, thank goodness, are the tiny minority. Most of my parents are lovely.

Gilly Pearson, London N11

Next Week's Quandary

Is there really any 'right' age for children to start school? Aren't children always different from one another? If so, isn't any school starting age always going to be a rough rule of thumb, and suit some children better than others? Why do we waste so much time arguing about it?

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