To think if a child starts school unable to do these things they have some kind of SN? and a checklist won't help!!

[brighteyedbusytailed]

[http://www.telegraph.co.uk/education/educationnews/10741986/Ofsted-all-parents-should-get-a-checklist-telling-them-how-to-raise-their-children.html]]

So basically a child with speech and language delay is because of bad parenting? Maybe someone should let the parents know they should be teaching them to speak because I'm sure they haven't thought of that.
My dd is on track for everything she should be doing but she can be chronically shy when meeting new people and wouldn't nessisarly ask an unknown adult for something... How I am supposed to teach her not to be shy exactly?

Apropos, I have a friend who has been diagnosed with Asperger's in his 40's. Sometimes it can be veeery subtle, so I wouldn't completely rule it out with DS, either.

he is an actual rocket scientist

The friend, NOT DS ..

It does depend what the checklist is for doesn't it - we are given a checklist 7+ months before children are due to start school in the part of Germany I live in,, and encouraged to consider holding them back to start a year later if they can't do AND can't be taught the skills on the list over the next month or so. Kids here also have school readiness assessments and are recommended to be kept back and/ or for speach or occupational therapy or whatever is deemed appropriate if they are not ready for school at 6 (ish). Checklists need to be just a tiny part of a bigger assesment. Children with subtler problems are obviously missed, and there are huge problems with the system (no inclusion) but a checklist on its own is a bit redundant!

To those who recommend Miele cat and dog, do you have the upright one?

. Sorry wrong thread .

Having grown in a country where school starts the autumn of they year you turn 7, I don't actually know anyone (or have heard of anyone) who has been or was held back a year because they couldn't tie their shoe laces (which was a guideline of sorts, together with other more obvious points). The parents would side step the issue by putting those kids in velcro and they all caught up at some point.. Luckily it wasn't a hard, fast rule.

Yes, DS is pretty much upright, although he did crawl for a looooong time. Sorry, couldn't resist..

Hehe no they never check, and don't have to wear laces (only the football trainers care about literal shoe laces). Shoe lace tying is apparently a rough indicator of a range of other skills - being able to complete a task of a certain level of complxity, motor control etc.

I held my son back a year even though he could tie his laces :D had to pull rank as an ex teacher to do so and get my friendly GP to write a letter, as the school assessor wanted to send him, but socially and emotionally I knew he couldn't have coped last year - school here is not like the UK.

Fusedog

Just because a implies b does not mean b implies a.

The children you fostered had presumably been neglected. Almost by definition. So six weeks with you would cause huge advancements.

But a child who can't do these things is not necessarily neglect. It may mean they are young for the year but will be able to by the 4.6 when the average child starts school, they may have undx special needs, they may just be developing skills in a different order to the average. (I have a dd who knew her colours before she crawled, talked in full sentences before she walked and knew her letters long before she could jump. No special needs, not a genius, not neglected, just developed in a slightly different order to the average child.)

I understand, MrTumble. We were straight into sitting quietly at desks, in rows, facing the front while teacher wrote on the blackboard (might be a bit different nowadays, although not a lot). I had a bit of trouble with that, as I was very chatty and kept turning around in my chair. DM had a cross phone call from the teacher. I soon learned to keep schtum.

My DD would chat quite happily to the pre-school staff when she was 3, I would have ticked the box on the checklist to say she could ask adults for her needs. In reception however, she had an awful teacher who terrified her, and so she barely spoke a word at school. The school simply did not believe me that she had regressed whilst in their care, they just had me down as a shit parent. It took about two years for her to feel confident talking to teachers again. Sometimes it is not the parents/home life that causes the problems!

Fusedog, I'll send my almost 8 year old to you if you can teach him to talk in 6 weeks. He'll be on the next bus. I'll send enough nappies for a week.

The problem is with society. A civilised society should not really have allowed its public services to be built on an excuse culture where every single person is expected to take responsibility and behave responsibly. Some people need to be told the rules, need the boundaries explained, when they have been parented badly to be shown how to survive, live, thrive, parent. Something deeply intrinsic has been lost and it is a perpetuating tragedy.

I am old, you know 54. When I was little most children in a very ordinary primary school could do those things; those who couldn't received help and back then many of those with special needs were identified quite quickly and were sent to special schools or part-time units where they received help and support from people who were really trained to give it. Contrast with my dc's primary where the ta's doing 1:1 were the dinner ladies. I though the children who needed that care needed something much better, more qualified and more expert. It was a money saving excuse and children and parents and all parts of society deserve more.

Toys there is a lot of sitting quietly - but also part of their German grade is based on contributing in class, they have to make presentations in class, and also they have to take respinsibility 100% for organising themselves, bringing home the right homework, working at the right speed, and at brwaks and before and after school for their own conflict resolution, getting themselves onto the right bus after school, being responsible for their own belongings etc.

Yes mine too.

She can do nothing on the list.

And we do nothing but give her bloody input.

Ok she has DXed SN..altho not DXed til 4.

