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Forward-facing pushchairs are failing to engage parents and
their children in conversation, a literacy charity says.
The National Literacy Trust claims parents and carers would
talk more to babies and toddlers if they had access to buggies
where the child faces them. In a survey of 800 parents and
carers, the charity found 88% felt they would chat more if
their child faced them. The trust believes parent-facing buggies
can help address language delays in pre-school children.
The NLT's campaign 'Talk to your baby' was launched in 2003
in response to concerns among head teachers that many children
were starting school without basic conversational skills.
In a joint survey with the National Association of Head Teachers
in 2001, 75% of heads of nurseries and schools admitting three
year olds were concerned about a decline in children's language
competence at entry.
'Missed opportunity'
The NLT believes parent-facing pushchairs can help address
this problem by increasing eye contact and chatter between
toddler and carer. "Children spend quite a lot of time in
their buggies," Talk to your baby manager Liz Attenborough
told the BBC News website.
"And it's a missed opportunity to have face-to-face communication
time." One respondent to the trust's online survey said: "My
child sometimes doesn't realise that we are with him until
we either stop and run around the front or tip him backwards
just to say hello. My husband has taken to walking backwards
in front of the buggy just so our son can see us."
While parent-facing buggies are available on the market,
the NLT says they tend to be much more expensive than traditional
pushchairs. "Talk To Your Baby is campaigning for change and
calling on the childcare equipment supplies market to think
creatively about how to meet demand for affordable, sociable
pusher-facing buggies," said manager Liz Attenborough.
Bird's eye view
But Maclaren, one of the leading pushchair manufacturers,
said while parent-facing buggies were reassuring for newborn
babies, older children needed to be stimulated by the world
around them.
"For children of six months and above (which the majority
of our buggies are targeted at currently), there are other
considerations," the company said in a statement. "By then
they are usually sitting up and are highly inquisitive, insisting
on looking at where they are going and interacting with the
surroundings that are approaching them rather than facing
backwards towards their parents."
Parents were more likely to nurture a child's verbal skills
when they spent 'quality time sitting down with a child in
a calm environment, without any external distractions', the
company added.
(BBC
News website, 15.12.05)
Fish oil supplements can dramatically improve the behaviour
of unruly children and help them to develop their speaking
abilities, researchers said yesterday.
Durham Council experts tracked 65 youngsters in three childcare
centres who took the supplements for five months. The results
indicated that 47 per cent of the children started the study
with poor behaviour, but only 4 per cent displayed behaviour
rated poor at the end. The researchers also asserted that
the supplement - a combination of omega-3 fish oil and omega-6
evening primrose oil - helped children to concentrate and
bond with their parents.
Madeleine Portwood, the senior educational psychologist for
the Durham authority and the lead researcher, said that the
impact on language skills was significant. She said: "Some
two-year-olds went from having a vocabulary of 25 single words
to being able to use whole sentences. Others were able to
sit down and concentrate for the first time in their lives.
The improvements in behaviour and concentration have facilitated
a stronger bond between parent and child. We think that this
has been largely responsible for the development of communication
skills in these children."
To certain language development, the team assessed the children
against a control group that did not take the supplement.
After five months the children who took the supplement had
made the equivalent of nearly nine months' improvement in
speech. The control group improved by about the expected five
months.
(The Times, 08.12.05)
"Modern buggies which seat children facing away from their
parents could be impeding the development of youngsters' speech,
research has found," says The Sunday Telegraph. "Experts claim
that old fashioned prams played a crucial role in developing
children's language skills because they had direct eye contact
with the adults pushing them. Now some children can spend
several hours a day staring into space rather than watching
and learning from their parents."
Britain's National Literacy Trust has approached several
buggy manufacturers to ask them to consider designing rear-facing
models.
(www.globeandmail.com, 14.12.05)
Another day, another piece of research to remind us that
Philip Larkin got it right when he wrote about what your mum
and dad do to you. A survey produced by the National Literacy
Trust suggests that the use of forward-facing buggies could
impede the development of children's speech.
The trust believes that the unsociable design of most buggies
- in which a baby faces away from the person pushing - contributes
to the poor language and communication skills of many children
starting nursery. Liz Attenborough, manager of the NLT's Talk
To Your Baby campaign, says: "Babies spend a lot of time being
pushed about, so it seems to us that they're wasting a great
opportunity for communication. This could be an ideal time
for parents or carers to talk to their little ones, pointing
out things along the way, or responding to the things that
grab their child's attention."
In questioning the way that we transport our children, the
trust is tapping into one of the most central relationships
in the life of a mother and father: the bond between parent
and pushchair. Until you have a baby, you cannot conceive
of how many hours you'll spend behind a buggy's wheels. A
recent survey calculated that the average mother will push
hers 13 miles a week. And that weekly half-marathon is only
the average: if you live in a city, your annual mileage will
probably be in the thousands.
While paparazzi shots of celebrities wheeling their progeny
give it a patina of glamour, the reality, in the words of
writer Anne Enright, is that "all women pushing buggies look
as though they are on welfare. Pushing a buggy makes you look
as though you're on the way to the methadone clinic."
To avoid this downbeat look, some parents spend upwards of
£500 on a more expensive buggy, such as the Dutch Bugaboo,
which lets babies face either way. "If we campaign to the
nation, and say you must have a buggy that faces you, then
it seems as though we want parents to feel guilty for not
having the money to spend on one of the high-priced buggies,"
says Attenborough. "That's why our campaign is targeting the
manufacturers, to say can't we have something affordable?"
While a buggy may be sociable, often the parent is not. "I
feel like buggy time is my time," says Emily, mother of an
11-week-old girl. "It sounds awful, but when I'm trolling
up the high street, I can almost forget that she exists. I
like the fact that I can't see her."
And isn't there a danger that making a link between speech
development and talking to the child could make parents feel
that a baby's ability to speak is a direct reflection of their
childrearing skills? "We don't want to make anybody feel bad,"
says Attenborough. "We're about empowering parents to have
the knowledge that most children will be better off if they
are spoken to."
(Extracted from an article by Christina
Hopkinson, The Telegraph, 13.12.05)
Baby buggies with seats facing forward could be stunting
speech development, say researchers. Toddlers' language skills
suffer when they cannot see the adult pushing them, it is
claimed.
Most modern pushchairs are designed with seats facing forwards
so youngsters can look out at the world around them. But experts
believe toddlers learn to talk more quickly when they are
face to face with their parents. They say old-fashioned coach-built
prams aided speaking skills because they gave children direct
eye contact with the adult pushing them rather than staring
into space. The National Literacy Trust set up an online poll
after hearing from health visitors that front-facing buggies
were contributing to speech problems.
Eight hundred parents and childminders responded, with 89
percent agreeing they would talk to their baby more if the
child faced them in the buggy. Now the trust, a charity devoted
to raising literacy standards, is lobbying manufacturers to
make rear-facing models. Liz Attenborough, who runs the trust's
Talk To Your Baby campaign, said very few modern pushchairs
allowed children to face their parents. Those that did tended
to be expensive.
The trust began its Talk To Your Baby campaign after research
among head teachers found children's speaking and listening
skills had deteriorated. Mrs Attenborough said: "When we talked
to early years professionals to find out why, buggies were
one of the key things that came up. We don't think buggies
are the only reason but part of a mix. If you have the child
facing you, you can't help but communicate with it. If you
are spending an hour in the buggy each day, that is an hour
of wasted opportunity.
