News

Study backs Labour childcare strategy

The publication of the largest ever survey of pre-school education in Britain yesterday will provide the foundations for the general election debate about how best to raise the prospects of children from deprived backgrounds. Margaret Hodge, the children's minister, will publish a national childcare strategy next week, which is expected to become a centrepiece of Labour's election strategy. It will call for a national network of children's centres providing education and health services for the under-fives.

The idea originated in well-established US research showing the positive impact of early-years education on children's lives, producing lasting benefits of higher attainment, better jobs and lower crime. But does the same apply on this side of the Atlantic? Professors from Oxford, London and Nottingham universities began a thorough investigation in 1997, tracking more than 3,000 children from differing social backgrounds through their early years. They looked at 141 pre-school settings, including nurseries, playgroups, private day nurseries, local authority day centres, nursery schools and fully integrated centres that provide a range of daily educational and health services from 8am to 5pm.

The integrated centres - pioneers of the children's centres which Mrs Hodge wants to roll out throughout England - performed best. They also cost the most, averaging £6,880 a child. The researchers found the advantage was not due to long opening hours. Children attending for half-days had the same level of attainment as the full-timers.The quality of education provided and the qualifications of the staff it made the difference. Nursery schools performed well for the same reason. Disadvantaged children benefited significantly, especially if they were in a pre-school with children from different social backgrounds. The average child of unskilled parents failed to reach the expected reading standard at the age of seven if brought up entirely at home, but romped well past it with the benefit of a pre-school education. Indeed, the benefits of pre-school education were almost as significant in promoting reading attainment at seven as a professional home background.

But the children of professional parents benefited too. By the age of seven those with pre-school experience were nearly half way to levels of attainment in reading and maths expected of an 11-year-old. Their advantage in writing was significant but not quite so pronounced.

The Effective Provision of Pre-School Education project found the quality of learning experiences at home was also important. Teaching nursery rhymes and songs promoted intellectual and social development in all children. Although parents' social class and levels of education affected the child's attainment levels, the home learning environment was more important and the effects persisted at seven. "What parents do is more important than who they are," the researchers found. But home learning was not enough for the average child, and those denied pre-school were disadvantaged. From the age of two the maximum benefit appeared to be gained by children whose parents were closely involved in the pre-school, fitting home activities into the development process. The researchers intend to track the children to discover whether the advantages of pre-school education persist into the later school years.

Professor Kathy Sylva from Oxford University said: "The impact of coming from a poor family when you are three is greater on your developmental profile than it is when you are five. It indicates to us that the pre-school has reduced bad effects on children's developmental profile." Ms Hodge said: "I think, I hope, this research gives comfort to parents who are always worrying about whether they are doing the best for their children and how to balance work responsibilities with care at home."

Getting off to a flying start

The seven-year research programme yielded a series of tips about how to get your child off to a flying start at school. The key message was: what parents do is more important than who the parents are. The activities contributing to higher intellectual, social and behavioural scores were:

• reading with the child
• teaching songs and nursery rhymes
• painting and drawing
• playing with letters and numbers
• visiting the library
• teaching the alphabet and numbers
• taking the children on visits
• creating regular opportunities for them to play with friends at home

Boys and girls tended to experience different home learning environments. Parents were more likely to engage in specific learning activities with girls and this might explain their greater educational prowess when they reached school. After a good start at home, the next big step for parents was choosing the best pre-school.

Iram Siraj-Blatchford of London University's institute of education said the research gave parents a valuable tool for recognising a good one. "You should observe the centre for a whole morning. Look at the relationships between adults and children. Are they warm and responsive? Are the children just sitting there or are they pro-actively engaged?" The parent should ask about the qualifications of the staff. In the best pre-school settings, there would be one adult for each group of between eight and 13 children. Half these adults would be teachers with a graduate qualification. Parents should look at Ofsted reports and ask how the staff discipline children. Do they separate children, or adopt the more successful approach of helping them resolve conflicts through negotiation?

(The Guardian, 26 November 2004)

Shopping centre pilot to help hard-to-reach parents

A text message information service for young mothers could form part of a new project that aims to take information, advice and activities to hard-to-reach families by setting up a shopping centre. The three-year pilot, due to launch in Oxford in October 2004, is backed by millionaire philanthropist Peter Lampl's educational charity the Sutton Trust, and could be rolled out nationally if successful.

