Keeping Parents Of Students Informed

Press, Volume CIV, Issue 30897, 2 November 1965, Page 19

Keeping Parents Of Students Informed

(Special Crspdt. N.Z.P.A.) LONDON, Nov. 1. Annual university reports keeping parents in touch with their children’s academic progress are suggested in the new “British Universities Annual,” published by the association of university teachers.

Mr R. D. Kitchen, headmaster of Lady Manners School, Bakewell, argues in a specially-invited article that parents, who still foot the majority of the bills, are the forgotten side of the university education triangle. Undergraduates, anxious to show adolescent independence, fail to consult their parents. University staffs aid and abet this attitude because “they fear a possible intrusion into academic freedom by a back-door method.” The result was that universities’ pastoral efforts usually founder, that the sudden disappointments and even tragedies of student life come as a complete shock to parents.

Mr Kitchen suggests that parents should get a brief, realistic report on their children’s progress every year. Only in this way would parents who did not themselves have a university education,

be able to gauge whether their child was doing well or hiding failure behind a smokescreen of evasions.