"It does set them back in their learning but also their social
and emotional development as well. There could be difficulties
with sociability and making friends if they don't have the
communication skills to convey their own feelings."
One parent told the survey: "My 11-month-old daughter is
very chatty, but I've noticed she falls silent after about
ten minutes in her forward-facing buggy despite my best efforts
to respond to her chats." Another said that as she pushed
her son in a buggy, her husband tried to walk backwards in
front of the baby for fear he would think he had been forgotten.
Mrs Attenborough said that since children can spend hours
strapped into their buggies every day, parents or carers have
an ideal opportunity to chat to their offspring, pointing
out interesting sights along the way and responding to those
which grab the toddler's attention. She said the campaign
had found just two 'less expensive' buggies whose seats are
reversible. These are the Bebe Confort Loola Pushchair at
£230 and the Quinny Buzz Stroller at £300.
The front-facing pushchair was pioneered in the late Sixties
by retired aeronautical engineer and pilot Owen Finlay Maclaren,
who found he struggled to transport his grandchildren in cumbersome
prams. The Maclaren company said in a statement that it would
be launching pushchairs with reversible seats in 2006, allowing
them to be 'parent facing'.
The poll of heads, conducted in 2002 jointly by the trust
and the National Association of Head Teachers, found 74 per
cent believed youngsters' speaking skills had declined over
the past five years. Similar research by the Government-funded
Basic Skills Agency concluded that declining numbers of pupils
have basic language skills, describing their communication
efforts as the 'daily grunt'.
(Laura Clark, Education Reporter, Daily
Mail, 12.12.05)
Modern buggies which seat children facing away from their
parents could be impeding the development of youngsters' speech,
research has found. Dozens of pushchairs are now designed
in such a way that babies can no longer see the adult pushing
them because they are facing forward.
Experts claim that old-fashioned prams played a crucial role
in developing children's language skills because they had
direct eye contact with the adults pushing them. Now some
children can spend several hours a day staring into space
rather than watching and learning from their parents.
Researchers from the National Literacy Trust, an independent
charity seeking to raise literacy standards, surveyed 800
parents and health workers. Their study showed that 89% of
their sample agreed that they would talk to their baby more
if the child faced them in their buggy.
Last night, Liz Attenborough, manager of Talk To Your Baby,
a campaign run by the National Literacy Trust, said face-to-face
contact was essential to speech development. She claimed their
research into pushchairs had shown that children's speech
development could be adversely affected by forward-facing
buggies. One parent told the study: "My 11-month-old is very
chatty, but I've noticed that she falls silent after about
10 minutes in her forward-facing buggy despite my best efforts
to respond to her chats." Ms Attenborough said: "With the
introduction of the buggy in the 1970s, where the child faced
away from the parent for the first time, fundamental time
spent on practising to speak has been lost."
The traditional carriage-built pram was introduced in 1877
by William Wilson who founded the Silver Cross company in
Leeds. Today the market in Britain is worth £185 million a
year, with top-of-the-range models costing up to £1,000. Yesterday,
the National Literacy Trust said that it had approached several
buggy manufacturers to ask them to consider designing rear-facing
models. Maclaren, a leading pushchair manufacturer, said in
a statement that it would be "launching pushchairs with reversible
seats in 2006, allowing them to be 'parent facing'."
(Catherine Humble and James Orr, Sunday
Telegraph, 11.12.05)
Magnus Pike, Andrew Marr and Peter Snow are well-known for
their wild - some would say distracting - hand gestures. But
new research has revealed how exaggerated hand and arm movements
are unconsciously used by parents talking to their young children
to help in the development of speech.
Psychologists have discovered that parents use a physical
version of baby speak when they are talking to infants that
seems designed to help them understand words better. The researchers
claim that children whose mothers regularly use baby gestures,
dubbed gesturese, learn words up to four months earlier than
those whose parents are poor at gesturing. Maria O'Neill,
who led the research team at Portsmouth University, now hopes
to use the findings to develop a training programme for children
who are struggling to learn to speak.
Her study found that, without realising it, mothers use a
coherent system of exaggerated gestures while talking to their
children that helps clarify the meaning of words for the youngsters.
They include:
- Pointing at objects such as a dog while repeating the
name;
- Tapping when counting items;
- Nodding and head shaking when saying yes or no;
- Waving while saying goodbye or hello;
- Finger-wagging when beckoning the child;
- Action mimicking when asking the child if they would like
a drink or telling them it is time to brush their teeth.
O'Neill claims that, while adults use gestures and body language
to emphasise what they are saying, gesturese helps to make
words less ambiguous for children. "We were really surprised
by how large the effect is," she said. "Children aged between
eight and nine months were able to learn target words far
quicker if their mothers modified their gestures. Mothers
who sensitively modify both speech and gesture tend to promote
vocabulary development for children under two. It advanced
the learning of 10 target words by around three to four months."
The study monitored the communication between mothers and
their infants during counting tasks and during free play.
They found that the mothers unconsciously used gesturese in
around 25% of their speech, and it accounted for 29% of all
communication between mothers and their children while the
infants were playing. The majority of the gestures, around
90%, involved pointing at objects being named.
O'Neill said: "Gestures are easier for children to understand
and to use themselves. When people are speaking to other adults
their hands tend to wave around all over the place but have
little actual meaning. Parental gestures are very meaningful
and are usually used to help describe an object or a word
with their hands. This switch seems to happen because the
parents are sensitive to their child's understanding. Gesturese
is a physical manifestation of baby speak which modifies gestural
communication for young children."
O'Neill also claims that although her study examined mothers
gesturing to their children, gesturese is used in varying
degrees by all adults when speaking to babies. She also found
that women in the UK use baby gestures nearly twice as much
as mothers involved in a similar study in Italy, a country
traditionally thought to have a more physically expressive
culture. But she believes further research is needed to understand
the differences in gesture rate between countries. "There
are striking similarities in the pattern of gestures used
by mothers in different countries though," she added. "Gestures
are an extension of all communication and not just the words
and language used."
O'Neill, whose research was funded by the Economic and Social
Research Council, is now attempting to find out which gestures
are most useful in helping children learn words. She hopes
they can help children who are struggling to learn how to
talk. Speech therapists already use a form of simplified sign
language when working with children suffering from Down's
Syndrome and autism. But many oppose the use of 'baby sign'
in normal children and believe it may even harm their development.
Marion Rutherford, of the Royal College of Speech and Language
Therapists in Edinburgh, said: "Gestures support the meanings
of words, but most parents would not have to modify their
behaviour for their children to learn language. Any parents
who have concerns about their children's speech development
should see a therapist first before trying to modify their
own behaviour."
The National Literacy Trust has now launched a campaign to
encourage mothers to talk to their children from birth to
help speech develop. Liz Attenborough, manager of the Talk
to your Baby campaign, said children's early interactions
with adults were hugely important. "Studies on Romanian orphans
who received little contact with adults in their early life
have found that they have language problems for the rest of
their lives. Babies are born without all their neurological
pathways connected, so their interactions during the first
few months and years of life play an important part in how
they develop."
(Richard Gray, science correspondent,
Scotland on Sunday, 11.12.05)
An interim report of the independent review of the teaching
of reading in early years settings and primary schools has
been published. Among its findings is the need to focus on
developing children's speaking and listening skills.