It will be co-ordinated by Oxford-based charity Peep (Peers Early Education Partnership), which engages local parents from deprived areas. A stand at the heart of Cowley Shopping Centre will be staffed at least once a week to provide on-the-spot information and advice to parents, and signpost them to to other services. It will also be a base for activities designed to encourage parents to play with their children.

"It is taking the information and contact activity to where people are, rather than expecting them to come to where the services are provided," said Peep chief executive Peter silva. "By being a local shopping centre we can make contact with people who might not go along to Sure Start or a local health clinic." He said text messaging was a mechanism young mothers were "very familiar with and respond to."

The pilot is supported by the Maternity Alliance, National Family and Parenting Institute, and Oxfordshire Children's Information Service.

(Children Now, 6-12 October, 2004)

Talk To Your Baby, a National literacy Trust (NLT) campaign to encourage parents and carers to communicate with children from birth, held its first conference in London last week.

Representatives of leading early years organisations including the NSPCC, Sure Start, I CAN, the Early Years Library Network and Coram Family, gathered to discuss the campaign.

Speaking at the conference Kamini Gadhok, professional director of the Royal College of Speech and Language Therapists, commented on many parents' reluctance to talk to their babies. "There must be a societal and cultural shift to ensure that children become more valued and communication between parents and children is encouraged," she said.

NLT director Neil McClelland also pointed to the need for a change in society to ensure that children receive a language-rich start in life. He said, "I'm incredibly excited about Talk To Your Baby. What we can achieve through the campaign is phenomenal, but we need to work with other early years organisations to get the message across."

The campaign aims to promote parents' role as their children's first educators and support professionals involved with language and communication. Talking to young children helps them to develop good language skills and enables better listening, learning, reading, writing and socialising.

According to the NLT, however, many children enter nursry and school with inadequate language and communication skills, and are more likely to experience learning, behavioural and relationship problems as a result. Campaign director Liz Attenborough said, "We want to get language and communication on early years professional's agenda.

"Parents don't not talk to their baby wilfully, they often just don't realise how important it is. Some professionals need to be made aware of the simple things that can be done to encourage better communication with children."

(Nursery World, 28 October 2004)

Put away the pushchair, what babies really need is their mother's touch

Babies are being deprived of their mother's touch because of the excessive use of pushchairs and detachable car seats rather than slings which physically bring them close to their parent, a report claims today.

Mild forms of sensory deprivation can come from the constant use of car seats - often used when babies are not even being driven - and pushchairs and prams, it suggests. In Britain most mothers - more than eight in 10 - use a pushchair, pram or car seat to transport their babies rather than holding infants to their chests. Only one in six regularly uses a sling or carries her baby in her arms, ensuring constant mother-child stimulation.

In many parts of the developing world, babies are carried on the mother's back or front, tied in a sling. This "kangaroo-type care" is encouraged by experts, who say different cultures have developed their own way of carrying babies. Cherry Bond, a children's nurse at Queen Charlotte's Hospital, London, who has a master's degree in behavioural sciences, said: "Babies spend much more time in chairs and seats than they used to, at a time when the sensory brain is being established and needs input.

"There's much better sensory information if the parent carries the child in a sling yet babies are in a bit of equipment rather than with a human being. More research needs to be done but there is a worry that all these chairs that fit into buggies are not good for children and may cause back problems."

She warned, however, that back problems may also afflict mothers using slings. "The trouble with some slings, clip-on ones, is that babies are bouncing around. I prefer the tie-on ones. Mums are up and about (after giving birth) much more quickly now and I see mums with back problems. A tie-on sling makes a mother's posture much better.

Her comments were underlined by Dr Tiffany Clark, director of the Touch Research Institute at the Miami School of Medicine, a centre for research into therapeutic touch, who encourages the massaging of children. About 1,000 schools in Britain, including Claremont community primary school in Blackpool and Garden primary school in Merton, south London, have carried out massages on fully-clothed pupils. Children are grouped in pairs and administer 10 minutes of simple massage strokes to each other on the head, neck, shoulders and back. Those who participate are said to be happier at school, have more friends, work harder and experience improved concentration.

