The Ofsted report criticising parents at St Anne's Park Primary will come as a surprise to many people.

The usual suspects for blame when things go wrong in our schools are teachers, heads, governors, kids, cleaners, dinner ladies, the lollipop man's pet dog and Gordon Brown (in any order).

The untouchables are the parents, who seemingly cannot be blamed yet who do plenty of blaming when their little darling goes off the rails.

Yet there is one group in education who will not find criticism of parents surprising.

They would never admit it in public, but teachers have known for years that one of the most significant barriers to a child's achievement can be the parents.

It must be said that at St Anne's Park Primary, head teacher Heather Forrest makes the point that most parents are supportive but here, as at many schools, there are some who can make life hard for the staff.

Across the city there are the parents who will stick up for an unruly child no matterwhat, and take a child out of school in term time to get a cheap holiday – and then complain about bad exam results.

Now, for once, a more candid picture of the problems at a school is being laid bare and the hope has to be that it could provoke a debate on an issue that seems to be taboo.

At St Anne's Park, as elsewhere, it only takes a few bad families to produce disruptive children. They in turn make life a misery for everyone else, staff and pupils alike.

What must be hoped is that more assessments of parents are made public by Ofsted.

Most right-minded people would welcome it – the only ones who would not are those who cause the problems in the first place.