Keir Starmer "sick and tired" of hearing about children who aren't school-ready

@verycloakanddaggers”services” don’t replace parents and parental responsibility. We have dc not having vaccination - that service is still available. Dc are screened by the nhs. Thats available. As is paid for nursery hours. People don’t use the services that are there! It’s not up to the state to bring up dc.

Poster is extremely paranoid no one cares what sport your husband watches, I've been to baby groups where some mum's are foreign and can barely speak English seriously no one cares if you mispronounced one letter.
Now I had my first really young and used to go to baby groups at 16 looking even younger because I was a short ass now that was awkward, but he has no cousins and had no siblings at the time so needed the socialising, can't let awkwardness get in the way of living your life.

As for the non potty trained school children I think it's exaggerated when my eldest started school a couple years ago there was only one child out of 30 in nappies and she was autistic and couldn't talk.

Quite agree. There was grinding poverty in the era I grew up in and precious little to nothing in the way of services. I fully expect people to tell me that children were brought up by a "village" in those days. They weren't. If anything parents get considerably more help from grandparents these days. If you were lucky your mum or MIL might help out for a few days with a new baby but that was it. After that you were expected to get on with it.

How does this affect parents teaching their children how to use the toilet? @ginasevern makes a valid point. I wonder if some parents nowadays just can’t be bothered.

There was a lot of almost Victorian style poverty in the 1960's when I grew up. Many people shared outside toilets for example and it was quite common to wash in a tin bath in front of the coal fire. But I didn't got to school with a single child who at 4 or 5 was still in nappies or who ate with their hands.

Since 2010 we've had fifteen years of cuts for every single service and a steep fall in wages (in real terms). Every piece of our society is feeling it.

This is precisely why we used to have a norm of different school starting points - because a child who is 4yrs 0m is not in the same place as one who is 4yrs 11m, very naturally and very obviously.

There's too much pressure on the natural development process now - parents without time, school starting earlier and professional childcare not taking on what parents used to do.

There are many 10yos who don’t wash their hands. They may be very capable of doing it but they don’t actually do it!

I think the biggest mistake is allowing this to happen and continue. Teachers should not be having to change nappies. Perhaps the time has come to delay these children starting and telling parents they need to to get their child ready and/ir come into school if the child is not toilet trained.

My children were assessed to within an inch of their lives at preschool with all targets etc so children attending these settings can be assessed by professionals in these settings. Where children aren’t attending these settings then parents need to be told that they must attend pre school assessment and delay the child starting if necessary.

We seem to be moving rapidly towards some parents doing practically nothing but having responsibility for their children and it’s not sustainable, affordable or acceptable to a modern society.

😂

I am one of the ‘wrong’ parents who used SS. I actually live 5 minutes away from their main hub locally and it was attached to my DDs primary.
Where I live is the nicer area which butts against an area of social deprivation separated by a main road.

The case worker we saw and dealt with said she actually wanted parents of all backgrounds attending as it was easier to get some parents to do things if they saw others doing it and not making a big deal of it. That she wanted them to see there were parents who worked part time and still did these things with their DC.
A few of us ended up managing the stay and play sessions when funding was cut and staff were too busy.
we did have an issue when they tried to exclude me and DD from certain events for having ‘the wrong postcode’. This is just before they started to close down anyway, DD went to school nursery and it seemed like too much effort when they didn’t want us there. So the stay and play ended anyway.

@StepawayfromtheLindors When I was an Education Officer 30 years ago, we had pockets of this. In areas of higher deprivation and too many chaotic families. I remember an infant school head very concerned because 10 out of 60 YR starters were not potty trained. That was very high even for that school. In other areas, a not loo trained dc at age 4 would be unusual. Parents have always differed in ability and what they think is important.

We now have more parents who are not teaching dc to get dressed and undressed, how to ask to go to the toilet, how to listen to a story or instructions, how to play with others, how to control emotions and not hit or kick, how to eat with cutlery - the list is endless. Too many parents don’t bother or think dc should not have to learn “until they are ready”. Which is code for “cannot be bothered!” It’s sad for these dc.

Not sure what has happened in the UK over the last 15 years but this wasn’t ever an issue when my DC started school.

@Wyksister Why do you think these “not ready for school” dc go to child care? Or nursery? Frequently they don’t. They are dc often looked after by extended family or have parents with many dc and their home life is chaotic. It’s something that should be monitored at progress checks, but it’s not.

SS initially focused on the 20% most deprived areas and was made up of lots of different services, so could be HV, parenting and nutrition support, playgroups, therapies etc. Also childcare. So it's not about 'who went' or not- you can be MC and need nutritionist support, it's just that your LA would have put it all in one place and made it easier to access and signpost to a range of other services.

