Two interesting pieces in the news this week about trying to develop better co-ordination of work with families.
England still suffers from huge structural inequality. There is poor social mobility. Children born into poverty are still likely to grow up and continue their lives in poverty.
A new report from Capacityltd notes that poverty is not mentioned nearly enough in either policy or discussion about early childhood services. The report observes that the Children's Centre programme is still largely failing to help parents improve their education and/or return to work. Children's Centres lack information about their local communities, they lack techniques to find out about local needs and desires, and they don't have the right tools to evaluate their work.
Ouch. And, from my experience, it's true.
Looking at four good Children's Centres, there are some interesting conclusions about what makes good practice:
* staff with an understanding the realities of living in poverty;
* an emphasis on progress and development for families, rather than just maintenance/survival through crises;
* community development through encouraging local parents to be volunteers, members of management board, etc.
The report is well worth reading, though it is comparatively poor in its understanding of what makes for good early childhood education and care. The examples and photos used range from uninspiring to grim, I think.
Meanwhile, the Guardian reports on progress in information-sharing across different professionals to promote children's welfare and protect them from harm. We're still under the shadow of what happened to Victoria Climbie - lots of people knowing some of the risks to the child, but no-one putting all the information together. The result was a pitiful life for a little child, ended with her murder.
Whilst the Capacityltd report is pretty much as straight as they come, reporting with honesty on the limitations and failings of Children's Centre, the Guardian's report is mostly fantasy. Take this:
"Now in place is the Common Assessment Framework (CAF), a basic way in which professionals, including teachers and other school staff (eg learning mentors) can record concerns about a child".
OK - the CAF is "in place" in the sense that the form has been created and you can download it from the Every Child Matters website. But I wonder how many teachers have played a part in writing a CAF.
1%?
Probably fewer.
So the Guardian does its usual job on social policy - it convinces those who want to be convinced that social policy is progressive, and it's working.
Then - just like with Sure Start - a few years later someone will do a decent bit of research, and show that the implementation has been patchy and the results varied.
At best.
Sunday, 23 September 2007
Friday, 21 September 2007
From a swearing background
A good story, from a friend.
A child is playing football in the school playground. He really wants the ball. He really wants it, even more, and shouts "pass me the fucking ball". A classmate threatens to tell his teacher of his swearing.
All day, his classmate keeps making knowing looks at him, putting up his hand in class, but then saying something different.
His nerves mangled, he decides that he is going to have to bring this to an end and asks to see the headteacher at the end of the day.
His explanation:
"I know I shouldn't have done it, Miss, but you see I'm from a swearing background."
A child is playing football in the school playground. He really wants the ball. He really wants it, even more, and shouts "pass me the fucking ball". A classmate threatens to tell his teacher of his swearing.
All day, his classmate keeps making knowing looks at him, putting up his hand in class, but then saying something different.
His nerves mangled, he decides that he is going to have to bring this to an end and asks to see the headteacher at the end of the day.
His explanation:
"I know I shouldn't have done it, Miss, but you see I'm from a swearing background."
Saturday, 15 September 2007
More on the building works...
On Monday the builders working to extend the Children's Centre cut through a power cable.
Power is lost to the local blocks of flats up to 9pm. An old guy up in one of the flats needs an oxygen cylinder. I assume it has some emergency back up. Am not pleased.
On Tuesday a resident (retired, loves his garden, best not to cross him though) comes over to talk to me and the building services manager.
"Call yourself a fucking builder, cowboy more like. What you going to do tomorrow - cut through the fucking water main. Joke."
On Wednesday the builders cut through the water main.
Power is lost to the local blocks of flats up to 9pm. An old guy up in one of the flats needs an oxygen cylinder. I assume it has some emergency back up. Am not pleased.
On Tuesday a resident (retired, loves his garden, best not to cross him though) comes over to talk to me and the building services manager.
"Call yourself a fucking builder, cowboy more like. What you going to do tomorrow - cut through the fucking water main. Joke."
On Wednesday the builders cut through the water main.
Early childhood education and care: some of this week's news
Defending nursery education
Despite high levels of expenditure on the early years, concerns remain that high quality early years education is being relentlessly closed down and replaced with cheaper alternatives. Recently, Blackburn with Darwen has used its "powers to innovate" to take headteachers away from seven of its nursery schools - Early Education says that this has "already impoverished the quality of educational
experience offered to its youngest children." You can read their full statement here.
Meanwhile, in Manchester, there is a feisty campaign going against the privatisation of early years provision in the Sure Start Levenshulme area.
