Parents in pyjamas : why the headteacher should stick to her guns

The school gate pyjama row shows how difficult it is for schools to set boundaries : but dressing properly sends a key message to children - and teachers

How long does it take you to get dressed in the mornings? Nothing fancy, obviously; just clothed in the first thing picked up off the floor. Five minutes? Ten at a push, counting a quick go with the hairbrush and the vain hunt for a pair of tights that isn't laddered?

Anyone with small children has had mornings when even five minutes seems too much to ask: mornings when someone's PE kit is lost, and someone else spills cereal down their last clean jumper, and the cat throws up, and the car doesn't start.

But on the whole it shouldn't be an impossible ask to ... put some actual clothes on. Then again, it seemingly depends who's asking.

Last week Kate Chisholm, the headteacher of a Darlington primary school, sent a letter home nothing that a minority of parents were regularly pitching up to school in their pyjamas, not just at morning drop-off but sometimes even at parents' evenings. It would help Skerne Park Academy raise children's aspirations, the head suggested, if parents could set an example of what's "appropriate and acceptable" in adult life.

Predictably, the whole thing has ended up in a juicy old tabloid row between those Skerne Park parents who agree that getting out of your dressing gown seems reasonable, and those taking furious umbrage. Chisholm has herself been accused of both snobbery and setting a bad example because she "wears high heels".

Sadly the Department for Education doesn't keep statistics for parental attire on the school run, but given a Cardiff branch of Tesco caused a similar furore by banning customers from shopping in their nightwear, it seems sage to assume Chisholm isn't the only head struggling with this one.

There's a certain sulphurous whiff of culture clash hanging over the whole thing, obviously. Anyone free to do the drop-off in a furry onesy is perhaps unlikely to have a job to go to afterwards - unlike the waiting teachers, some of whom may have been up since dawn to get their own offspring fed, dressed and dropped at nursery before starting to prepare the classroom for a stressful working day ahead. "Aspiration" can be a loaded word when used by a successful professional woman.

But pyjamafate is only the tip of a much bigger dilemma now facing everyone is education, from nursery right through to university, over what it's fair to expect from parents. How far can teachers interfere in a family's private choices without overstepping the mark and wrecking delicate relationships? And in a climate of ever increasing pressure for better results, who takes responsibility when parenting gets in the way of teaching?

There are increasing signs across government of a willingness to grapple with this dilemma. Sir Michael Wilshaw, Ofsted's chief inspector of schools, has suggested fines for parents who consistently fail to turn up for appointments or don't listen to their children read; David Cameron spoke recently about the responsibility parents have to get it right for their kids. But it's still far from clear how all this translates to the classroom, leaving too many teachers damned by parents when they do interfere and increasingly afraid of being damned Ofsted if they don't.

Hackles rise - and, in extremis, fists can fly - if teachers meddle in what many parents regard as none of their damn business. Yet if children start school in nappies and barely able to speak in sentences because nobody got around to toilet training and they are constantly parked in front of the telly, that arguably is the business of anyone whose job relies on getting them through to Sats at age seven. 

The same is true of the 13-year-olds who can't concentrate in lessons because someone let them stay up all night playing Call of Duty. And what admissions tutor wouldn't be tempted to tell the helicopter mother who insists on accompanying her 18-year-old to his university interview that he'll never learn to work things out for himself if she doesn't back off?

But not all boundary disputes between home and school are so easily resolved. Parents naturally want small children to have time to play, and resent homework spoiling evening and weekends, yet an ever more rigorous curriculum renders it almost impossible for teachers to stuff everything into the school day. Banning chocolate from packed lunches may similarly be in a child's best interest, but feels overly intrusive to many parents. Parents' evenings positively hum with awkward things left unsaid. Is it ever acceptable for a teacher to suggest that your child's plummeting grades might improve if you managed to have a slightly less poisonous divorce? 

Schools have long been expected to pick up the pieces of difficult home lives for good reason, given that the alternative is simply accepting that some kids are doomed. Some work miracles in near-impossible circumstances. But teachers are not social workers, and even the best get occasionally ground down by parents pulling relentlessly in the other direction: mothers whose kneejerk response to their angel being justifiably punished is to demand an apology from the head; fathers physically brawling on the school run in front of horrified kids. Shuffling through the playground in your PJs is arguably a pretty mild offence by comparison.

There are heads who have learned to be grateful if parents show up at all, regardless of what they're wearing; Jeremy Corbyn was technically right yesterday that what really matters is for kids to be there on time, having had breakfast and preferably a good night's sleep. But the two are not unconnected. At worst, consistently failing to get it together in the morning can be a sign of something seriously wrong: depression, heavy drinking, hidden domestic problems that might need gently uncovering. 

And at best - and I say this as someone perpetually running late, whose signature school-run look is "dragged through a hedge backwards" - it doesn't suggest the kind of calm, organized morning routine that delivers kids relaxed and ready to learn.

Nobody's asking anyone to rise at dawn and make their own sugar-free granola from scratch. But tiny changes can achieve surprisingly big results. Getting dressed sends kids a signal that school is a place to be taken seriously, that teachers are people you strive to impress.

But perhaps most importantly of all, it creates the reassuring illusion that grownups are vaguely in control of life rather than constantly defeated by it. Chisholm should stick to her guns. Her pupils, if not their parents, will probably thank her for it in the long run.