Do you really know who your child's teacher is?

On 14 October, Deborah Baidoo posted a thread on her WhatsApp status. Twelve short screens, written between a lunch break and the evening. She taught preschool at an American school in Ghana, and what she wrote is the clearest statement we have read of a problem that sits under most of what we build. A status disappears after a day, so we asked if we could keep it here. The passages in quotation are hers, in her order, lightly trimmed. The rest is ours.

Her question

You are busy at work, going about your day, but have you ever paused to wonder what exactly goes on in your child's school after you drop them off? Who are the people your child spends hours with every day? Who is teaching them, caring for them, correcting them, and influencing how they see themselves and the world?

Schools expect parents to entrust their children to them every day, yet some make it unnecessarily difficult for parents to interact with their children's teachers or know the people responsible for their care and education. So, let me start with a simple but important question. Do you really know who your child's teacher is?

Most parents can name the school. Fewer can name the class teacher. Fewer still can say what that teacher trained in, or how long they have been doing this. Try it now, before reading on. If you had to check a WhatsApp group to be sure, that is the point she is making.

Loving children is not a qualification

Do you know your child's teacher's qualifications, training, or experience? This concern is particularly important at the preschool level, where some schools may employ people with little or no relevant training in early childhood education to care for and teach young children. Let's be clear: loving children and being qualified to teach them are two different things.

Working with preschoolers requires patience, wisdom, emotional intelligence, and an understanding of child development. These are formative years when children are developing socially, emotionally, physically, and intellectually. The people who care for and teach them play a significant role in shaping these experiences.

That middle sentence is the one to keep. Warmth is necessary and it is not sufficient. A two-year-old who bites, a four-year-old who has stopped speaking in class, a child who cannot yet hold a pencil the way the others do: each of these has a right answer, and a kind person without training will guess. Guessing with other people's children is not kindness.

Why is it so hard to ask?

So, why should parents struggle to know the qualifications of the people entrusted with their children? Why should building a relationship with their child's teacher be made so difficult? Could there be something some schools don't want parents to discover?

Having worked as a preschool teacher in an American school here in Ghana, I never experienced some of these barriers between parents and teachers. Parents had my contact, and there was consistent communication. Transparency was part of the relationship. Think about it: if you leave your one-year-old child at school every morning and you are an intentional parent, wouldn't you want regular updates, information, and reassurance that your child is safe and well cared for?

Could some school owners be uncomfortable with parent-teacher relationships because of how they treat their teachers? Could it be that some teachers are poorly paid, inadequately treated, or employed without the relevant qualifications and training? And could the fear of parents discovering these shortcomings be one of the reasons some schools make communication so difficult?

She puts these as questions. Here is what we think the honest answer usually is. A school that keeps parents away from teachers is rarely protecting the teacher. It is protecting the rota. If the Nursery 2 teacher left in the third week of term and the class has since been covered by whoever was free that morning, the head does not want that conversation at the gate. Distance is cheaper than an explanation.

Both sides have a job

Parents have a responsibility to take an active interest in their children's education. We cannot simply pay school fees, drop our children off, and assume that everything is being done correctly. We must ask questions, attend meetings, understand school policies, and communicate our children's needs. At the same time, schools must recognise that parental involvement is not interference; it is an essential partnership in a child's development.

Schools can establish professional boundaries and structured communication channels without creating unnecessary barriers between parents and teachers.

That last sentence is a whole design brief. A boundary is fine. No teacher should be answering a parent at eleven at night, and a class of thirty families cannot each have the teacher's personal number. Structure is fine too. What is not fine is silence dressed up as structure. A channel with hours is a boundary. No channel at all is a wall, and a wall with a polite sign on it is still a wall.

Who is monitoring our schools?

Back to the question I always ask. Who is monitoring our schools? Who ensures that schools employ appropriately qualified and competent teachers? Who checks that the required standards are being followed? And who holds schools accountable when they fail to meet them?

An inspector comes now and then, and the visit is usually announced. A parent comes every morning. Which of the two is more likely to notice that the class teacher changed in week three and nobody said so? The parent is the only daily inspector a school will ever have, and a parent can only inspect what they are allowed to see.

The gate

And as for the schools that won't let parents anywhere near the school building and insist that children be dropped off at the gate. Hmm. Should we be asking questions, or should we be calling in the investigators? Because, please, what exactly is happening behind those gates that parents aren't allowed to see?

We would put this one slightly differently. A gate is not the problem. Plenty of good schools keep the morning drop-off at the gate, because forty adults in a corridor full of three-year-olds is not safe either. The problem is a gate that tells you nothing. If your child is signed in at 7:42 and that fact reaches your phone before you have pulled away, the gate is a window. If your child vanishes behind it until three o'clock and the school's whole account of the day is "fine", the gate is a wall. Same gate. The difference is whether anything comes back out.

Her closing

Our children are not just pupils on a register. They are human beings whose formative years deserve care, competence, and intentional investment. Parents, the next time you drop your child off at school, ask yourself: do I really know the people I am entrusting my child's life to for those hours? And if you don't, perhaps it's time to start asking questions.

Four questions to ask this week

If you are a parent and you could not answer her first question, these four will get you there. None of them is rude. A good school will be glad you asked.

1. Who is my child's class teacher, and what did they train in? A good school answers in one sentence, without first checking whether it is allowed to.
2. How do I reach them, and how soon will I hear back? "Through the office" is an answer. "Through the office, within a school day" is a better one.
3. Was the teacher in today? If not, who covered, and would anyone have told you if you had not asked?
4. May I see the classroom? Not every day. Once. A school with nothing to hide has nothing to arrange.

What a school can do about it

If you run a school, the thread above is about you whether or not it describes you. Here is what the good ones already do, and none of it needs a budget.

• Put the class teacher's name, face and qualification where parents can see it. On the wall, in the term letter, in the app. If you are proud of your staff, this costs you nothing. If you are not, that is the finding.
• Give each class one channel to its teacher, with hours. "Weekdays, replies within a school day" is a boundary. "All enquiries through the office", with no promise attached, is a wall.
• Tell parents when the teacher is away and who covered. They will find out anyway, from a five-year-old, a week late and wrong.
• Treat a question as the partnership she describes, not as a complaint. The parent who asks is the parent who stays.

What her thread says about us

We build software for schools, and her questions name a gap in ours. A parent using the Clarvyn app can already see the time their child was signed in and out at the gate and who handed them over, every present, late and absent mark, the school's notices, the teacher's remark on a report card, and what the school holds on file about the child. What a parent cannot yet see is the class teacher's name and training on the child's page, and a parent cannot yet write to the teacher from the app. Both are being built, and this thread is the reason they moved up the list. We will say here when they ship.

Update, 16 October 2026. The first of the two has shipped. A parent signed in to Clarvyn now has a Teachers tab on their child's page: the class teacher first, then each subject teacher, with their photo, the subjects they take, the year they joined the school and their qualifications. It never shows a teacher's phone number or email, and each teacher can choose to hide their own photo or qualifications. It is in the parent area on the web now, and comes to the phone app with its next update. Writing to the teacher from the app is still being built, and we will say here when that ships too.

Deborah Baidoo taught preschool at an American school in Ghana. The quoted passages are from her WhatsApp status of 14 October 2026 and are reproduced here with her permission.