At the Kids' Academy day nursery, which is part of Manchester's Burnage Children's Centre, Ofsted found that: “nappies are changed on torn mats with foam exposing, feeds are left in bags on top of a radiator and the fridge is dirty and smells of sour milk. Babies are provided with some manufactured toys, which they hardly access and are left to crawl around aimlessly. Children do not benefit from a consistent staff team, who know the children well to meet their individual needs.” Read the full report http://www.ofsted.gov.uk/portal/site/Internet/menuitem.7c7b38b14d870c7bb1890a01637046a0/?event=getReport&urn=EY274784&inspectionNumber=419178&providerCategoryID=2&fileName=\\ey\\DC\\INSPDC_EY274784_03052006.xml.
Weep.
Dummies
Dummies are bad, health professionals say - they ruin children's teeth, and speech, and interfere with breastfeeding. Parents should ditch them.
Dummies are good - and parents are now being advised to put babies to sleep with a dummy in their mouth, as this may reduce the chances of cot death.
It seems professionals working with young children are just as confused as everyone else.
An interesting piece of research by Dr Judy Whitmarsh shows that attitudes to dummies in early years provision are influenced more by personal experience and viewpoints, rather than by research. As a result there seem to be no clear guidelines on dummies in nurseries: instead there is "ambivalence and anxiety".
More news on the impact of Sure Start
The Guardian states - without giving a source - that "the child from a deprived home has heard an average 34 million fewer words addressed to them by the age of five." The attempts by the Sure Start programme to encourage parents to communicate more with their children through a programme of talks by Beryl Hilton-Downing are described as "hard-hitting" but "frustratingly, out of a potential 300 or so parents and carers, only around 20 have turned out to hear her".
Meanwhile, the Telegraph reports on what a local parent calls the "brilliant" facilities at the Children's Centre in Thurnby Lodge, Leicester but worries that Sure Start is not reaching the people who need it most and can focus too much on what adults want rather than what would benefit their children.
A local headteacher says that "the only gain has been the early identification of children with learning and behaviour problems, so they don't just turn up at school and it's the first we've heard of them. Other than that, it's money down the drain."
That seems a little harsh to me - that's not such a bad result. Is it?
Despite high levels of expenditure on the early years, concerns remain that high quality early years education is being relentlessly closed down and replaced with cheaper alternatives. Recently, Blackburn with Darwen has used its "powers to innovate" to take headteachers away from seven of its nursery schools - Early Education says that this has "already impoverished the quality of educational
experience offered to its youngest children." You can read their full statement here.
Meanwhile, in Manchester, there is a feisty campaign going against the privatisation of early years provision in the Sure Start Levenshulme area.
At the Kids' Academy day nursery, which is part of Manchester's Burnage Children's Centre, Ofsted found that: “nappies are changed on torn mats with foam exposing, feeds are left in bags on top of a radiator and the fridge is dirty and smells of sour milk. Babies are provided with some manufactured toys, which they hardly access and are left to crawl around aimlessly. Children do not benefit from a consistent staff team, who know the children well to meet their individual needs.” Read the full report http://www.ofsted.gov.uk/portal/site/Internet/menuitem.7c7b38b14d870c7bb1890a01637046a0/?event=getReport&urn=EY274784&inspectionNumber=419178&providerCategoryID=2&fileName=\\ey\\DC\\INSPDC_EY274784_03052006.xml.
Weep.
Dummies
Dummies are bad, health professionals say - they ruin children's teeth, and speech, and interfere with breastfeeding. Parents should ditch them.
Dummies are good - and parents are now being advised to put babies to sleep with a dummy in their mouth, as this may reduce the chances of cot death.
It seems professionals working with young children are just as confused as everyone else.
An interesting piece of research by Dr Judy Whitmarsh shows that attitudes to dummies in early years provision are influenced more by personal experience and viewpoints, rather than by research. As a result there seem to be no clear guidelines on dummies in nurseries: instead there is "ambivalence and anxiety".
More news on the impact of Sure Start
The Guardian states - without giving a source - that "the child from a deprived home has heard an average 34 million fewer words addressed to them by the age of five." The attempts by the Sure Start programme to encourage parents to communicate more with their children through a programme of talks by Beryl Hilton-Downing are described as "hard-hitting" but "frustratingly, out of a potential 300 or so parents and carers, only around 20 have turned out to hear her".
Meanwhile, the Telegraph reports on what a local parent calls the "brilliant" facilities at the Children's Centre in Thurnby Lodge, Leicester but worries that Sure Start is not reaching the people who need it most and can focus too much on what adults want rather than what would benefit their children.
