Truancy crackdown to include children aged four

[Sheila Struthers]

Government to publish absentee figures for reception year, while behaviour adviser highlights children who fail to attend nursery

In a report largely accepted by ministers, the government's expert adviser on behaviour, Charlie Taylor, also calls for schools to offer support to parents who are failing to get their children into nursery.

Taylor does not call for the statutory school age to be lowered and there will be no legal sanction for absence from school below the age of five.

However, at the launch of his report on truancy, he drew attention to one possible sanction: "I was in a school in Battersea the other day where, very harshly, they actually shut the door on parents if they bring their children in late. They say you can't come into nursery late. Sounds very harsh – but that school has 97% attendance, way above the national average. There is a job [to be done] in terms of educating parents, teaching them that school is important and this is where you need to be."

Taylor argued that missing out on nursery left children like "a jigsaw with lots of pieces that haven't been filled in".

"Missing bits of nursery means that you're missing out on some of the early learning, some of the key social skills that develop into children's character and ability to function in the classroom.

"There are kids arriving from nursery who don't know their own name, literally don't know their own name, so the school has a fundamental job to do. Nursery education is every bit as essential as the weeks before GCSEs."

[Ali Admin]

Taylor argued that missing out on nursery left children like "a jigsaw with lots of pieces that haven't been filled in".

Taylor is getting highly paid to trot out state dictated soundbites and spin. He needs his own blanks filled in.

There are kids arriving from nursery who don't know their own name, literally don't know their own name.

Nursery has been doing its job well, then....

Children don't need a name any more, only a number to map their 'learning journey' and record the outcome.

What utter tosh.

[moonrabbit]

My thoughts exactly - how often are these children being spoken with in nursery for them to not know their own names??! Are they just being grouped together and already loosing their individuality at such a young age?
"ability to function in the classroom" isn't so important at 4 surely, and how is getting them to spend more time in an environment like that going to make things better when it's already not working by their own admission?

And "educating parents" ? Were they not already educated sufficiently then... surely we would all be dying to send our children off to these people if we'd all had such a marvelous time ourselves?

[Mayfly]

Perhaps the Government should read this report recently presented to the Royal Economic Society:

Reinvestigating Who Benefits and Who Loses from Universal Childcare in Canada
https://editorialexpress.com/cgi-bin...2&paper_id=469

At best, these contributions are mixed in their support for a universal child care program. The reported benefits for children of least advantage, the grounds on which universal child care is often justified, stands opposite to negative outcomes for bulk of children. Perhaps, Heckman's push for child investment and its connection to the universal provision of child care needs to be reconsider. Aligning with previous literature, these results point to targeting methods at the low end of the distribution as the most effective way to pro-mote the well-being of children. Also, child care at the youngest ages has proven to be ineffectual. Thus, provision of care at the earliest years of life must be consider care-fully. Policy-makers should weight the importance of development at the earliest stages of life appropriately and possibly consider alternative forms of investment in these children. Given current trends it does not seem likely that child care use, even at young ages, can be discouraged; this emphasizes the importance of quality of care in universal programs as the cost of cutting corners appears to be high. As our evidence suggests that program maturation and improvement of care has been ineffectual in improving child outcomes, the outlook for universal childcare is somewhat bleak.

The holistic approach of this study to the assessment of the Quebec Family Policy emphasizes the need for future research to dissect the mechanics of a universal child care program, clarifying causal relationships. Further research is also required to explore the poor health, emotional, and behavioural outcomes for male children as well as the increasing variance in outcomes. How is this evidence connected to the care provided and growing gender gap in later school achievement? Although providing an initial look at a distributional impact of child care use, the techniques used in this paper warrant further application to child care related problems. In conclusion, we suggest that the losses to children through the middle of the distribution make imperative future qualitative and quantitative research on improving outcomes for the average child in a child care settings. As a popular notion universal care child care may capture the public eye, but its implication, now and tomorrow, are far reaching and thus should be approached with evidence at the heart of the policy-making process.

Alternatively you could take a common sense view that taking a very young child away from it's Mother and putting it in a room full of strangers day after day is probably going to upset a child who might be too young to explain just why they are upset . . .

[raq23]

Nursery has been doing its job well, then....

Don't they say hello to the kids as they come in the room? Maybe the teacher doesn't know their names.

[Polly]

Alternatively you could take a common sense view that taking a very young child away from it's Mother and putting it in a room full of strangers day after day is probably going to upset a child who might be too young to explain just why they are upset . . .

Absolutely!


I've never understood how taking a very young child and putting it in with 30 or so others the same age is beneficial to the children.

For socialisation children need to mix with older and younger children, that way they learn how to interact in a meaningful way. All they learn in a room of 30 toddlers is to copy the behaviour of other toddlers who haven't yet learned not to hit, bite, snatch etc And I fail to see how 4 staff members (in our local nursery) are adequate to look after and interact meaningfully with 30+ two and three years olds Even the busiest mum is going to to better than that!

I think the big problem in this is that young children are being processed in the same way as sausages, no wonder then that 15 years later they get sausages at the other end

The only mystery to me is why they think they'd get anything different ?

[Gizzie]

I'm reading a very good book called 'Better Late than Early' by R.S. Moore, which has quite robust research to prove why NOT going to nursery is a very good idea.

There's not a lot of research to back up early education apparently.

It was published in 1975, but you'd think that they wrote it last year. It feels completely up to date with the problems it is detailing, yet, clearly, nobody took any notice!

Gizzie

[Sheila Struthers]

I see Alan Watt has covered this article recently:

http://cuttingthroughthematrix.com/r...ve_on_RBN.html

[s836apg]

SPAD BEHAVIOUR 11
EDUCATION secretary Michael Gove's
"expert adviser on behaviour", Charlie Taylor, has a formidable reputation in some quarters. But is it wholly deserved?
On Monday the Old Etonian contemporary of David Cameron outlined his latest hardline wheeze, telling Radio 4 listeners that the child benefit of parents of children who persistently truant should be cut. The idea is unpopular with teachers' unions and charities but Taylor, who after Cambridge university became head of the Willows, a state special school in Hillingdon, still has his fans.
Last month, when he called for school "sin bins" for unruly children to be removed from local authority control, the Daily Mail's Tim Shipman said Taylor must be right because he "turned around a former sink school in Northwest London". According to Rachel Sylvester in the Times, Taylor "turned around the junior school" and was "asked to take over the senior school, which had gone 'completely off the rails"'. Taylor himself told the Evening Standard. "When I first came in 2006 it was incredibly violent" suggesting that he had somehow "transformed" the school.
It is true that from 2006 until 2011 Taylor was head of the Willows and its 26 primary age children with special needs and that Ofsted found the school "outstanding" in 2006 and 2010. But the suggestion it was an out o fcontrol "sink' school that needed "turning round" is not supported by Ofsted reports.
When inspected in 2002 it was found to be "a good school with excellent and very good features". "Behaviour, in and out of classrooms" was "very good... Procedures to manage poor behaviour are very well developed and appropriately implemented", said the inspectors. When Ofsted then visited in 2006 it noted that the Willows was already "judged to be a good school with excellent features at its last inspection and many of its robust systems and practices were still in place when the leadership changed this year".
But then describing Taylor as a head who helped a tiny special school get a bit better, rather than one who turned round a violent sink school, wouldn't make him sound like a schools superman whose judgement cannot be challenged, would it?