The two Mr Ps on life in the classroom: ‘I've worked with teachers who have been hit or kicked'

The Guardian

20 hours ago

You can learn a lot about British society from what children bring into classrooms. Take sex toys, Lee Parkinson says. He co-hosts the highly popular Two Mr Ps in a Pod(Cast) with his brother Adam – they both work in primary schools – and their inboxes are bursting with stories from teachers of X-rated show-and-tells.
'You would not believe,' Lee says.
'Inundated,' Adam nods. 'Honestly, a variety of objects.' There was the child who brought in the Harry Potter wand that wasn't. 'And the kid was like: 'I tried to get it working but it just kept buzzing.'' Then there was the child whose pretend hearing aid turned out to be a cock ring. And the second world war gas mask that was 'a full-on, PVC gimp mask', Lee adds. Adam, who works as a higher learning teaching assistant, recalls a time when one pupil proudly showed him his end-of-year gift for the class teacher: a copy of Fifty Shades of Grey. 'He'd taken it off his mum's nightstand.'
The Parkinsons' latest book, How to Survive the School Year, is a portrait of the alarmingly high rates of embarrassing incidents in the classroom and beyond. Anecdotes sent in by their audience of teachers and parents shows that sports days are a hotspot for comical mishaps. Adam once split his trousers playing football with the kids, and had to deliver his big presentation on behaviour later that day in a pair of rugby shorts.
The brothers – I want to call them boys, because all their riffs and ribbing seem to summon their childhood selves to the minature table we are sitting at in Adam's classroom in Walkden, Greater Manchester – happily bat stories to and fro.
In publicity material, Adam is the one who pulls silly faces, while Lee does his best to look sensible but fun. In person, the dynamic is more nuanced. Lee, at 40, is the eldest of three (middle brother Ryan works in sales) and the original Mr P. He coined the name when he launched his ICT (information and communications technology) training business in 2013, which he combines with teaching a Year 4 class part-time at another nearby primary, and a platform to coach teachers in the use of AI to reduce their admin.
Lee very much wears the long trousers, metaphorically and literally. Today he has helped himself to the only adult chair in Adam's classroom ('He took my teacher's chair!'). Adam, 36, is wearing shorts, having returned victorious from a tri-golf tournament with his Year 6s – he's still clutching the trophy – and fidgets in a tiny plastic seat. They're constantly in competition mode, and still vie for the position of 'number one son'. (Lee is now on top, having been awarded an MBE last month.)
Adam is known as The Other Mr P, which you'd think might put him at a disadvantage. He blurted it out when he was introducing himself on the very first podcast, and the name stuck.
So he othered himself? 'I don't mind, because Lee worked tirelessly for five, six years before we started,' he says. 'And this whole thing has led to a life that I never thought possible.'
Back in 2018, the Mr Ps were on holiday in Florida, sipping beer in a hot tub after a day in one of the parks, sharing stories from their classrooms. 'We were just trying to outdo each other with the most ridiculous thing that's happened in our schools,' Lee says. 'I thought: 'We should sit down and record these. Do a podcast'.'
Adam had never heard of a podcast but later he came up with the name over dinner in Buffalo Wild Wings in Kissimmee, Florida. Lee bought the microphones as soon as they got home, and the podcast took off. During lockdown, it became a sort of communal staffroom for teachers who were estranged from colleagues, working remotely, or supervising the children of key workers. Now Two Mr Ps in a Pod(Cast) has had 7.5m downloads, and in October the brothers take their Let That Be a Lesson … tour to venues from Edinburgh to Exeter.
But while their three books (the previous two being Put a Wet Paper Towel On It and This Is Your Own Time You're Wasting) are full of things going comically wrong, increasingly the Parkinsons receive messages from teachers about things going seriously wrong. Burnout, workload and behaviour are the recurrent issues.
'The number one reason for teachers leaving the profession is workload,' Lee says. Although he believes 'that's going to get overtaken by behaviour … There is a growing number of cases where teachers and senior leaders are being verbally, or in some cases physically, assaulted by parents. And there's the online trolling – parents openly being negative about teachers online.'
Lee is hyper-alert to attacks on teachers. We meet in the midst of a heatwave and the fan is going full pelt. Lee enters into a tirade against 'the person who designed primary schools and decided to make it too cold in winter and the surface of the sun when we get a bit of nice weather. What was the mindset? Why do you want to stitch us up as teachers?' Even summer term, with its fetes and sports days, dupes staff with 'a false sense of security'. Truth is, they're behind on the curriculum having crammed for SATs, an exam which Lee thinks has 'no bearing on children's academic development other than an understanding that life's not fair and most of the important things in your existence will be decided by idiots like Michael Gove'.
He is especially exercised about Ofsted. 'It is, in my opinion, one of the main reasons we've got 40,000 teachers leaving the profession a year ... Ofsted say they raise standards and improve lives. Well, they were found to be contributing to the death of a teacher,' Lee says, referring to Ruth Perry, the head whose death by suicide was linked by the coroner to her school's Ofsted inspection. 'So you can't say they improved lives. She wasn't the first and she won't be the last unless things drastically change.'
He has had teachers contact him with similar stories. 'Why create a framework that makes teachers' workflow go through the roof exponentially, plunging them into this boiling pot of stress and worry?'
Changes to Ofsted inspections are due to be published in September, but the proposals have already been met with opposition. 'I think they're not capable of reforming themselves. What we need is a working party of people outside Ofsted, working with Ofsted to make necessary changes.' This sounds like a job he might enjoy. 'I'd have a discussion,' he says. 'But I don't think they'd want to hear from me.'
