Pupils should be taught how to be good parents while they are still in school, according to a Birmingham teacher.

Lynn Edwards, outgoing chair of the Professional Association of Teachers, said schools must step in because young mothers and fathers could no longer rely on their own parents to teach them.

But her proposal was voted down by delegates at the union's annual conference in Oxford.

Mrs Edwards said courts were ordering parents of children involved in anti-social behaviour to attend courses on how to teach youngsters to behave.

But the damage has already been done by this point. Instead, people should learn parenting skills before their children were born.

Youngsters should be taught "parent-craft" as a compulsory subject between 14 and 16, while they are studying for their GCSEs. New parents could rely on the advice of grandparents but this was no longer the case, said Mrs Edwards, who teaches geography at Saltley School in Birmingham.

"The extended family no longer occupies a village or urban neighbourhood. It is more likely to be spread across the world," she told the conference.

"Most people used to live in extended families, comprised of fairly large nuclear families, within a fairly small area.

"Most people therefore grew up taking some responsibility for younger siblings, or other relatives, while they were still children themselves. They learned how to be good parents on a practical basis within this family setting."

She added: "Many young people are getting ASBOs. Their parents are getting compulsory parenting orders.

"This is too late for the young person and for the parent.

"But the practical experience gained by living in a large extended family has gone.

"The modern nuclear family does not, and cannot, offer any similar experience to today's young people.

"They rely on what they learn outside the family setting for most of the different areas of life".

Mrs Edwards also said schools should teach potential parents who to ensure children respected authority, she said.

"It would need to take account of differences in culture and faith and in family circumstances, without criticising any of the options as to what constitutes a family.

"It would need to cover the practicalities of caring for a child. It would need to give ideas and guidance on how to teach manners, road safety, the handling of money and what constitutes acceptable behaviour to young children within the family setting.

"But it would need to go way beyond how to look after a baby or discipline a toddler into areas where young people, still legally children, are challenged about their own behaviour and how it affects the way their parent, or parents, and those 'in loco parentis' respond to them."

The Government has made tackling anti-social behaviour among young people a top priority, and introduced a range of measures including anti-social behaviour orders and on-the-spot fines.

But critics have accused Ministers of going too far. Earlier this week it emerged West Midlands Police had sent officers to deal with two schoolgirls playing hopscotch in a Birmingham street.

Community support officers made them scrub their chalk hopscotch grids off the pavement.