The report, which was published on 1 December 2005, is the
result of an investigation by Jim Rose, a former director
of inspections at Ofsted, into best practice in the teaching
of reading. The report summary recommends that the 'core phonic
work, that is to say, teaching children the alphabetic principles
to read and spell words in and out of text, should be taught
regularly, discretely, at a brisk pace, and set within a broad
and rich language curriculum that takes full account of developing
all four inter-dependent strands of language: speaking, listening,
reading and writing'.
The report states: "The development of speaking and listening
skills requires fuller and more intensive attention to make
sure that children acquire a good stock of words, learn to
listen attentively, and speak clearly and confidently. These
skills are the foundations of phonic work, for example, in
building phonemic awareness. Moreover, they are prime communication
skills, hugely important in their own right and central to
children's intellectual, social and emotional development."
The review will be fed into the renewal of the National Literacy
Strategy Framework, and the development of the new Early Years
Foundation Stage. A second and final report is due out in
the New Year that will look at how teachers can provide early
interventions for students falling behind. For more information
visit www.standards.dfes.gov.uk/rosereview
or click here.
(Extracted and adapted from DfES report
summary, 07.12.05)
Parents are being asked to send in the first words spoken
by their children for a special exhibition. The idea is to
celebrate the thrill of a baby's first word and the importance
and pleasure of communicating with children from the moment
they are born. Baby's First Word will be included in a joint
exhibition at Brighton's Jubilee Library and at the School
Clinic in Morley Street, Brighton.
Sarah O'Dair, a speech and language therapist at South Downs
Health NHS Trust, said: "We share similar aims with the library
in wanting to encourage interaction between babies, parents
and siblings, through talking, singing and looking at books."
Parents can submit the words to the library or at Morley Street.
(Brighton Argus, 8-9 October 05 - added
02.12.05)
Pre-school publisher Treehouse is to extend its list of baby
books to capitalise on programmes such as Bookstart and the
recent trend for infant sign language. Creative director Richard
Powell said: "We are seeing greater interest from parents
and retailers, although many parents still don't realise you
can instil that interest in books before your child can speak."
Treehouse believes that novelty book products provide the
answer. "We can encourage more parents to share books with
babies by creating novelty packages, where the book crosses
over into toys and provides an early learning element," Powell
said.
The company has launched a marketing drive, distributing
thousands of activity packs to parents, nurseries and libraries
containing colouring games, posters and leaflets of suggested
reading for babies and toddlers in support of the National
Literacy Trust's Talk To Your
Baby campaign.
(Caroline Horn, The Bookseller, 25.11.05)
Mothers who find more satisfaction in their jobs than staying
at home looking after toddlers should not feel guilty about
leaving their children in a nursery, research published today
suggests. It found that children of mothers who were fulfilled
at work were much less stressed after attending nursery, often
for long period, than those whose mothers had unfulfilling,
often part-time, jobs or who were exhausted by staying at
home all day.
The findings will reignite the controversy over whether very
young children should spend lengthy periods apart from their
mothers in a formal group-based child care setting. Dr Penelope
Leach, the child care expert, said recently that children
looked after by their mothers did significantly better in
developmental tests than those cared for in nurseries. Her
report was seized upon by those who believe that mothers should
stay at home after childbirth.
But the latest research, by academics from three British
universities, suggests that more time in nursery care could
benefit children whose mothers were in unrewarding employment
or who felt emotionally drained by the role of 'stay-at-home
mum'. .[The study] was conducted by Dr Julie Turner-Cobb,
a health psychologist and senior lecturer at the University
of Bath, Dr Christina Chryssanthopoulou from Kent University,
and by Dr David Jessop, a neuro-immunologist at the University
of Bristol.
(Sarah Womack, The Daily Telegraph, 21.11.05)
Foreign au pairs left in sole charge of young children are
fuelling language development problems, according to speech
therapists. Increasing numbers of young people are coming
to Britain to work as nannies and au pairs from countries
which have recently joined the European Union, such as Poland
and Hungary, and other parts of the world, including China,
Russia and Brazil. Working parents, who struggle to find affordable
childcare, are bypassing au pair agencies and employing the
new arrivals directly, often using the Internet. In some cases
they become the child's main carer.
Catherine Aldred, a consultant speech and language therapist,
said that leaving young children for extended lengths of time
with nannies who have poor English could be hampering their
speech and language development. "Speech and language difficulties
are common and growing and can lead to learning difficulties
later on," she said. "Nannies not having a proper grasp of
English would be a factor, I have seen children where it has
been a factor. I've seen children who have been with nannies
who have spoken no English, and it has been a problem. I'll
be thinking 'where does the problem lie?' And you realise
that the child is not being exposed to language and the interaction
that is so important."
One in ten children have speech and language problems, according
to the Royal College of Speech and Language Therapists, but
there is a severe shortage of qualified practitioners - there
are waiting lists of six to 18 months. In a survey by the
National Literacy Trust and the National Association of Head
Teachers, 74% of heads felt children's speaking and listening
skills had deteriorated in the past five years. A poll by
I Can, a national education charity, found that 89% of nursery
workers were worried about the growth of language and communication
difficulties among pre-school children. Ninety-two per cent
of them attributed this to the lack of time adults and children
spend talking together.
Dr Aldred, who treats children at Booth Hall Hospital in
Manchester and St Thomas's Hospital in Stockport, said parents
should look for English-speaking nannies. "A foreign accent,
French or whatever, doesn't matter, or if the language is
a little bit broken that does not matter too much," she said.
"The nanny should have the vocabulary to feel confident to
talk to the child."
Yesterday, childcare experts said they were also becoming
increasingly concerned about other problems experienced by
parents who recruit au pairs from unregulated Internet sites
to avoid paying agency fees. Elizabeth Alder, the chairman
of the Recruitment and Employment Confederation childcare
group, described the practice as a 'potential danger'. She
added: "Many REC members are dealing with families who have
selected unsuitable au pairs and need a quick and properly
vetted replacement."
Figures presented to select committee MPs last year showed
that in 2002/2003, 60,000 foreign au pairs came to Britain
through officially recognised schemes. Appointed through au
pair agencies, the workers are not supposed to be left in
sole charge of children under two years old. The families
they live with, who pay about £55 for a 25-hour week, are
also supposed to contribute towards the cost of English classes.
However, the market has become less regulated since ten former
Soviet block countries joined the EU last year. Annette MacKenzie,
37, a mother of three from North London, received 80 replies
when she advertised for an au pair over the Internet. "It
was extraordinary," she said. "They came from everywhere,
Brazil, Lithuania, you name it. It left me uncomfortable because
it revealed this kind of underworld. Many just had mobile
phone numbers and no permanent addresses. A lot of them sounded
hopeless and couldn't speak English. You can't believe that
any mother would use them, but they do, because it is all
they can afford."
Deborah Lawson, the chairman of the Professional Association
of Nursery Nurses section committee, said a black market was
operating that could threaten children's development.
(By Julie Henry, education correspondent,
The Telegraph, 20.11.05)
The National Childminding Association has named Liz Bayram
as its new chief executive. She will replace Gill Haynes,
who steps down from the role on 21 December. For the past
two years, Ms Bayram has worked as the NCMA's director of
policy and public affairs. Before joining the NCMA, she was
head of communications at the Royal Society.
.At last weekend's AGM, NCMA members voted for all home-based
childcarers to have a level 3 qualification within five years
of registration by 2015, and for early years workers to be
entitled to Inset Training Days.
