We’ve all been there, haven’t we? That moment of arrival at university.

Years ago, the excellent dramatist Jack Rosenthal wrote Eskimo Day, a television play about arrival at university, during which Maureen Lipman’s character says: “It’s Eskimos, isn’t it, that, when they get old and no use to no one no more, they just quietly sling their hooks and toddle off into the snow? For good. And their kids don’t much bother because life goes on. They’re adults now.”

They’re adults now. Or are they? Arrival at university used to end with a strict “Go now, please” to Mum and Dad, and you would never see a parent at an open day.

Now, the University of Warwick has to take over most of the suburb of Canley as a park and ride for 4x4s for its open day, and the parent drop-off has become a chaperoned move-in at most halls of residence. The cars all disgorge boxes of starter-kitchen kits and pot plants, packed by Mum, and only occasionally reluctantly unpacked by the young students themselves.

So, when the moment comes to start being a university student - for which we’ll use the shorthand of 18 years old - are you an adult, or are you still a child? I would argue that you are not yet fully an adult, and, though I wouldn’t dispute the claims of commentators such as Frank Furedi that young people shouldn’t be infantilised, I would dispute the age-old cry of the university: “Well, they’re adults now.”

My older son, at 18, went on an excellent student-exchange scheme from his university. When he hadn’t contacted us 48 hours after he was due to arrive in China (as it happens), and had not, of course, even told us exactly where he was staying, we contacted the university. Had he arrived at their partner university and booked into his accommodation? Was he all right?

The answer we received was: “We’re not allowed to tell you. He’s an adult.”

Yes, and he was a boy and his father a teacher, so it was I who had to find the booking-in details, call the overseas university and receive the welcome news (which they were delighted to share) that he was, indeed, fine but had lost his phone.

How interesting that a Chinese university had no qualms about making the common-sense decision to provide welcome news to a parent, but that the UK university would not.

Meanwhile, students themselves say that they are unprepared for adult life. As long ago as 1994, sociologist Jeffrey Arnett surveyed college students on whether they considered themselves as adults.

He wrote: “Only 23 per cent indicated that they considered themselves to have reached adulthood, while nearly two-thirds indicated that they considered themselves to be adults in some respects but not in others.

“The most important criteria for marking the transition to adulthood were intangible criteria, particularly ‘accepting responsibility for the consequences of your actions’, ‘deciding on beliefs and values independently of parents or other influences’ and ‘establishing a relationship with parents as an equal adult’, each of which was endorsed by more than 70 per cent of the sample.

“In contrast, role transitions such as completing education, marriage and becoming a parent were endorsed by less than 20 per cent. It is suggested that the transition from adolescence to adulthood in Western societies is a process that may last many years, during which individualistic and intangible markers of adulthood are gradually and incrementally pursued.”

So the reality is that this is not a dichotomy: it’s a journey, a continuum. In schools, we see the same at 11 and at 16: some new Year 7s are clearly big-school-ready; others are still little boys and girls. Some 16-year-olds are definitely sixth-form students; others still ask how long the homework is supposed to take. Why, then, should 18 be the only cliff edge?

And it’s odd, isn’t it? As a society, we are pushing adulthood on to young people more and more, and earlier and earlier. We want them to vote, we want them to drive, we buy adult clothes for tiny children … and then they tell us they’re stressed. Perhaps there is some cause and effect. Perhaps we should let them take their time to develop into adulthood.

Of course, this does not mean we should stifle their aspirations and their development. Until the 1970s, the age of consent in the UK was 21, as it still is in some countries. Starting to take responsibility earlier than that is undoubtedly a good thing: as brains develop in teenagers, so do opinions, judgements and identity. I cannot be the only person who squirms with embarrassment when I think of some of the views I held at 14, some of the tastes I had at 16 or some of the decisions I made, even at 18. Yet we understand and forgive such volatility in students, because we know that growing up takes time.

A great deal of great work has been done in recent years in neuroscience, and the instincts that teachers and parents have operated by for generations have been frequently vindicated, while others have been healthily questioned. The need for parents and teachers to give more responsibility under controlled conditions - as a planner of an expedition, coach of a team or, dare one say, prefect - has always been recognised. More recently, we have been better capitalising on the ways teenagers study and on their work rhythms.

Teenage attitudes to risk have always been a point of concern for schools and families. When I was a deputy head, I quickly learned that long lectures about the risks of smoking or drinking were largely lost on the student body. What they needed was a clear set of rules, clear boundaries, clear consequences. Risk matters little to the growing mind.

All of this was crisply summarised recently by The Guardian’s Katie Forster when, reviewing Frances Jensen’s The Teenage Brain, she tackled some questions about the nature of teenagehood and adulthood: “I don’t think organisation is a high priority for most teenagers. They have other things to worry about” is one conclusion that, I think, we can all relate to. “There are … dozens of mixed messages for teenagers” is another.

And the conclusion that 18-year-olds are not yet fully adult is now being recognised on a practical basis. The University of Bristol has invited students to involve their parents in their welfare - and it is surely only the first in a tidal wave of universities that will do the same. Some 94 per cent of Bristol students have opted to have their parents informed if the university is worried about them.

Of course, 18-year-olds are young adults, as are 16-year-olds. Some 13-year-olds are pretty adult, too. But to push them into full adulthood when some of them have never lived away from home before, never cooked a meal, never booked their own tickets and still - importantly - don’t know who they are or what life is about, is wrong. Yes, finishing school should be the start of adulthood, but not a door closed on support.

Chris Ramsey is headmaster of Whitgift School, an independent school in South Croydon, and chairs the HMC/GSA’s Universities Committee. The text of this article was originally used as the opening speech in a University of Buckingham festival debate

This article originally appeared in the 13 September 2019 issue under the headline “When does a child become an adult?”