A local headteacher says that "the only gain has been the early identification of children with learning and behaviour problems, so they don't just turn up at school and it's the first we've heard of them. Other than that, it's money down the drain."
That seems a little harsh to me - that's not such a bad result. Is it?
Monday, 10 September 2007
Early childhood education and care: some of this week's news
Let our children play
A wide-ranging group of experts have written to the Daily Telegraph on the importance of play – stating that "outdoor, unstructured, loosely supervised play – appears to be vital to children’s all-round health and well-being." A welcome alternative to all the recent publicity given to the failure of four year olds to improve their scores on PIPS (Performance Indicators in Primary Schools) tests. But as a society we still seem to get more worried about the test scores of young children than the loss of places and opportunities to play.
Breaking the law on pay
A private nursery owner just up the road from where I live is the first person to befined for breaking the National Minimum Wage laws. As if it isn't bad enough that we entrust our youngest children to people bang-on the minimum wage and pay crisp-packers at Walkers more.
Professor Helen Penn, in a recent piece, interestingly wondered whether the extent of regulation of nurseries in England (especially the mandated staff:child ratios) has had a perversely negative effect.
"We have held on to our staff-child ratios, which are very generous, but parents and childcare workers pay for it in higher fees and lower wages; and low wages in turn means that the job of childcare attracts less skilled or less committed staff. This raises the very uncomfortable question of whether our attempt to maintain quality through regulation has overall had a negative effect.Perhaps it would be better to have less regulation and more emphasis on good pay, conditions and training for staff?"
Anyway, good to see a crooked nursery owner facing the consequences of trying to make a quick profit off the backs of her underpaid staff.
The minimum wage - which they weren't even getting - is only set at £5.35/hour.
Starting school is stressful
There has been a bit of a "doh" reaction to this one because it seems obvious. But the story is actually a little different to the way it has been reported.
The children start to experience stress about the transition to school 6 months before their actual start in reception according to a new report (which uses measures of the hormone cortisol in children's saliva to assess how stressed the children were). It's common knowledge that starting school is stressful, but the 6-month duration must be a matter for concern. A workable hypothesis would surely be that it's parents who are anticipating this change and passing their anxiety over to their children wholesale.
The report also finds that higher levels of cortisol lead to fewer infections like colds.
But, interestingly, shyer children appear to be less stressed by starting school - perhaps because outgoing children are more likely to get into confrontations with teachers, and have difficulty in controlling their behaviour in line with the norms of beign at school. All that sitting down, waiting in dinner queues, sitting through assemblies etc, which still happens to four year olds in many primary schools.
As a result of being less stressed, they are more likely to get infections in the six months after starting school.
Stress is not in itself a bad thing: if we didn't have cortisol we'd never get up in the morning.
A wide-ranging group of experts have written to the Daily Telegraph on the importance of play – stating that "outdoor, unstructured, loosely supervised play – appears to be vital to children’s all-round health and well-being." A welcome alternative to all the recent publicity given to the failure of four year olds to improve their scores on PIPS (Performance Indicators in Primary Schools) tests. But as a society we still seem to get more worried about the test scores of young children than the loss of places and opportunities to play.
Breaking the law on pay
A private nursery owner just up the road from where I live is the first person to befined for breaking the National Minimum Wage laws. As if it isn't bad enough that we entrust our youngest children to people bang-on the minimum wage and pay crisp-packers at Walkers more.
Professor Helen Penn, in a recent piece, interestingly wondered whether the extent of regulation of nurseries in England (especially the mandated staff:child ratios) has had a perversely negative effect.
"We have held on to our staff-child ratios, which are very generous, but parents and childcare workers pay for it in higher fees and lower wages; and low wages in turn means that the job of childcare attracts less skilled or less committed staff. This raises the very uncomfortable question of whether our attempt to maintain quality through regulation has overall had a negative effect.Perhaps it would be better to have less regulation and more emphasis on good pay, conditions and training for staff?"
Anyway, good to see a crooked nursery owner facing the consequences of trying to make a quick profit off the backs of her underpaid staff.
The minimum wage - which they weren't even getting - is only set at £5.35/hour.
Starting school is stressful
There has been a bit of a "doh" reaction to this one because it seems obvious. But the story is actually a little different to the way it has been reported.
The children start to experience stress about the transition to school 6 months before their actual start in reception according to a new report (which uses measures of the hormone cortisol in children's saliva to assess how stressed the children were). It's common knowledge that starting school is stressful, but the 6-month duration must be a matter for concern. A workable hypothesis would surely be that it's parents who are anticipating this change and passing their anxiety over to their children wholesale.