(Nursery World, 17.11.05)
Advice from Ofsted and an array of other official bodies
all stresses the importance of speaking and listening in the
early years. But many teachers - as Beth Crocker found - are
still waiting for 'permission' to concentrate on these skills
before launching into reading and writing.
Among those striving to create this permissive society are
Sue Palmer and Ros Bayley, literacy and early childhood specialists
who developed Foundations of Literacy
(Network Education Press). "There can be little doubt, that
in terms of literacy, and perhaps all school-based education,
the most fundamental skill of all is listening," the book
says. "Unless children can listen, discriminatively and with
growing attention, they will be slow to understand and slow
to talk." They suggest games such as listening walks, where
children notice sounds such as cars and birds, and Spot the
Sound, in which they have to close their eyes and identify
where a noise, such as a ticking clock, is coming from.
It is all the more necessary because of concerns that youngsters
are not spoken to and listened to enough before they reach
school. There has been an increase in the number of schemes
which work with families of young children to boost their
speech and language skills. One of the first was the Peers
Early Education Partnership on Oxford's Blackbird Leys estate,
which helps young mums to relate to their infants. It has
been followed by schemes such as the National Literacy Trust's
Talk To Your Baby and East Brighton's Talking and Learning
Together project, which works with babies from nine months
old and their families.
These skills are also embedded in the Government's guidelines
for working with under-threes, which will become a legal requirement
under the new childcare bill. Birth to Three Matters, to be
merged with the foundation stage guidelines for three to five-year-olds,
is built around four 'aspects'. The Government says these
'celebrate the skill and competence of babies and young children
and highlight the interrelationship between growth, learning,
development and the environment in which they are cared for
and educated'.
One aspect is being a skilful communicator. It focuses on
sociability and conversation and the building of relationships.
It stresses the development of friendship and sharing emotions.
It is broken down into being together, finding a voice, listening
and responding and making meaning. Being together has to do
with being a sociable and effective communicator. It ranges
from gaining attention and making contact to encouraging conversation.
Finding a voice is about becoming confident and competent
with language - from having an impulse to communicate up to
sharing thoughts, feelings and ideas, and taking in exploring,
experimenting, labelling, describing, questioning and predicting.
Then there is listening and responding - making playful and
serious responses, enjoying and sharing stories, songs, rhymes
and games and learning about words and meanings. Finally making
meaning includes negotiating and making choices and understanding
each other.
The guidance says: "Babies and young children do not merely
begin to make sense of what is going on around them and express
themselves, they start to learn about 'conversation'." So,
perhaps more emphasis on speaking and listening will not only
lead to better readers, it will also result in few Asbos,
as people talk more and lash out less.
(Diane Hofkins, TES, 11.11.05)
In a press statement about the Government Childcare Bill,
the Department for Education and Skills outlined the following
as part of its plans to improve children's wellbeing:
'For Children from birth to the end of reception year, all
registered settings will be required to deliver the Early
Years Foundation Stage - a framework of requirements to ensure
all young children have access to an integrated learning and
care experience that evidence shows enables them to achieve
the best outcomes. This will have the same legal force as
the National Curriculum in schools.'
(DfES, 08.11.05)
Newborn babies do more than just look for faces amid the
barrage of sensory information arriving at their undeveloped
brains - they want eye contact too. Teresa Farroni, a neuroscientist
at Birkbeck College in London, showed 100 newborn babies pictures
made up of dark blobs on a light face, arranged to represent
the eyes and the mouth, and studied how much attention different
versions of the image were given. Dr Farroni's results, published
today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences,
concluded that babies look for eye contact, and therefore
interaction, from the faces.
(The Guardian, 08.11.05)
Click here for related
research
The Pre-School Learning Alliance has teamed up with marketing
company Bounty to launch a scheme keeping parents up to date
and informed about childcare and early years education. The
initiative, known as Footsteps, will provide advice and support
on matters ranging from how to choose childcare and learning
through play activities, to guidelines on nutrition for under-fives.
Parents will receive regular mailings and magazines and be
able to access an interactive website. They will also be supplied
with offers and samples of a variety of services, including
leisure activities. Parents can register to join for free
at www.bounty.com/footsteps.
(Nursery World, 03.11.05)
Teachers are to be briefed on how dialogue and questioning
techniques can encourage the development of young children's
thinking, following a study by the National Foundation for
Educational Research (NFER).
NFER researcher Kate Ridley reviewed the literature on thinking
skills in children aged three to seven and found that classroom-based
approaches, with their emphasis on dialogue 'seem to match
in well with what the psychological literature says children
are capable of'. The NFER research, which looked at post-2000
publications, highlighted the key role played by dialogue,
questioning, stories and play in enhancing children's ability
to think.
But Ms Ridley said the research had also 'shown up some gaps
in our awareness of the best way to develop thinking skills
in young children', chiefly the use of questioning. She added:
"In particular, we'd like to see future work providing information
on how dialogue and questioning can encourage thinking skill
development."
The report is at www.nfer.ac.uk/research-areas.
(Nursery World, 26.10.05)
A baby word survey has been launched to celebrate Bookstart
Day. People can register their baby's first word and the story
behind it at any library or at one of the borough's Surestart
centres. Lewisham Library and Information Service launched
its Baby's First Word census with mothers and babies at Wavelengths
Library, Griffin Street, Deptford, on October 4.
The survey is a Talk To Your Baby initiative, encouraging
parents to communicate with their baby by asking them to listen
for and report on their child's first word. Cabinet member
for culture, Councillor Alyson McGarrigle said: "The Lewisham
Baby's First Word Survey is great fun. What's more, it's a
brilliant way to celebrate Bookstart Day and highlight the
importance of interacting with children in their early years."
(This is Local London, 11.10.05)
One of the longest and most detailed studies of UK childcare
has concluded that young children who are looked after by
their mothers do significantly better in developmental tests
than those cared for in nurseries, by childminders or relatives.
The study on children from birth to three will reignite the
controversy over the best way to bring up young children.
It found babies and toddlers fared worst when they were given
group nursery care. Those cared for by friends or grandparents
or other relatives did a little better while those looked
after by nannies or childminders were rated second only to
those cared for by mothers.
According to Penelope Leach, a leading British childcare
expert and one of the study's authors, the social and emotional
development of children cared for by someone other than their
mother 'is definitely less good'..Leach insisted her findings
should not be interpreted as a demand that mothers stay at
home. Instead, she described it as supporting a demand for
'developmentally appropriate high quality childcare'.
The study, by researchers led by Leach and colleagues Kathy
Sylva and Alan Stein, began in 1998 and involved 1,200 children
and their families from north London and Oxfordshire. Mothers
were interviewed when their babies were three months old and
again when they were 10, 18, 36 and 51 months.
(The Observer, 02.10.05)
On 29 September the winners of the Early Years Booktrust
Awards were announced.
