Teacher union conference motion on "social dysfunction"

The following motion appears in the agenda of my trade union's annual conference, due to take place in the week before Easter:

Impact of social dysfunction and family breakdown

17 THAT Conference urges the Executive Committee to press the Government to recognise fully the extent to which social dysfunction and family breakdown are damaging the educational attainment of children and the performance of schools and colleges.

I suspect that the concern lying behind this motion is that schools and teachers are being marked down during inspections/self evaluation processes when the real cause of the underachievement of pupils does not lie with the work of the schools and teachers themselves. But it will be interesting to see what definitions of "social dysfunction" and "family" are used in the debate. What the union will expect Government to do in order to deliver the "recognising" called for in the motion defeats me - particularly since the present Government has done plenty to remove those fixed reference points, both social and ethical in nature, that would support stability in the home lives of children.

The full agenda for the Conference can be downloaded in pdf format from www.atl.org.uk.