Head hits back Why I was right to ban pyjamas
Kate Chisholm, the head who asked parents to stop wearing PJs on the school run, tells Harry Wallop why she is standing firm
Head teacher Kate Chisholm only became aware of the furore her letter to parents had caused when a friend texted her from Sydney with the message: “Why are you on my television?!”
It wasn’t just Australia who wanted to talk. She has also had requests from Nairobi to New York, where breakfast television studios have been willing to bump Donald Trump off the news agenda in favour of this well-spoken primary school head teacher from Darlington in County Durham.
The letter in question was a four-sentence missive Miss Chisholm sent out in the school bags of her 450 pupils at Skerne Park Academy on Monday evening.
It was polite and to the point. In it, she noted that parents were increasingly dropping off – and even picking up – children while “still wearing their pyjamas and, on occasion, even slippers”. She hoped, she wrote, parents agreed it was important “to set our children a good example about what is appropriate and acceptable… in preparation for their own adult life”. She ended with the sign-off: “Thank you for your cooperation in helping to raise our children’s aspirations.”
Since it was sent (and posted on Facebook, where it went viral), she has received “hundreds” of emails in support. Some fellow teachers have also expressed horror at slipping standards not just at the school gates but in parenting in general. Most have applauded Miss Chisholm, 36, for speaking out.
But the support has not been universal. Some parents have seen the letter as a personal attack.
Miss Chisholm says: “In every school there are always some parents, regardless of what type of school it is, who are either anti-Establishment or think they know better. I am sure every head teacher in the country could name parents who don’t agree with them when it comes to education. But these parents have been very vocal about their dislikes. That letter gave them a chance to voice their opinion.”
A hardcore group of parents decided to attack the messenger, turning up the following morning in full nightwear to make their point. Others took to social media to brand Miss Chisholm as “snobbish”.
One mother, Kim Daniel, threatening to take her children out of school, said she had once seen Miss Chisholm “dressed in a lowcut top, wearing high heels. What example is she setting the kids?”
Miss Chisholm admits that she’s disabled her Facebook account: “I don’t want to see any of the negativity.”
I am chatting to her in a wine bar in London, where she is visiting with her deputy to attend a one-day course on children’s mental health.
While she stands at 6ft tall, she is nothing like Miss Trunchbull, the tall and terrifyingly sadistic head teacher in Matilda, who some parents have suggested she resembles. If anything, she looks far more like the kindly, sunny Miss Honey.
The fact that she has managed to keep her smile is a miracle.
“I’ve been called an overpaid prostitute and a failed fat supermodel. Both times, this was parents saying these things to me in front of their kids. If I want to have a word with the parent about a discipline issue, say, some parents have shouted at me, they’ve sworn at me, they’ve told me that I don’t know what I am talking about.”
She insists she has a thick skin and is able to laugh it off – even when one parent said she hoped she was barren, “because if you have children, they’ll be the spawn of the devil”.
When Miss Chisholm took over the Skerne Park Academy, the primary school was getting such bad results that there was talk of closing it down. While Darlington is a relatively affluent town, Skerne Park housing estate, next to the school, is not. Of the children attending, 43 per cent are entitled to free school meals – nearly three times the national average of 15 per cent.
But Miss Chisholm didn’t see this as an excuse for a lack of aspiration, and has made it her mission to crack down on parents allowing their children to skip school or turn up late; she has also improved SAT scores, appointed a full-time social worker, introduced lots of after-school activities, and even replaced French with Mandarin as the second language. At its most recent inspection, Ofsted rated the school as “good”.
She is keen to stress that the majority of parents are “absolutely
‘I’ve been called an overpaid prostitute and a failed fat supermodel’
fantastic, wonderful people”. But there are still a small number who are resistant and are happy not just to insult her, but take it further.
“I’ve had parents take a swing at me. It was because I wouldn’t back down over school uniform. It used to be that the children could wear anything they wanted on the bottom half, and then a blue jumper on top. When we changed it, I insisted the parents made them wear the jumpers with logos, because I wanted the children to feel part of a community.”
Even though she ensured every child received a free uniform paid for out of the pupil premium and sponsorship, there was a backlash. One parent even decided to make it physical. “A father just got so irate that he took a swing at me. I had to duck. He was massive.” Was she worried? “I just thought, ‘That’s new. I’ve never had that before’,” she smiles. “I asked him to leave the building.”
Yesterday, a report by the Association of Teachers and Lecturers said that 43 per cent of teachers or teaching assistants had experienced violence at school over the last year. Given a list of reasons for bad behaviour, 85 per cent of those polled said that a lack of boundaries at home was to blame.
Miss Chisholm says that, like at all schools, there are violent pupils – “some of those children who need the most love show it in the most unloving way,” she adds wryly.
But what concerns her is not the lack of respect for teachers, but for education itself. This cannot be laid at the door of the child, but has to be blamed on the parents: “If you respect education, you want your child to come to school on purpose, not as an afterthought.”
Which is why she decided to fight the pyjama battle. It started in September, when she spotted a handful of parents wearing nightwear not only to drop off their children but also to pick them up. “Then, at Christmas, we have about 12 different performances of the Christmas play, in morning, afternoon and evening. And there were parents in all of these performances wearing pyjamas.”
Is it possible they were just tracksuit bottoms? “There were big, red, fluffy dressing gowns, slippers, tops with sleeping unicorns,” she says.
“It’s nice to make an effort for the children – it’s their big day. When I was a child, my mum [who was a teacher herself ] would put on this posh dress and perfume. And I’d see my parents in the audience and it would make my day.”
She insists her objections to pyjamas are not because she is being “snooty”, it is because she thinks the children will suffer.
“I am a great believer in brain development and how children grow. Children need boundaries and they need to know what to expect in the morning. There are studies that prove a clear routine improves children’s ability to learn, and therefore their ability to retain knowledge, their ability to progress and reach their aspirations.”
That is all she wants: for the children to flourish and reach their potential. And she’s happy to take on any parent who disagrees with her. Even those with flying fists.