Winner: Poppy Cat's Farm by
Lara Jones (Campbell Books)
Shortlisted: No Bed Without
Ted by Nicola Smee (Bloomsbury), Poppy Cat's Farm by Lara
Jones (Campbell Books), Look at Me! by Joanne Partis (Chrysalis
Books), Bathtime Peekaboo! By DK Team (Dorling Kindersley),
Can You Cuddle Like a Koala? by John Butler (Little Orchard),
Not So Loud, Oliver! by Tony Maddox (Little Tiger)
Winner: The Very Dizzy Dinosaur
by Jack Tickle (Little Tiger Press)
Shortlisted: Duck's Key Where
Can it be? by Jez Alborough (HarperCollins Children's), The
Very Dizzy Dinosaur by Jack Tickle (Little Tiger Press), Pond
Goose by Caroline Jayne Church (OUP), Doing the Animal Bop
by Jan Ormerod, illus. Lindsey Gardiner (OUP), A Chair for
Baby Bear by Kaye Umansky, illus. Chris Fisher (OUP), My Friend
Gorilla by Atsuko Morozumi (Mathew Price Books)
2005 judges: Children's book
consultant Wendy Cooling, health visitor Penny Miller, Bookstart
co-ordinator for Leicestershire Bookstart Afsa Mitha, illustrator
and winner of several children's book awards Nick Sharratt,
and HRH The Countess of Wessex
For more information go to www.booktrust.org.uk
Get the facts
BT is offering up to 200 awards worth over £3,000 to UK schools
that demonstrate best practice in speaking and listening activities.
The winning schools will receive: £1,000, which is not tied
to any project or activity; a DVD player; a free set of resources;
a communication skills roadshow; and a range of in-kind benefits.
Full application details can be found at www.bt.com/schoolsawards.
Complete the certification process
You have to register before you can apply for an award by
completing the certification process. You will be asked to
tick a number of boxes to indicate your commitment to a series
of statements relating to good speaking and listening skills,
and to provide a personal statement of no more than 150 words.
Once your personal statement is complete, you will be able
to proceed to the award application stage.
Complete the application form
You need to fill in an application form to provide evidence
of speaking and listening in the classroom, school and community.
BT also welcomes applications from individuals who are beacons
of good practice in speaking and listening and apply the principles
of good communication skills in their classroom.
Submit the application
Applications must be completed online using www.bt.com/schoolsawards.
The deadline is 12 noon on 14 November 2005. What next? Up
to 300 schools will be shortlisted and announced on the website
on 12 December 2005. The winning schools will be announced
on 16 January 2006: up to 200 schools will be selected. Each
winning school will be asked to share their best practice
by publishing parts of their application on the website.
(Education Guardian, 27.09.05)
The following letter from Dr John H Keen was printed in The
Times on 29 September, 2005, in response to an article 'How
do you infringe a baby's human rights? Just say 'coo'.' Printed
on 27 September, the article reported that visitors to Calderdale
Royal Hospital in Halifax, West Yorkshire, have been banned
from cooing at babies because it was decided such behaviour
infringes the newborn's human rights. The hospital has also
banned well-wishers from asking mothers about their babies.
The rules have been introduced to protect the babies' 'right
to privacy'.
Letter from Dr John H Keen to The
Times
Sir, The managers at Calderdale Royal Hospital who have banned
visitors from cooing at babies in the special care baby unit
are seriously misinformed. As a paediatrician, a father of
four and grandfather of six I know that babies who are talked
to make better developmental progress and are also happier,
and that these two are closely related.
John H Keen
Consultant Paediatrician
Manchester
(Letters Page, The Times, 29.09.05)
Children can learn just as much from playing with shoe boxes,
car keys and saucepans as they can from toys sold as 'educational'.
Leading experts on children's play claim that parents should
be wary of parting with money for 'educational' toys because
they may not help any more than the everyday household items
with which kids often enjoy more. The concern is so great
that the Good Toy Guide, the annual analysis of the best new
products coming on the market, which is trusted by parents
and respected by manufacturers, has said it is resisting pressure
from the industry to include a separate 'educational section'
when it publishes its latest list next month. It believes
such a category would be misleading.
.Krister Svensson, director of the International Toy Research
Centre in Stockholm, has gone one step further in a book about
to be published on toys and play. He says there is no scientific
evidence to back up toy industry claims that such a thing
as an 'educational toy' even exists.
"I question the whole concept of an educational toy," he
said. "Toys don't teach cognitive or motor skills; they just
encourage children to practise them. You can make a complex
toy that forces children to manipulate them in a certain way,
but children can learn just as much from repeatedly taking
the lid off a shoebox and putting it back on again."
(Extracted from an article by Amelia Hill,
education correspondent, Observer, 25.09.05)
Sure Start remains one of the government's
best achievements, but the new centres need more professional
backup.
Ministers need not panic. Supporters of Labour's flagship
programme for deprived under-fives just need to take a deep
breath. A government-funded study has failed to find improvement
so far in Sure Start children relative to other deprived children.
Perversely, children of teenage mothers seemed to do worse
in Sure Start areas. But though the programme has been dealt
a blow, experts, including those who did the study, agree
the problem lies in the hard-to-measure design of Sure Start
and in government pressure for early results. How can you
prove a miracle effect on the hardest-to-change children when
the first Sure Starts had been open only 18 months?
.Researchers compared 19,000 under-fives, half in Sure Start
areas, the rest from similarly deprived districts, but found
no discernible developmental, language or behavioural differences.
Crucially, they were not asked to compare children actually
in Sure Start programmes, only those living in the area, many
of whom had no contact with it.
Responding to the overwhelming evidence that the futures
of most children are set by family circumstance long before
primary school, Sure Start provides drop-in mother-and-toddler
groups, parenting classes, health visitors, IT classes, childcare,
speech therapy and so on. The scheme was set unrealistically
tough targets - such as reducing the number of low-birthweight
babies in an area. But the key test was whether children progressed
faster. Experts advising on the evaluation warned that effective
results would come only when the same children were followed
for years. But politics doesn't work to academic timetables.
The ambiguous results are not the fault of the eminent researchers,
whose problems were legion. Poor areas have a high turnover
of families; Enfield Sure Start, monitored by the Guardian,
had an 80 per cent turnover of under-fives, so any evaluation
missed many children with a lot of Sure Start help who moved
away, while catching newcomers who might have had none. No
complex social scheme makes for a crisp laboratory experiment,
but ministers yearned for hard proof that would cement Sure
Start into the welfare state. The control areas also had schemes
and action zones; indeed, places without Sure Start often
had better help for some groups, such as teenage mothers.
Sure Start areas were assumed to be reaching this group, though
many were not. Researchers didn't know how many children in
either group had what help, if any.
Every Sure Start is different, run variously by health, education
and voluntary groups or local authorities.They are so popular
partly because mothers have a big say in how local schemes
are run. But without a fixed template, the same everywhere,
researchers couldn't know what they were measuring..In future
far more reliable data will come from following the progress
of the same nine-month-olds tested this time, monitoring them
again every two years.
.Here is one piece of early encouragement. The one positive
finding in this Sure Start study may prove vital in the long
run - Sure Start mothers give 'warmer parenting' than the
control group, with less hostility, less smacking, less negative
criticism and more affection. That has not translated so far
into improvement in children's progress, but academics expect
it to augur well for emotional and social development.
(Extracted from article written by Polly
Toynbee, published in The Guardian, 13.09.05)
Reading your
baby's mind, extracted from an article written by Pat
Wingert and Martha Brant for Newsweek, 15.08.05
A wealth of new research is leading
paediatricians and child psychologists to rethink their long-held
beliefs about the emotional and intellectual abilities of
even very young babies. In 1890, psychologist William James
famously described an infant's view of the world as "one great
blooming, buzzing confusion". It was a notion that held for
nearly a century: infants were simple-minded creatures who
merely mimicked those around them and grasped only the most
basic emotions - happy, sad, angry.
Science is now giving us a much different
picture of what goes on inside their hearts and heads. Long
before they form their first words or attempt the feat of
sitting up, they are already mastering complex emotions -
jealousy, empathy, frustration - that were once thought to
be learned much later in toddlerhood.