Lee didn't always feel like this. He started teaching in 2007, 'straight from uni'. He'd just turned 22. Labour's Sure Start programme was in full swing. 'He loved it,' Adam says. 'And I loved the thought of doing what he was doing.' At the time, Adam had been going 'from job to job': Next, Co-op, Iceland, Odeon cinema, six months of data handling at Ofsted ('I didn't know what Ofsted was when I worked there. If I had, I would have messed up all the things!') and volunteering as a rugby coach in a primary school.
One day, his aunt, a children and families officer, asked him to volunteer one-to-one with a child who was struggling with his behaviour, and in isolation out of class. 'I struck up a real bond with him. I absolutely fell in love with working in a school.'
It's fair to say that Adam was able to relate. Of the three brothers, he was the one who their parents were always being called in to school to discuss. Mostly for wrestling with other children and making rude gestures. He was diagnosed with ADHD at the end of primary school. 'I was medicated through secondary school,' he says. 'It helped me massively.' He would take his meds each morning, then button his blazer. 'And I'd look in the mirror, because I knew the saying, Looking smart's halfway to being smart, and I swear I was a different child.'
Adam points to Lee, and the empty space between them, which has acquired the identity of their middle brother. 'They were a lot more able in terms of the work than I was. And I don't mind admitting that. I've done well, I think, with what I've got – to get to where I am.'
'My mum and dad always say, if he'd been the first, they'd never have had another kid,' Lee offers.
'Oh, he loves this!' Adam says, feigning indignation – or perhaps not feigning. His legs are bouncing wildly in that tiny chair. In the way of the best family joshing, it's both good-natured and close to the bone. You get the feeling they can – and often do – go on for hours.
'Are they not Mum and Dad's words?' Lee asks.
'MBE! This guy!' Adam shrieks.
'I'm just relaying information,' Lee says, leaning back in his teacher chair with a wink.
'What was the card you got on Father's Day for Dad?' Adam says.
'From your number one son?'
'No! It wasn't!' Adam's voice rises in triumph. 'It was, 'Sometimes you just get it right first time.''
For a moment, it seems as if they never left home. They've always been close and more alike than Ryan. 'We like spicy food. He hates spicy food. We were always drinking blackcurrant squash, but he'd have orange,' Adam says.
Both Mr Ps are parents themselves. Lee has 14-year-old triplets and a 21-year-old stepson. Adam has a daughter, nine, and a six-year-old son.
Increasingly, he has posted about his experience as what he calls 'a Send dad [special educational needs and disabilities] … Because it took me a long time to accept what the situation was, and learn,' he says. After his son was diagnosed with autism, 'I would say I grieved for the life I expected. I worried if he would ever make friends, be invited to parties, or join a sports team.'
Adam's son's diagnosis has led him to reflect on his own. 'Sometimes autism and ADHD really clash.' While his son enjoys being read the same story repeatedly, Adam finds the repetition challenging. 'The last thing I ever want to do is not be there for my son and not give him what he needs,' he says. He has started to wonder whether taking 'tablets again would help me … relax a bit more. I'm a bit of an overthinker. I do struggle with that.'
His son has an education, health and care plan (EHCP) and attends special school, having left mainstream education when the one-to-one care his EHCP legally entitled him to had to be shared with other children who needed support but didn't have EHCPs.
The schools minister has recently refused to rule out replacing EHCPs, which have become fraught with problems, since the number has risen by 140% in the past 10 years while councils run deficits. Should they be scrapped? 'There's got to be a legally binding document to ensure children get the education they deserve,' Lee says. 'But is the current system working? No. Do education, care and health have to be rolled up or can there be a separate education plan? Are we able to create something that can make mainstream a lot more inclusive?'
The Parkinsons speak every day. Do they ever get sick of each other? 'He's like my fifth child,' Lee says. 'Adam can be one of the funniest people on the planet. There's times I think: how do you function as an adult?'
'I feel I bring his silly side out,' Adam says. 'And at times he brings my serious side out, and we complement each other. But you couldn't have two me's because … Well, I wouldn't know how to plug a mic in.'
For all the jokes, they have had days where they've gone home and cried. Adam has worked in a number of schools, including in Manchester. 'There are days when you're driving home, thinking, wow, that was a really hard, sad day. I've worked with teachers who have been hit or kicked … I've had all the children crying. And that's the saddest thing for me. Because for a lot of children, if they have a tough home life, this is their escape, their solitude.'
'We're faced with the biggest retention crisis we've ever seen for what should be the best job in the world,' Lee says. But he wouldn't recommend teaching to his children. 'Your job as a parent is to protect your kids. I feel like the current education system can break people – the expectations put on teachers, where you're expected to do more with less, and you're constantly made to feel like a failure, and you're under this incredible pressure and the sort of compassion fatigue teachers feel, working in a system that no matter what you do, no matter how many hours you dedicate – you are still seeing the system fail some children.'
But sometimes a teacher will message them or come up to them – this happened to Adam at the tri-golf tournament earlier – and tell them that the podcast has kept them going, or brought them back to teaching, because, Adam says, 'we shine a light on the amazing things and the hilarious things'.
'It's a real privilege to have quite a big impact on a profession that is so special,' Lee says. What they really want is for teaching to be 'respected and valued by everyone'.
How to Survive the School Year: An Essential Guide for Stressed-Out Grownups is published by HarperCollins (£16.99). To support the Guardian order your copy at guardianbookshop.com. Delivery charges may apply.