The report also finds that higher levels of cortisol lead to fewer infections like colds.
But, interestingly, shyer children appear to be less stressed by starting school - perhaps because outgoing children are more likely to get into confrontations with teachers, and have difficulty in controlling their behaviour in line with the norms of beign at school. All that sitting down, waiting in dinner queues, sitting through assemblies etc, which still happens to four year olds in many primary schools.
As a result of being less stressed, they are more likely to get infections in the six months after starting school.
Stress is not in itself a bad thing: if we didn't have cortisol we'd never get up in the morning.
Sunday, 9 September 2007
Best letter
I think this is the best letter I've read in an early years publication - it's in Nursery World this week. Here's a selection:
I am not usually one to complain, but please, please, please no more "art" posters! ...
Sorry but I would prefer a poster showing "how to make homemade soup" rather than a poster of "unhealthy" canned soup. I don't care that it's one of the most famous brands of soup and a Warhol painting.
I am not usually one to complain, but please, please, please no more "art" posters! ...
Sorry but I would prefer a poster showing "how to make homemade soup" rather than a poster of "unhealthy" canned soup. I don't care that it's one of the most famous brands of soup and a Warhol painting.
Thursday, 6 September 2007
School uniform
Short story from my day. A parent has 2 children, a 3 and a 4 year old. The 4 year old has just got a place at primary school so she, understandably, decides to move her younger one away to the nursery class of the new school so she doesn't have to try to be in two places at 9am every morning.
She's on income support.
The school has a uniform.
A sweatshirt (with school logo). A white t-shirt (with school logo). A book bag (with school logo).
For 2 children to have 2 sweatshirts, 2 t-shirts and a book bag each costs more than £60.
She's on income support.
She gets £40 from a charity set up to help parents who can't afford uniforms; and she doesn't eat for two days.
She's on income support.
The school has a uniform.
A sweatshirt (with school logo). A white t-shirt (with school logo). A book bag (with school logo).
For 2 children to have 2 sweatshirts, 2 t-shirts and a book bag each costs more than £60.
She's on income support.
She gets £40 from a charity set up to help parents who can't afford uniforms; and she doesn't eat for two days.
Problems recruiting head teachers
It is difficult for primary schools in England to appoint headteachers: a third of them do not find a suitable candidate when they advertise.
As a pretty happy school headteacher in London, I came back to work and found 400+ emails in my inbox and what looks like a hundred letters, circulars, brochures etc.
The flyer for a course I had booked myself on says, at the bottom: "you may wish to bring a suitcase so you can take the materials home at the end".
And there are problems with our building work - running late. (Why are builders always so optimistic? Does it make them happier people in general?)
I get a stream of furious emails and a take a tricky call, which never quite becomes a bollocking, on my mobile.
Did anyone turn up to see how I was managing it all...to see the extent of the problems...to say anything to the staff who came in during the holiday with me to phone every parent, send letters out to them all, etc?
You can read about the problems of recruiting headteachers in England here
(Now, to be fair, I did get a little bit of e-support, admittedly rather late on in all this, and from someone high-up but who has no background in teaching. Perhaps this sink-or-sink attitude is a teacher/education problem?)
As a pretty happy school headteacher in London, I came back to work and found 400+ emails in my inbox and what looks like a hundred letters, circulars, brochures etc.
The flyer for a course I had booked myself on says, at the bottom: "you may wish to bring a suitcase so you can take the materials home at the end".
And there are problems with our building work - running late. (Why are builders always so optimistic? Does it make them happier people in general?)
I get a stream of furious emails and a take a tricky call, which never quite becomes a bollocking, on my mobile.
Did anyone turn up to see how I was managing it all...to see the extent of the problems...to say anything to the staff who came in during the holiday with me to phone every parent, send letters out to them all, etc?
You can read about the problems of recruiting headteachers in England here
(Now, to be fair, I did get a little bit of e-support, admittedly rather late on in all this, and from someone high-up but who has no background in teaching. Perhaps this sink-or-sink attitude is a teacher/education problem?)
Monday, 3 September 2007
Keep failing pupils back - David Cameron's great idea?
Common sense idea: if pupils don't "pass" Key Stage 2 then they should stay back another year (or until they do). This will ensure that every child starts Secondary School with a fair chance of success.
What would actually happen?
It's been tried in both the US and Canada - so some grounds to make reasonable predictions.