They are also far more sophisticated
intellectually than we once believed. Babies as young as four
months have advanced powers of deduction and an ability to
decipher intricate patterns. They have a strikingly nuanced
visual palette, which enables them to notice small differences,
especially in faces, that adults and older children lose the
ability to see.
.Armed with the new information,
paediatricians are starting to change the way they evaluate
their youngest patients. In addition to tracking physical
development, they are now focusing much more deeply on emotional
advancement. The research shows how powerful emotional well-being
is to a child's future health. A baby who fails to meet certain
key "emotional milestones" may have trouble learning to speak,
read and, later, do well in school. By reading emotional responses,
doctors have begun to discover ways to tell if a baby as young
as three months is showing early signs of possibly psychological
disorders, including depression, anxiety, learning disabilities
and perhaps autism.
.A child's social, emotional and
academic life begins with the earliest conversations between
parent and child: the first time the baby locks eyes with
you; the quiet smile you give your infant and the smile she
gives you back. Your child is speaking to you all the time.
It's just a matter of knowing how to listen.
(Extracted from Reading your baby's
mind, Newsweek, 15.08.02)
Pre-school children participating
in a trial in which they take daily fish oil supplements have
shown 'dramatic improvements' in their behaviour and concentration,
according to researchers.
The Durham Sure Start trial has announced
preliminary findings from its study of the effects of omega-3
fatty acid supplements on 60 children aged between two months
and three years, in a year-long trial that began last November.
Hannah Cooper, spokeswoman for manufacturer
Equazen which supplies the fish oil supplements used in the
trial, said: "Initial results suggest that the performance
of 60 per cent of the children has improved dramatically after
taking supplements. The trial will end in November and findings
will be presented to the DfES with a view to fish oil supplements
being rolled out across Sure Start."
(Nursery World, 21.07.05)
An early years pedagogue model should
be developed for staff who work in children's centres, new
research from the National Children's Bureau concludes. Defining
and developing an integrated workforce in children's centres,
a summary report by the National Children's Bureau's Early
Childhood Unit, containing the views of 300 people, says there
was 'overwhelming agreement' that children's centres should
not be staffed solely by teachers or led by teachers, and
there was support for a pedagogue model whereby someone would
have the skills and knowledge to 'support the type of integrated
services envisaged for children's centres and be able to work
with the child holistically'.
Director of the unit Sue Owen said:
"Participants were interested in a new professional role in
the early years sector. They were looking at something that
would pull together integrated childcare and education and
would fit well with other professions, for example health
and social services."
(Nursery World, 07.07.05)
The National Children's Bureau (NCB)
is to lead a two-year project to encourage greater involvement
of parents in their young children's learning. The Parental
Community Support Project will encourage parental participation
in children's centres and other early years settings and provide
better support for parents to engage with their children's
learning. It will be run by NCB's Early Childhood Unit in
partnership with the London Borough of Camden and the children's
charity Coram Family.
During the first year, the NCB will
identify existing methods of engaging parents effectively.
In the second year, this information will be used to develop
a core model of good practice and roll out a national training
scheme for practitioners in children's centres.
(Nursery World, 23.06.05)
Forget how many toys you have, or
whether the spoon scooping your pureed carrot is silver. If
you are a baby, the key to your development is not your family
wealth or background but whether your mum is a mind-reader,
according to new research. A study of mothers and their babies
concluded that a mother's ability to "read" her
child's mind and accurately judge its emotions is more important
to the infant's development than her social status or income.
Half of the 200 women involved in
the survey, carried out by the university of Durham, had no
education beyond 16 and were unemployed or in unskilled or
semi-skilled jobs. But the study found that, though babies
from poorer homes did score less well overall in tests of
play and speech, it was judging how well a mother understood
her baby, not her social background, which gave the best steer
as to the child's development.
The project assessed the mothers
and babies when the infants were eight, 14 and 24 months old.
Mothers and babies were videoed playing together for 20 minutes,
with transcriptions made of what each woman said. A mother's
commends were judged to be appropriate if she appeared to
be "reading" her child correctly, such as remarking
that the baby was content when it was quietly playing with
a toy. In contrast, some mothers appeared to "misread"
their babies, for example by suggesting he or she was upset
or tired when the child showed no signs of being so.
After tracking the babies to age
two, the study did show a connection between poverty and delays
in key areas such as speech and play. However, the study concluded
that, while significant, these links were "not strong".
Factors such as how much support a mother had from family
and friends, or whether she suffered from depression also
had little effect on the child's playing and talking. In contrast,
youngsters whose mothers could "read" their inner
feelings had higher scores and were less likely to be in the
bottom 10% for development.
(The Guardian, 26.05.05)
No parent ever forgets their child's
first word. However, for many mothers it comes as something
of a surprise when a baby starts to utter the word 'dada'
long before they manage to say 'mama'. But it is not because
babies are expressing favouritism for doting fathers such
as David Beckham. Experts have revealed that the reason is
physical, not emotional. Dr Mary Fagan says that the natural
development of babies' mouth and tongue means that the first
sounds they can make begin with G and then D. As a result
the familiar early calls of 'gaga' and 'goo-goo' tend to be
followed by 'dada' - with the M sound taking several months
longer to master. This explains why babies often say 'dad'
first, despite the fact that most spend more time with their
mothers.
"There are some constraints
on the sounds babies can produce early on in their infancy,"
said Dr Fagan, a research associate at Cardiff University's
School of Psychology. "The D sound just happens to be
one of the first sounds babies can produce before M. It has
a lot to do with the early structure of the face. "When
babies are born their tongues are fairly large in proportion
to the mouth, which helps babies breastfeed, so the tongue
has very little range of movement. "So it's usually nothing
to do with a child's preferences. It is not favouritism -
it is science." The situation is similar in other languages
including Spanish, Italian and Chinese, she added.
(Daily Mail, 6.05.05)
Head teachers are calling for new
mothers to attend weekly sessions to learn how to bring up
their children. David Gray, a head teacher from Devon, said
they would learn to teach a child the difference between "yes"
and "no". Research showed that parents who played and talked
with their babies improved their chances in life, he added.
The National Association of Head
Teachers conference backed his call for funding to ensure
badly-behaved pupils did not disrupt teaching for the rest.
He was supported by Irene Cox, head of Sedgemoor Manor infants
school in Bridgwater, Somerset, who said children in her school
could "swear like troopers". They used obscenities they heard
at home as nouns, adjectives and verbs - "clearly showing
they can sequence familiar vocabulary into sentences", she
said at the conference in Telford, Shropshire. When she had
raised this with one mother, the woman had said "we use the
F word all the time - but we don't swear." When she pointed
out that was what had concerned the school, the mother said
"I thought you meant real swearing."
Ms Cox said she had had to ban parents
from the school site for fighting in front of the children.
She had seen schoolwork children had laboured to produce screwed
up and thrown away by a parent, with a comment such as "What's
this rubbish, then?" Irene Cox said her pupils could "swear
like troopers" "No wonder so many children say they want to
stay in school at the end of the day," she said. Schools were
rapidly becoming the only places where children were given
any boundaries - "where no means no, it doesn't mean 'if you
carry on annoying me I will eventually give in and say yes'."
Mr Gray, a member of the association's
national council, told the conference parents got ante-natal
training on the immediate practicalities of caring for their
new babies, but were then "left very much to their own devices".