Dr Clark said: "Massage stimulates the activity of the vagus nerve (one of the 12 cranial nerves), which slows down and relaxes the central nervous system. "This in turn slows the heart rate and blood pressure and the release of stress hormones. Changes suggest increased relaxation and attentiveness so classroom performance improves. The increase in serotonin improves mood state."

Today's report by Johnson's Baby, the baby care products' manufacturer, entitled Power of Touch, says infant massage is becoming a daily routine, beginning at birth, for some mothers. Less than 20 per cent of women over 55 used to massage their babies compared with 80 per cent of mothers under the age of 24 who massage their babies today, says its survey of 2,500 parents. Around 22 per cent of mothers say they massage their babies at least once a week while 20 per cent massage their baby every day and 12 per cent massage their baby once a month. Mothers massage their babies less as the baby gets older. Nearly two thirds massage their babies under six months between once a day and once a week compared with less than half of mothers with babies aged six months to two years old.

(The Telegraph, 17 September 2004)

NHS plans revolution in care for children

A 10-year blueprint for revolutionising children's health services in England was presented by the government yesterday as a world first in setting comprehensive standards of paediatric care. John Reid, the health secretary, promised that children would no longer be treated as small adults, given inappropriate medicines in reduced doses, or trailed by anxious parents between services that dodged responsibility for conditions such as autism. Instead, the NHS would offer a child-centred service, tailored to individual needs. Mr Reid said there would be more treatment at home for children and young people with complex health needs, better speech and language therapy, and earlier diagnosis and treat- ment of autism and diabetes.

The child-friendly approach would include use of cartoons and computer games to spread health awareness, and text messaging to remind children to take their medicines. The aim would be to integrate health, social care and education services, providing parents with a one-stop shop, often in children's centres or extended schools. The "national service framework" for children was triggered by public concern following the Bristol heart babies scandal. It took three years to compile, and the full version came in 10 parts.

Although it was welcomed by medical and social care groups, there was concern that the government could not guarantee it would be implemented. NHS trusts and local authorities will have discretion over timing the introduction of the various parts of the package, and will not be required to complete the job before 2014. Full story

(The Guardian, 16 September 2004)

Mums and dads are no fun to play with, say children

Parents are not very good at playing according to children, who say mums and dads are too bossy, lack imagination and are not nearly as fun as their friends.

These are some of the findings of an NOP survey that has revealed a huge gap in adults' and children's perceptions of play. The poll, commissioned by The Children's Society and Children's Play Council for national Playday today (4 August), found that while most parents claim to play with their children every day, most children say they rarely or never play with mum or dad.

Children said parents didn't know how to play children's games and were often too busy or tired to play. Half said they would prefer to play more with friends. Dads proved to be the least popular playmates.

Children said that their parents were "slow and rubbish", "boring" and "give you a headache", when they were asked to describe the worst thing about playing with their mums and dads.

Play is key to children's development, according to experts in the field, who said the survey highlighted the need for parents to become more playful.

Rachel Murray, play development worker for Southward Play Network in London, said: "We have to become more childlike and follow our children."

Thousands of children and parents across the UK will enjoy fun days and play-related activities during the 17th national Playday today.

Tim Linehan, The Children's Society's assistant director for campaigns, said the event aimed to highlight both the fun and serious aspects of play.

(Children Now, 4-17 August 2004)

Schools are to be given official guidance on how to teach pupils standard spoken English. The Qualifications and Curriculum Authority said it wanted to ensure children were able to communicate "clearly" in all settings.

The move comes amid concern that excessive television and computer use are damaging conversational ability.

The QCA's 60-page booklet - Introducing the Grammar of Talk - will be available to schools in England from October. Children aged 12 to 16 will learn the benefits of using correct grammatical constructions, such as "you were" rather than "you was", in everyday speech. They will look at how they use speech differently when talking to friends and when addressing a large group in a formal setting. It is hoped this will improve their social skills and career prospects.

A QCA spokesman said: "This is based on recent research in universities. For the first time, teachers will get structured guidance in how to help pupils with speech. Children will learn what is appropriate in a certain context."

As part of the national curriculum in English, pupils are expected to develop writing, reading, listening and speaking skills. The QCA is hoping that discussing the "grammar of talk" will help the latter two.

Part of the guidance relates to the "shape and structure of talk", telling children how and when to use words like "right", "OK" and "really". The booklet also focuses on the skills of face-to-face communication and unplanned conversations, with emphasis on informal phrases such as "like you were saying" and "to go back to".

