SCHOOLS are coming under increasing strain as they struggle to cope with children who have suffered emotional damage as a result of family breakdown, a leading headmaster said yesterday.

A “selfish” determination among parents to put their interests above those of their children meant that schools were left to pick up the pieces through their pastoral care services, Graham Able, chairman of the Headmasters’ and Headmistresses’ Conference (HMC), said. Mr Able, the Master of Dulwich College in southeast London, gave warning that even the bestresourced independent schools would soon be unable to cope if the trends continued.

Children from stable two-parent families coped far more easily at school than those from broken homes, who required “quite large amounts” of pastoral care to cope with the consequences of separation and divorce. Boys, who already struggle to keep up with girls in the classroom, were particularly vulnerable to disruption in the family home or the absence of a father.

Mr Able told the HMC’s annual conference in Dublin: “The need for high-quality pastoral care has, sadly, never been more crucial than it is today and, unless society can start to reverse selfish and self-indulgent attitudes, this trend will continue.

“Unfortunately, there is more interest in and concern for individual rights than there is in our duties to one another, to society at large and especially to our children. Whilst there are many examples of single and divorced parents who give excellent support to their children, we all know that those growing up under the same roof as their mother and their father are much less likely to require additional pastoral care at school than those who do not enjoy that advantage.

“The problem of absent or non-existent fathers can be particularly difficult for adolescent boys. It would be refreshing if society and our legal system concentrated rather more on the duties of parents to their children rather than their rights to self-gratification no matter what the cost to others.”

The HMC represents 240 leading independent schools, including Eton, Harrow, Rugby and Westminster.

Mr Able said that he was “firing a warning shot” about the problems faced by schools, although he acknowledged that there was little government could do to encourage families to stay together where marriages had broken down.

He said: “In our schools, these children are in the minority and because of that we have had the time to give them pastoral care. If what is happening in society goes on long enough, even we will find it difficult to cope.

“Children who don’t get the support that others from very stable two-parent backgrounds get at home can suffer in their work and behaviour, and find it more difficult to relate to other children and to adults.”

Mr Able also said that independent schools might walk away from government plans to reform GCSE and A-level examinations, and move to the International Baccalaureate instead, if their successor failed to challenge pupils.

He called for GCSEs to be abolished in all subjects except for English and mathematics. These would be taken a year earlier, with school transcripts provided by teachers for all other subjects that set out the standards that they believed pupils had achieved.

Students would then study up to seven subjects at AS level for two years, before choosing three A levels in the final year of sixth form. This would allow students to achieve breadth and depth in advanced study.

Mr Able said that independent schools would wait for the review of qualifications for 14 to 19-year-olds by Mike Tomlinson, the former Chief Inspector of Schools, before deciding whether to act alone.

“I very much hope that the final outcome of the Tomlinson committee will produce a curriculum which allows most members to stay within the mainstream,” he said.

“It is, however, our duty as heads to provide the best educational experience we can for our students, so if the reforms do not produce a high quality, properly challenging and flexible curriculum with a sensible assessment regime, we will have to consider what alternatives are available.”

Schools in the HMC are to discuss a proposal to end national publication of their A-level and GCSE results because they are unhappy at being ranked in league tables. Instead, schools would place results on their websites.

Independent schools would still be obliged to provide their results to the Department for Education and Skills, which publishes a listing of performance at GCSE and A level.

Explore UK News

• Crime News

• Education News

• Health News

• Scotland News

Times Recommends

• UK regional accents thrive against the odds
• ‘Scarecrow’ wind farms put rare birds to flight
• What an anti-climax: G-spot is a myth