Researchers at Exeter University had reported on how parents
who provided a secure environment with intellectual stimulation
could transform children's chances, regardless of social class
or income. "How much better then it would be if the local
education authority provided weekly sessions which mothers
and babies from all social levels would be expected to attend."
Experts could be on hand to discuss any concerns. Mothers
who did not attend should lose their child benefit, he explained
later. "The parents could be taught the importance of a regular
routine for their baby, the importance of teaching the child
the difference between 'yes' and 'no' and the necessity of
playing with and talking to one's baby."
In the meantime the next government
should propose more coherent policies on inclusion and exclusion,
he said. The funding he was calling for was necessary so the
vast majority of "normal children" who just wanted to get
on and learn received more of their teacher's time. The conference
unanimously backed their resolution.
(BBC News online, 29.04.05)
'Maracas' and 'yum' are just two
of the first words spoken by babies and reported to Talk To
Your Baby, the early language campaign of the National Literacy
Trust, which wants nurseries and early years settings to take
part in a new scheme to encourage parents to talk to their
children. Campaigners are asking parents to share the stories
behind their baby's first word to highlight the important
role parents play in a child's language skills.
TTYB manager Liz Attenborough said,
"Babies learn to talk by listening to and copying their
parents, so it's vital that parents and carers talk to their
babies as much as possible. A baby's first word is a signfiicant
milstone on the path to becoming a talker. After lots of one-to-one
interaction with parents and siblings, and practice at making
sounds, a child's first word shows they have learned to use
the right sounds to tell you something. It's an amazing achievement
and well worth celebrating."
It was an Australian chef who reported
his daughter's first word as 'yum', Ms Attenborough said,
adding, "We want to her more stories like these."
Nurseries and libraries are being urged to set up display
areas featuring children's first words and the interesting
stories behind them. The scheme is being run in association
with the Early Years Library Network, Bookstart and Youth
Libraries Group. A step-by-step guide, poster and hand-out
for parents are available to download
free
Meanwhile, TTYB has also published
a paper to generate discussion among parents and practitioners
about the reasons behind the apparent decline in young children's
language skills. 'Why do many young children lack basic language
skills? is also available on the website. Download
the discussion paper
(Nursery World, 28.04.05)
Vulnerable children and families are set to benefit from
the second phase of a major child health project launched
in Glasgow last week with £1.6m from the Scottish Executive.
The Starting Well Demonstration Project, one of four schemes
set up and funded by the Executive to improve health in Scotland,
provides community-based support from health visitors and
community nursery nurses.
The money will support Starting Well until the end of March
2006, covering the whole of Glasgow city. An independent evaluation
of Starting Well Phase One found it had successfully supported
more than 1,800 families. Usually, new mothers receive a minimum
of six contacts over five years from a health visiting service.
Under the Starting Well scheme, mothers were offered 34 contacts
over the first three years of their child's life.
Families are offered advice on a range of issues, including
debt and employment, respite child-care and baby massage.
Support is also provided through the Positive Parenting Programme,
a strategy developed in Australia. Triple P, as it is known,
aims to prevent behavioural, emotional and developmental problems
in children by improving parents' knowledge, skills and confidence.
The evaluation found that Starting Well had a number of benefits
for both parents and children. After six months of taking
part, mothers showed significantly lower levels of depressive
symptoms. The quality of home environments improved and parents
felt better equipped to look after their children. An increase
in the number of children registered with dentists was also
recorded.
Dr Michael Killoran Ross, project manager for Starting Well
in NHS Greater Glasgow, said, "Phase One was a universal
intervention that targeted all families within the two areas.
Phase Two will directly target vulnerable children. We will
establish multi-disciplinary and multi-agency teams that will
provide support to the most disadvantaged families in our
communities. The project will provide valuable national lessons
in intensive family support."
Starting Well was established in 2000 with £3m from
the Scottish Executive and implemented in two of Glasgow's
most disadvantaged areas, Great Easterhouse and the Gorbals,
Govanhill and North Toryglen. More information on the project
is available at www.healthscotland.com
Children who attend Sure Start local
programmes are doing better in language skills, new research
commissioned by the Department of Education and Skills reveals.
Researchers from City University, London, also found the number
of parents worried about their children's language skills
had decreased. www.dfes.gov.uk/research
(Children Now, 20.04.05)
Mothers who return to work part-time when their children
are as young as three months old have no adverse effect on
the future development of their offspring, according to the
latest academic survey. But full-time working mothers who
leave their children under 18 months old in the sole care
of grandparents or of friends risk seeing their children fall
behind at school.
Researchers say there are "significant" detrimental
effects when the child is left with an unpaid carer. The child
is, on average, three months behind his or her peers by the
age of seven, doing less well in literacy and numeracy tests
and being less adept with language. If the child goes to nursery
rather than grandma's while his or her mother works full-time,
he or she is about one month to two months behind by the age
of seven.
The research by Bristol University, and published in the
Economic Journal, is the latest to look at children's
educational development and their mothers' working patterns,
and will alarm those 44 per cent of working mothers who use
grandparents as child care. Academics at Bristol University
tracked 7,000 children born in the Avon district in 1991 and
1992 from birth until they were seven years old.
Paul Gregg, professor of economics at Bristol University,
said: "What we found was that short periods of care by
relatives appear not to be damaging. It is sole reliance on
relatives by the full-time working mother that appears harmful."
According to the Bristol research, when the mother returned
to full-time work within 18 months of her child being born,
there were "moderate" adverse effects. "These
are not huge, but they are enough to be noticeable,"
said Prof Gregg. "Children are set back a month or two
in their development. They are less good at maths [adding
and substracting], their language is less good and their reading
and word recognition is less advance."
Researchers found that formal paid care - by child minders
or a nursery - was not associated with adverse outcomes for
the child. Prof Gregg said: "A low stimulation environment
for a large part of the week is not positive."
(Telegraph, 14.03.05)
The design of children's centres
is set to play a vital role in an education partnership's
new strategy for language, literacy and communication for
the Foundation Stage. Representatives from Manchester Education
Partnership recently attended a series of meetings with architects
working on the first phase of the city's children's centres.
Manchester already has six children's centres up and running,
with five more awaiting approval. Twenty-six are planend in
total, with funding of around £9.8m.
Bev Jones, the partnership's senior
Foundation Stage consultant and a member of the team involved
in planning the children's centres, said, "I've been
looking at what spaces would be used for and the impact on
children's learning. I wanted to explore how the design could
engage children rather than just comply with the standards."
Ms Jones said she wanted to ensure
some kind of communal eating area is included in the plans
to help children's language development and social skills,
and encourage their curiousity. "If children can see
the preparation of food, then they will ask questions about
it. The idea is to have large windows into the kitchen so
that children can see in, and a central space next to the
kitchen where children and practitioners and visiting parents
can eat. At the moment, children tend to eat in the same room
they spend the whole day in and there is no link with food
preparation."
Other elements she would like to
see incorporated in the design include flexible spaces with
fewer fixed rooms, windows at child height, and skylights.
"We really want to start with the child and allow children
and practitioners to develop the space," said Ms Jones.
"We expect children to become curious people, yet we
surround them with solid walls." She added, "This
is very much a wish-list, but the basic principles are there."
Tina Kelley, Sure Start capital project
manager, said, "To speed up the process we have a partnership
with three construction teams who typically do school extensions
and new builds, so we don't have to go out to tender."