It won't work. First of all it makes schools amplify the already regrettable trend of just "teaching to the tests" - in British Columbia (Canada) this meant that during the year that tests took place, the children would often be doing work at a lower level than previous years (in terms of critical thinking, hand-on experiments, exploring subjects in depth). As the parent of a child coming to the end of primary school, I've seen this at first hand. For example, the constant revising of a scientific idea about forces through the endless replaying by video of a toy car rolling down a slope until everyone "got it". Great education.
Secondly, testing regimes like this create "failures at eleven" - once children failed to move on from primary school, their self-confidence drops and they would be likely to become more disaffected and less likely to learn than before.
The effects of repeated failure are unlikely to be good. It's also unlikely that primary schools want big cohorts of early-adolescent children aged 11+, feeling disaffected, on their rolls, knocking around the playground with 3 and 4 year olds.
Other things that Mr Cameron does not seem to have thought about.
Children who are not good at taking tests (don't forget, we are talking about 11 year olds here) but who may have perfectly good basic maths and English in day to day classroom life. Do they have to stay back?
Children with learning difficulties who may never achieve level 4 across the board. Do they stay in primary school until they are 16?
Schools which are genuinely not doing a good enough job - would they end up with half of their year 6 repeating? In which case, could they do a better job with a class of 45 than they could with a class of 30? Is this the best way to lead improvement?
What would happen to the unused spaces in secondary schools which result from children being kept back? As schools are funded per child on roll, a secondary school could end up being penalised financially for the perceived failures of the primary school down the road.
There is an important debate to be held about many of the issues David Cameron identified in Sunday Telegraph earlier in the week. A debate: not the floating and then spinning headline-happy ideas like repeating year 6.
Cameron hasn't looked at the findings of the "no child left behind" movement in the US. Nor are there any signs that he has given much thought to the realities of trying to run a primary school in England.
One last thought: shouldn't we concentrate less on getting children ready for secondary schooling, and more on getting secondary schools ready for children? How about offering a creative and stimulating curriculum which would interest less academic and test-savvy children (which would still include the basics of literacy and numeracy, perhaps through more practical application)? Aged 11, most children would surely do much better with that. But perhaps we should try to "fix broken Britain" by labeling them as failures and leaving them to watch their friends go off to secondary school whilst they stay behind, cross-legged, in primary school halls.
What would actually happen?
It's been tried in both the US and Canada - so some grounds to make reasonable predictions.
It won't work. First of all it makes schools amplify the already regrettable trend of just "teaching to the tests" - in British Columbia (Canada) this meant that during the year that tests took place, the children would often be doing work at a lower level than previous years (in terms of critical thinking, hand-on experiments, exploring subjects in depth). As the parent of a child coming to the end of primary school, I've seen this at first hand. For example, the constant revising of a scientific idea about forces through the endless replaying by video of a toy car rolling down a slope until everyone "got it". Great education.
Secondly, testing regimes like this create "failures at eleven" - once children failed to move on from primary school, their self-confidence drops and they would be likely to become more disaffected and less likely to learn than before.
The effects of repeated failure are unlikely to be good. It's also unlikely that primary schools want big cohorts of early-adolescent children aged 11+, feeling disaffected, on their rolls, knocking around the playground with 3 and 4 year olds.
Other things that Mr Cameron does not seem to have thought about.
Children who are not good at taking tests (don't forget, we are talking about 11 year olds here) but who may have perfectly good basic maths and English in day to day classroom life. Do they have to stay back?
Children with learning difficulties who may never achieve level 4 across the board. Do they stay in primary school until they are 16?
Schools which are genuinely not doing a good enough job - would they end up with half of their year 6 repeating? In which case, could they do a better job with a class of 45 than they could with a class of 30? Is this the best way to lead improvement?
What would happen to the unused spaces in secondary schools which result from children being kept back? As schools are funded per child on roll, a secondary school could end up being penalised financially for the perceived failures of the primary school down the road.
There is an important debate to be held about many of the issues David Cameron identified in Sunday Telegraph earlier in the week. A debate: not the floating and then spinning headline-happy ideas like repeating year 6.
Cameron hasn't looked at the findings of the "no child left behind" movement in the US. Nor are there any signs that he has given much thought to the realities of trying to run a primary school in England.
One last thought: shouldn't we concentrate less on getting children ready for secondary schooling, and more on getting secondary schools ready for children? How about offering a creative and stimulating curriculum which would interest less academic and test-savvy children (which would still include the basics of literacy and numeracy, perhaps through more practical application)? Aged 11, most children would surely do much better with that. But perhaps we should try to "fix broken Britain" by labeling them as failures and leaving them to watch their friends go off to secondary school whilst they stay behind, cross-legged, in primary school halls.
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