YOU hear them before you see them at the school gates. They are the parents whose language would be bleeped out if they were on prime time television.

Some people are so used to swearing that they don’t seem to be capable of turning it off, even around children. And by letting rip with some traditional Anglo-Saxon vocabulary on the school run, they’re giving other people’s children quite an education.

Other parents often feel reluctant to take it up with the people concerned, for fear of ending up on the receiving end of another foul-mouthed tirade.

So it’s good that Vivienne Arkell, head of Pokesdown Primary School, has sent out a message in the school newsletter that such behaviour is not OK and that the minority of parents responsible can expect to be banned from school property.

The danger here, as every parent knows full well, is that children tend to do as we do, not as we tell them.