The majority of children's centres will be extensions to premises
or conversions, including buildings on school sites and existing
early years settings. The construction companies involved
are Amec, Bramalls and Wilmott Dixon. The first phase will
be completed by March 2006 and the design work for the second
phase will start at the end of 2005.
(Nursery World, 10.03.05)
An inquiry into the provision of
pre-school education and care across Scotland launched by
the Scottish Government should be used to put early years
education "on the map", say experts. The Scottish
Independent Nurseries Association (Sina) said the inquiry,
which is to focus on child development work and flexibility
of childcare provision, should emphasise staff training and
teaching environments.
"Early years needs to be put
on the map and we hope the inquiry will highlight the value
of early years education on a child's life," said Mairi
Maciver Clark, one of Sina's directors. The inquiry, which
was launched by the parliament's education committee, will
also look at support for parenting.
Robert Brown, the education committee
convener, said botched provision for children's early years
risked storing up problems across education, employment, families
and criminal justice. He added that the inquiry would complement
the committee's ongoing work on looking at what motivates
children in school.
The committee is asking for written
submissions by 1 April which can be sent via email to education@scottish.parliament.uk
with the subject line titled "early years". The
final results of the inquiry will be published in early autumn.
(Children Now, 23.02.05)
A scheme to improve children's communication
has helped in the education of children of asylum seekers
and is being extended to other areas of the curriculum. Talking
Partners has helped nearly 500 chidlren in Liverpool aged
from four to eight with their speaking and lsitening skills,
and is proving crucial to ethnic-minority youngsters, said
Julie Spencer, Liverpool City Council's advisor for the communication
scheme.
"One of t he most successful
aspects has been to improve confidence and self-esteem, and
children from asylum-seeking families are often among the
most needy," she said.
Pupils on the initiative receive
three 20-minute sessions a week for 10 weeks, where they write
storeis and learn verbal skills. This is being extended to
maths teaching, in order to help children tackle the subject's
technical vocabulary.
Spencer said she eventually hoped
the scheme would grow in size from covered 84 primary schools
to all 200 in the city.
(Children Now, Feb 2005)
You are never too young to learn,
according to Graham Schafer at the University of Reading.
Babies can - and do - learn before their first birthday. He
reports in Child Development that he asked parents of 52 nine-month-olds
to use 12 board books and 48 picture cards showing keys, apples,
fish and so on, in games with their babies four times a week
for up to 10 minutes a time. Then, at one year old, the infants
were tested. They were shown pairs of pictures, one of them
for example a fish, while an investigator said "Fish,
fish, look at the fish!" Babies that had been "trained"
looked at the correct picture. Other infants did not. "We
can conclude that the children who had taken part in the games
with their parents had learned those particular words, and
not in a way linked to a special context," said Dr Schafer.
"Parents should definitely talk to their young children
- even more than they may already do."
(The Guardian, 10.02.05)
The Basic Skills Agency (BSA) has
defended its decision to spend £1 million on press and
television adverts that encourage parents to talk to their
young children. The Wales-only adverts, some of which have
been scheduled in the prime-time slot during Coronation
Street, are designed to improve the talking and listening
skills of babies and toddlers to prepare them for school.
The BSA commissioned the campaign after it found that communication
skills among young children had declined sharply during the
past five years.
The National Confederation of Parent
Teacher Associations (NCPTA) has questioned the cost effectiveness
of such a campaign but it has been welcomed by the National
Association of Head Teachers (NAHT) Cymru. In 2002 the BSA
conducted a survey of more than 700 head-teachers in Wales.
Although based on anecdotal evidence, a clear pattern emerged.
Some 56 per cent of teachers said their pupils' ability to
listen and respond to instructions had deteriorated, while
two-thirds said fewer children could speak audibly and be
understood. And 93 per cent of teachers said it was "absolutely
essential" to listen and respond to young children under
three years olds.
The BSA's director Alan Wells said:
"If you grunt at a child it will learn to grunt back.
If you speak to them in a more fluid way they will imitate.
We're trying to remind people that that's important."
He added: "The budget for these adverts is relatively
small compared with the money spent helping pupils to catch
up after they have failed to acquire these skills. We've got
to communicate using modern technology and modern ways."
Mr Wells said poorer communication
skills were down to cultural changes that meant parents were
busier and had less experience of good parenting. They also
felt "disempowered" by the education system and
did not know what they should and should not do. The campaign
has been endorsed by education and life-long learning minister
Jane Davidson. But Margaret Morrissey, spokesperson for the
NCPTA, said: "They talk as if parents never have these
conversations. It's a little bit unfair because probably 90
per cent of parents are always talking to their children.
The BSA has got to be careful it's not spending far too much
of its resources on television adverts that tell parents to
do somethign they already do."
In contrast, NAHT Cymru director
Anna Brychan said: "This problem is serious enough to
warrant an investment of this kind. Our members have noticed
a marked decrease in the ability of children who come into
school for the first time. We welcome the fact that the BSA
has recognised the problem, but what's really needed is parenting
classes - active hands-on help."
The television adverts, which show
a person talking enthusiastically to someone out of sight
who turns out to be their young children, also promote a free
advice pack for parents.
The campaign is the fourth funded
by the Assembly government to improve basic skills.
(TES Cymru, 28.01.05)
Never mind books, tapes, computer
games and other education aids. The most important thing you
can do for your children, it turns out, is simply to talk
to them. And sing, and laugh, and interact.
There's a growing body of research
to show how fundamentally important early communication is
for babies and young children - not to mention for older kids,
too - and this week there's an official acknowledgement of
that with the launch of a booklet by the government-funded
Basic Skills Agency. The booklet urges parents to take as
many opportunities as they can just to talk to their child.
"All the studies show that babies
and young children imitate and mirror their parents," says
Alan Wells, director of the BSA. "And we know that talking
to children early on in their lives improves skills such as
reading, writing and numeracy later on. "Simply speaking to
your child matters more than the parental level of achievement
- it's not about your level of education, it's about how much
you are interested and involved in your child's development
that counts."
And if it sounds self-evident, it's
not yet a message that is getting through. A survey of headteachers
in Wales found they believed as many as 50% of children were
starting school lacking the communication skills necessary
to learn effectively. "That's very important, because the
danger is that children end up failing from very early on,"
says Wells. "If you fall behind in the early years in your
school career, research shows you'll be behind when you leave."
The answer, he says, is interaction.
And you can't start too early: babies develop the ability
to hear at 24 weeks' gestation, so talking and singing to
them in the womb isn't barmy: there's even research to show
your baby can tell from your voice whether you're happy or
sad, stressed or relaxed.
By birth it's all systems go and,
says Lynne Murray - professor of developmental psychology
at Reading University and co-author of The Social Baby: Understanding
Babies' Communication from Birth - it is hard to overestimate
the complex skills possessed by a newborn, which enable it
to interact with other people. Babies, says Murray, come wired
to talk, and the person they most want to communicate with
is their mother whose voice, of course, is the one they know
best.
"We've done experiments using a dummy
the baby can suck on to activate a voice recording, and we've
been able to show that a baby prefers the sound of a human
voice over a non-human sound, prefers the mother's voice over
another person's voice and prefers the mother's voice talking
'baby talk' to talking in an adult way."
In fact, says Murray, researchers
have found that baby talk has a great deal in common the world
over. "If you listen to the baby talk of a Mandarin Chinese
mother and a British mother, you'll be astonished at the similarities,"
she says. "A lot of people are embarrassed by baby talk and
think they won't use it, but we believe the pitch people instinctively
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