Do As We Say, and There's A Nice Little Earner In It For You....

National Association of Head Teachers president Clarissa Williams has suggested parents who spend 'quality time' with their children should be rewarded through the benefits system:

Ms Williams called for a benefit system which provided incentives for good parents.

"What I would like to see is a benefits system that would reward parents for engaging with schools - that could be linked in some way to the benefits they get," she said.

Perhaps parents who spent time reading to their children, going to school parents evenings or helping out in their school, could get higher payments, she suggested.

Leave aside the difficulty of policing such a system (Who is going to monitor if parents are spending 'quality time' with their children? How is 'quality time' to be defined?), just what sort of 'parent' is the norm in some of these schools that you have to be bribed with other people's money to spend time with the children you brought into the world...?

Punitive steps like fining parents for truanting children rarely worked...Clarissa Williams argued.

Well, have you really tried...?