Parenting: Tories would ease up on 'monitoring parents'

Michael Gove MP took questions from parents and practitioners at aFamily and Parenting Institute event in London on Monday. A motherdispleased with the lack of healthy food served at her child's nurseryasked whether school food regulations would be extended to pre-schools.Mr Gove urged her to tackle the problem herself by telling the nurserywhat she wanted.

'We don't want to preach too much,' he said. 'Tougher standards havedriven the quality of school meals up, but these school meals aren'tattractive to children so they're increasingly eating fast food whichthey access from outside.'

He said mentoring would be used to encourage a greater take-up of SureStart services. 'A concern is that not enough people from the lowerincome end of the spectrum use (Sure Start),' said Mr Gove. 'They don'tuse it because they are frightened of being judged. They think that ifthey move within the state sector they will be looked at and askedquestions about what they're feeding their child, what they're teachingtheir child. They worry that they'll be looked down on for notconforming to a Government-prescribed model of how you should raise yourchildren.