The QCA spokesman said: "Over the last five years we've focused on literacy, but there is a whole spoken language out there which operates very differently."

The guidance book will not look at regional dialects.

(BBC News Online, 9.08.04)

Staff turnover 'harms pre-school learning'

High turnover of staff in day nurseries and other preschool settings is threatening the language and social skills of children, one of the country's child-care organisatons warns today.

The Daycare Trust said young children could suffer delays in language development, which could persist until they were six years old, if the nursery or childcare staff looking after them were constantly changing. Its study, carried out by Edward Melhuish of the University of London, also warned of increased aggression among children whose carers kept coming and going.

Professor Melhuish said: "Children learning to communicate will often use idiosyncratic speech or gestures. A caregiver who is familiar with a child is likely to learn such idiosyncrasies and be able to respond, where as a new caregiver is more likely to fail to understand."

(The Independent, 14 June 2004)

Edelman believes it is vital that parents talk to their babies right from the beginning. "Most parents do it automatically, but some need encouragement."

Liz Attenborough at the National Literacy Trust agrees and the charity is running a campaign called Talk To Your Baby. "One professional told me that, in the old days, you could look around a nursery and highlight the children with difficulties because they were unusual, but nowadays it's the other way round - you highlight the children without difficulties."

Blaming television is obvious, but Attenborough thinks it is only part of the story. Most households are much noisier, with a background din from a television or radio preventing people from talking to each other. The family unit is now smaller, with fewer adults around to talk to children, and busy lives mean that traditional mealtimes are becoming a rare occurrence. Attenborough also cites the move away from active play to what she calls solo toys, such as computer games. "Parents feel they have to give their children expensive presents and don't realist that children would rather have their time than something flashy."

(Daily Telegraph, 3 April 2004)

Communicating Matters: early language and communication project invites comments

Manchester Metropolitan University, led by Professor Nigel Hall, is developing the materials for the Early Language and Communication Project, 3-5, under the title of Communicating Matters. The team would like the views of practitioners about the teaching of communication and oral language at Foundation Stage.

At three years old the children have discovered the joys of speech. They are learning as many as ten new words a day - and some have already grasped the first 1,500 words of the 20,000 words they can expect to learn in a lifetime. But there's much more to communication than what you say.

Is our ability to communicate simply a basic biological gift or a sophisticated social skill? Is being an effective communicator measured by what comes out of our mouth or what our bodies secretly give away? What predictions can we make for those with the gift of the gab? And is it too late for those who are struggling to make themselves heard?

Scientists involved in the programme:

• Psychologist Professor Geoffrey Beattie (University of Manchester) reveals the secrets of what parents are really communicating through their body language
• Dr Gwyneth Doherty-Sneddon (Stirling University) assesses how good parents are at reading their children's body language
• The children's verbal skills are assessed by Dr Sue Roulstone, Deputy Director of the Royal College of Speech and Language Therapists
• ERP (Evoke Related Potential) is conducted by Dr April Benasich at Rutgers University, New Jersey, United States
• fMRI (functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging) is led by Dr Gary Liney at the Hull Royal Infirmary

Adult learning benefits children

Parents taking up opportunities for adult learning find communicating with their children easier even if their courses have nothing directly to do with parenting, according to a team from the Government-backed Centre for Research on the Wider Benefits of Learning at the Institute of Education. The report, The Benefits of Learning, showed that when parents went out to study their children broadened their range of social relationships at college crèches or playgroups, while getting out of the home and daily routines alleviated stress and depression. Many also reported that studying made them more confident as parents, better able to communicate with their children and more understanding and patient even if the content of the course had nothing to do with parenting. Co-author Cathie Hammond said that doing courses 'changed women's attitudes, hopes, plans, social circles and self-perception'.

(Nursery World, 18 March 2004)

Teachers are to get help to improve children's basic speaking and listening skills

Teachers are to be offered training to improve young children's speaking and listening skills.

Academics at Manchester Metropolitan university have been commissioned by the Government to create an early language training programme called Communicating Matters.

The move follows warnings from David Bell, the chief inspector, that the verbal and behavioural skills of the nation's five-year-olds were at an all-time low. An analysis of 350 Office for Standards in Education reports by The TES found that inspectors were concerned about speaking and listening skills of half the four and five-year olds starting school last term.

