School leaders have accused Labour of “window dressing” after Keir Starmer pledged to introduce...
...supervised toothbrushing for young children in England’s primary schools.
While the policy has long been supported by the dentistry profession as a way of curbing decay, headteachers said it was not appropriate for their staff to check whether pupils had cleaned their teeth.It's not appropriate to check what parents are sending in for a packed lunch either, but that didn't stop them, did it?
Paul Whiteman, the general secretary of the National Association of Head Teachers, said: “We have serious reservations about how such a policy could even work. It is not the role of teachers to be making sure children brush their teeth each day.
“Schools already play a role in teaching children about the importance of looking after their teeth through the curriculum, but there has to be a limit in terms of what we can expect them to do.
“We should demand more than window dressing from all of our politicians.”
Oh, be quiet! You've already meddled in things that were the purview of parents, you can hardly claim it's not your role now...
The British Dental Association, which represents the profession, said it was encouraged by Labour’s proposal, given ministerial inaction over introducing a similar scheme.
So, have the hapless Labour brains trust decided there's more votes to come from dentists than from teachers? Because maybe they shouldn't have let Diane Abbott do the maths...