But why would it be? My experience of nurseries through both a toddler and a preschooler is that they support potty training. Understandably children have to be started with the intensive potty training at home, but then they have supported us with continuing. Same for my friends. It is ultimately the parents responsibility - and we both work more than full time hours and trained ours. Our friends also

A lot of money is being given to Ofsted registered childcare

Is that tax payer funded childcare failing our children?

I heard that a lot of the children who didn’t actually need it were attending. But AFAIK there was no assessment - nobody was saying, ‘Oh, you seem like a nice MC parent, your child won’t need it, go home.’

Was it recommended by SWs or HVs to parents of children who’d benefit? If so, I can imagine that in itself putting people off, if it implied any criticism of their parenting.

So, why are so many children now falling behind in being ready for school? Why has it become an issue now?

I've heard so far,

Parents too busy.
Not a SAHM.
Continuity issues with carers.
Nappies too comfortable.
Children go to school too young.

Are these valid reasons, really? At the end of the day school is about learning. Learning only. Any children, not including SEN of course (which has never been the issue), that are no school ready is a parental issue surely. Parents literally are in responsible for their kids, nobody else. I realise that is an unpopular view here on MN.

@GETTINGLIKEMYMOTHERSure Start did nothing for dc who didn’t go. Believe me, a good proportion of the ones who needed it. There’s a myth been built up around this. Spaces were taken by dc who didn’t need the service. Parents were not compelled to go and many were too chaotic to go or simply did not care.

My Dmum said that - they often only realised when routines were disrupted often by hoildays.

They also worked to routines - so go before leaving drill to go to toilets at school breaks - I've seen that sort of bladder training frowned on by some these days.

Now there more emphaiss on letting them learn body signals - which is great till you get often ND kids who have poor feedbacks.

DS has very poor interoception skills body singals he doesn feel so even a teen he gets dehydrated.

I remember the teachers storming out later to complain in preschool year as DS had one at 3 - but he was stood right by the toilets made no attempt to get there and they left for for next 20 minutes in wet clothes surpised he wasn't bothered. DS was fine most of the time but end of terms and if he was coming down ill then he'd often have accidents.

As PP pointed out when you look at the surveys these headline get based on it not really kids in nappies -though that may be on the increase- it's accidents - and kids struggling in class room enviroments often with undiagonsed SEN/ND or youngest in school year are most likely to have it happen.

Incidentally mine could use cultery and get dressed - though made that easy as possible - could follow instructions but were often left exhuatsed by school and older two did have accidents which woudl put them in these sureveys as problems.

Our youngest who doesn't have poor body feeback older two do and was trained in a week when she suddenly announced she was not having nappies any more. She didn't have any accidnets at school and I got told I finally worked out how to toilet train - no I'd finally had a child who got body feedback messages - and is likely only one without ADHD - though she has a few processing issues.

I don’t know how true it is, but I read at the time that Sure Start was avoided by too many of the parents of the children who would most have benefited from it, because they thought it would mean too many bossy, ‘middle class’ women telling them where they were going wrong.

School readiness isn’t just about toilet training, it’s an obvious physical factor that’s tricky but some schools don’t have high numbers and that’s good.

A pp mentioned nurseries having small numbers and more staff so able to potty train - private nurseries do, and they are great at it, council/school nurseries have higher numbers and 1-4 members of staff,
So say you have 30 kids, 5 still in nappies might not sound a lot but takes at least 1 adult away at any given time, and that’s breaking rules tbh as there should be 2 adults present when changing children, then you have children who may or may not be diagnosed with ALN, at nursery age they will likely require a 1:1, that leaves 1 adult for all the rest of the children, and then some of these children will not be ‘school ready‘ so you’ll have potentially 20+ children to keep an eye on that don’t follow simple instruction, can’t sit for a story, can’t interact with adults or their peers.
Spend a morning in an early years setting and you’ll find yourself exhausted!

To add to what a pp touched on too, ALN isn’t always an excuse for not toilet training, we’ve had lots of children come through the infants with diagnosed & undiagnosed (but awaiting assessment) need that are toilet trained, we’ve even toilet trained a child with ASD in year 1 who ‘wasn’t ready’ at home but took to it like a duck to water in school with some gentle encouragement and reminders.
(Disclaimer; I’m not suggesting all children with suspected or actual ALN will be ready or able, just that for some children it will be achievable)

Where have I said her experience isnt true? I have said there is a difference between accidents and wearing nappies in school.

People read these stories and believe things have changed since their DC were at school, because everyone in their DCs class was out of nappies but some had the accidents. I am saying that it is the same today, that some DC have accidents. The aren't many wearing nappies in reception.

Are you telling someone that her experience is simply not true? Wow.