The head of the Government's Basic Skills Agency has said that a "daily grunt" phenomenon was being created by parents who were not devoting enough time to their children.

Alan Wells, director, said heads believed that fewer pupils now had basic language skills compared with five years ago. Last term,the Qualifications and Curriculum Authority sent schools information on teaching speaking and listening from Year 1.

Professor Nigel Hall, who is leading the Manchester project, is keen that the materials are not seen as a remedial programme. He said: "This is about bringing practitioners up to date and helping support them."

The group will first produce a training pack for staff working with three to six-year-olds and later for those working with the under-threes. Materials will be distributed in May 2005.

Ofsted confirmed children's performance on entry is measured against criteria in the foundation stage curriculum, which details the progress expected between ages three and five. A typical three-year-old uses familiar words in isolation to identify what they want. As they get older they should be able to develop explanations, initiate conversations and resolve disagreements through talk.

But inspectors who looked at four and five-year-olds in three schools, where all children were native English speakers, said: "Many children speak in single words or incomplete sentences."

Liz Attenborough, co-ordinator of the Talk To Your Baby campain, said: "Children are severely challenged by impaired language. They may not learn that a conversation is about taking turns. If everyone else knows it, they are disadvantaged and can't express themselves."

Professor Robin Alexander of Cambridge university has developed new materials with the QCA to support teaching through dialogue. He said transforming classroom talk could lift literacy standards. The resources will be out by the end of this term.

(Times Educational Supplement, 30 January 2004)

Language is key to the class divide

A vital piece of social research from America should be read by politicians of every party, who all profess to want to see disadvantaged children succeed. A key ingredient in determining future social class is language - the basic tool for thought, argument, reasoning and making sense of a confusing world. There is only a short time during the first three years that the brain absorbs language, the concepts it embodies and the culture implied.

Meaningful Differences in the Everyday Experience of Young American Children is one of the most thorough studies ever conducted. Three groups of children were tape-recorded throughout their first years - welfare families, working-class families and professional families. With painstaking care, researchers counted then extrapolated all the words a child would hear and speak in every encounter and interaction with its parent or care-giver. When they analysed the hours of recordings, the sharp class differences in the three groups' early experiences were startling.

By the age of four, a professional's child will have had 50 million words addressed to it, a working-class child 30 million and a welfare child just 12 million. Consider this: they found the professional child at the age of three had a bigger vocabulary than the parent of the welfare child. The way children were spoken to was also measured, how much they were listened to, explained things, given choices and in what tone of voice. So at the age of three the professional child has had 700,000 encouragements addressed to it and only some 80,000 discouragements. But the welfare child will only ever have been encouraged 60,000 times in its life, suffering twice as many discouragements, with the working-class child in between the two.

This epic analysis confirms what we all secretly know already. The educated are better at communicating with their children than the uneducated - and the child is branded for life. When the children in the study were measured at age nine to 10, the authors, with an uncharacteristic slip from their stern academic terminology, conclude: "We were awestruck at how well our measures of accomplishments at three predicted language skill at nine to 10." In other words, school had added little value after the age of three: it was already too late.

Smug conservatives might think this confirms all their prejudices: class is in the DNA, or at least permanently deep-dyed into a child's immutable culture. But the point of this work is to prove it is not so. Intervention works. Give very young children intensive interaction with teachers and they make up for what they lack at home; parents can easily be taught to read and talk to their children constructively. IQ, they say, is only a measure of the child's early experience and that can be changed. But it takes a major effort: to get the welfare child up to the vocabulary standard of the working-class child, it would take 41 hours a week of talking at the level offered by the professional parent.

So if we really want to change class destiny, it can be done. But it takes good teachers in high-quality children's centres where children of all classes mix, not bundling all the deprived together. The Treasury sees a limited roll-out of children's centres in poor areas as a getting-mothers-off-benefit-and-back-to-work policy. But if they took the long (and expensive) view, this must be Labour's key remedy for social class division.

Meaningful Differences in the Everyday Experience of Young American Children, by Betty Hart and Todd R Risley, is published by Brookes Publishing in the US.

(From an article by Polly Toynbee in The Guardian, 2 January 2004)