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School cuts warning: some kids don’t know own name
Shocking fact emerges as Frank Field warns that funding cuts hit education of poor children
Some young children have such poor language skills that they start school without knowing their own name. The shocking fact has emerged during a row over cuts to Sure Start, a government programme designed to tackle inequalities in early education.
David Cameron's poverty adviser, Frank Field, told Radio 4's Today programme last Saturday that many schools have to teach the most basic of skills to first-time attendees. "We're talking about children knowing their own name... and knowing that crayons are for drawing with and not for stabbing the person next to you," he said.
Talking about the problems this morning with Today host Sarah Montague, Neil Wilson, head of a group of schools in south Manchester, said that the problem was much more widespread than people thought. "A significant majority know their names," he said, "but some do not... Speech and language impairment is probably the biggest special need in primary schools."
The problem is not families that cannot speak English properly, but rather parents who don't bother speaking to their children enough.
A lack of communication during the key period between ages zero and three can stifle language development permanently, leading to behavioural problems and lower employability in later life.
Parents need to speak to their children more, says Jean Gross, the government's communication champion for children, although she admits, "time is a luxury".
Gross blames families that "lack adults from different generations with wide vocabularies", while Wilson cited TV as a contributing factor, pointing out that families increasingly sit in silence rather than talking.
On top of this, one of the key institutions set up to tackle such problems, Sure Start, has already seen 31 children's centres close due to public spending budget cuts. These are the same centres which Cameron unequivocally pledged to protect, calling them "something that really matters".
"Yes, we back Sure Start," he stated just the day before last year's general election.
Field first raised the issue of cuts to Sure Start as far back as March. Despite this, national funding is being cut on average by £50 per child, with reductions of up to £100 a child in some of the country's poorest areas such as Tower Hamlets. ·
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We could suppose the poverty advisor informs the PM of just how much more poverty he is creating by chopping education for the poor. If he had an advisor for fat cats he could tell the PM that boosting poverty is bad all round. I think children learn more by being listened to than being talked at.
Its noticeable that many ( mostly mothers ) at the school gate don't speak English to their kids. Though I have seen many of the kids that answer their parents in English when spoken to in a foreign language.
Sure Start was as much a political project as an education one. Its worth listening to the BBC's radio 4 Analysis programme on the subject. All is not as it seems.
Your item contains this:
The problem is not families that cannot speak English properly, but rather parents who don't bother speaking to their children enough.
Which raises the following question:
What happens when the "English" 'spoken properly', fails to convey the truth? Or doesn't THAT matter?
I only ask because the real failure is NOT about WHAT language is spoken as THE language but about WHAT is conveyed and what is intended to be conveyed in that 'properly spoken' language.
Do you care about THAT?