But people saying "SN excepted" really annoy me as at 4 there us no way you can be 100% sure a child doesn't have SN.

I would bet that far more children who cant do these things have unDXed SN than are neglected.

Parent blaming is crap.

Xposted..my post was meant to come after ouryves.

MrTumble: I think we had some of that too, but no presentations, thank goodness - unless it was some simple show and tell, etc (unless I have repressed it).. And 80 % of us walked to school alone right from the beginning.. but it was the 1980's, in a smallish town (of under 90 000 inhabitants), in Finland.

As someone working in a school in a very mixed area, yes - we see children who cannot do some of those things of the checklist.

However - the check list is pretty rubbish - it isn't measurable in any way.
It needs to be expanded with timings, etc. - exact things to measure.

At this rate, Ofsted will expect to be monitoring children's progress at time of birth.

That checklist:

To sit still and listen For how long exactly. BTW, the usual yardstick is age+1 minute, so 4 year olds should be expected to sit for 5 minutes.

To understand the word no and the borders it sets for behaviour No, is such a negative word and one that children love to push the boundaries to. Some children hear negativity so much that they can't handle praise.

To talk in sentences Is this in English or their home language? Some children start school/nursery with no English. Also, some children like my DS didn't say much in the way of sentences till he had almost started reception.

Those parents who truly don't care won't suddenly start cos of a checklist. Those parents who really do care won't be able to get the NHS to work any faster (dyspraxia, dyslexia and some language disorders aren't clinically diagnosed till 7+ as standard clinical practice). Nor will they find it easier to access appropriate educational support (more special schools close all the time, and with them goes the specialist knowledge to help these kids).

SN education has declined big time over the last two decades, despite neurological research having come on in leaps and bounds. The evidence based child developmental therapies and teaching methods developed as a result of this research are being used as standard practice in other countries. In the UK we insist on letting a bunch of totally ignorant politicians run rampant with their pet theories across our education system, wrecking the potential outcomes of thousands upon thousands of young children in their wake.

I'll use just one example to demonstrate my point.

In Australia ALL children who are having issues with reading are assessed by a behavioral optometrist at 7. Of those 52% are found to have visual tracking or convergence issues. (www.engagingeyes.co.uk gives more info for those who are interested).A short course of personalised visual therapy is then prescribed. Of those children for who it is identified that visual therapy can help - the vast majority are sorted within 6 months and their reading issues resolved as a consequence. For obvious reasons 6 months help at the right age and developmental stage is far, far cheaper than decades of remedial teaching support.

Here in the UK we don't even bother to test for visual tracking or convergence issues (they aren't part of the NHS eye test) and it's hard even to find someone who can do it privately. Teachers don't even know this VERY common visual problem exists. (The dyslexia association doesn't point parents towards standard screening tests by behavioral optometrists either - they'd lose 2/3 of their paying clientele!). Yet the too high percentage of children who continue to leave school without functional literacy skills persists year after year, stupid Government initiative after initiative.

I think the thing is if there is a checklist there has to be something that happens if kids cannot do things on the checklist - an assessment that is triggered, referals put in place. A checklist on its own is just a bit of paper - and reminds me of when I was secondary teaching in the UK and my maternity risk assessment was a check list, and even though I flagged up several major health and safety problems with my working conditions while pregnant (very hot classroom with no ventilation or fan during a heatwave, 3 flights of stairs and no lift and having to walk down all of them to change classrooms at the same time as several hundred teenagers, whilst carrying piles of books) once the checklist was done it was filed - and that was it - and a box on a checklist headed "complete maternity risk assessment" could be checked...

Politicians love a checklist - they can be linked to "targets", and statistics, which can be manipulated...

ToysR yes everyone under 1.5km walks, we are rural and live 4km from the nearest school, about half the kids live over that distance, maybe more than half. Certainly nobody takes and fetches though. Self reliance, self motivation, and general independence skills are paramount. The thing is I guess that if a child flags up as not able to handle school things do happen - referals for occupational and speech therapy mostly, but my DS's friend's mum was involved in talks about whether her son would go to mainstream or a special school due to some purely physical issues he has (not even huge ones - he has motor control issues and is small and not very strong - he has no defined medical condition though). He can't hop, can't do his laces, can't ride a bike - she said it was not clear he'd get to normal school even though he is clearly confident and intelligent (and had already stayed back a year - you can't stay back 2!) - that can't be right IMO. On the other hand he was referred for occupational therapy which has helped him a lot - and another boy in the year who was sent for speech therapy now speaks clearly enough to pass muster... I do have some worries about my son but they are too subtle for the checklists and assessors to catch onto... I hope he'll cope due to now being one of the oldest - I am glad (very glad indeed) that we have the option of holding them back here, so he is now going to be the 3rd oldest in his class not the very youngest.

Children quickly catch up in reception. If they can read their names, great. If they can't , no biggy - they can within the first half term.

Totally agree that the list is completely arbitrary.

And this:
He insisted many middle-class parents “intuitively” raise their children well but large numbers of poor families lack the ability to pass on vital life skills.

Patronising. Insulting.