to wonder why kids need to be able to read BEFORE starting school

[M3lon]

Just reading this.

I don't get it. Surely if you are in charge of the education system it makes more sense to address the issue of why children that start behind never catch up than to try and work out how to make sure all children start with exactly the same abilities and experiences on day one - which is NEVER GOING TO HAPPEN, because children develop at different rates, are actually different ages when school starts and have starts in life that you can't make even across the board without some major re-plumbing of society as a whole.

AIBU to think the minister for education should focus on fixing the bit he is actually in control of, and make schools somewhere where getting behind doesn't mean you can never catch up?

I HAVE worked hard at home with not much help whatsoever

Then this articalnosnt aimed at you.

*artical isn't

Surely in order to understand this we need to see more detailed data? There will be children who have speech or special needs etc that will need more support and help at the early stages. Are a large portion of these children from immigrant/english as a second language families?
Surely until we can categorise where these children are we can't being to help them. There will be patterns of some sort, these need to be identified and then plans put in place. Given that nursery hours have increased and people have been encourages to put their children in pre-school why is this still such a massive problem?

Lastly I think we all know that those children (without any special needs etc) that start school unable to toilet properly, sit and eat a meal, put a simple sentence together are never going to catchup unless additional support is given.

It is perfectly OK to have a baby that can sit up in an outward facing pushchair. They see the world and you can talk to them. You point things out to them as you go along. My DD used to get so excited at what she saw! We then used the correct words to describe what we saw.

I think we cannot blame the government for parents not talking or reading to children. These parents were probably were not talked to or read to themselves. They may find reading difficult and find it easier to babysit by providing a tablet or other electrical device. That does not take time or much effort. These parents just do not go to libraries very much, if ever. There can be free classes, sure start and all sorts of initiatives, but if they do not go, the children do not progress as they should. SureStart waas notorious fof being taken over by MC parents. Any initiative must be targeted very closely at those who need it, not those who want it!

It is not just deprived areas where this happens. My neighbour works in a nursery in a MC estate in a MC area of a town. Huge problems wth speech when children arrive aged 3. It appears to be about lack of parental time and a belief that children must have electronic games to amuse them. Some think it helps wth later employment!!! It relieves the parents of bothering to do much and they do not have family conversations. They just watch tv or play on devices.

I love listing to young children expressing themselves and asking questions. You just know they are connecting with life and their environment. They will have the ability to read at bit later on. Those with few words (but are not SEN) are truly deprived.

Kids shouldn't be expected to read before they start school, but if they can, then the school will accommodate them, just as they will accommodate those who aren't yet reading.

When DS1&2 started school (teens now), they were both reading pretty fluently. We chose the school that would help DS1 (then DS2) continue at his own pace, not the one where the HT said we shouldn't be teaching him to read.

hmmm...my big issue with all this, is the washing of hands, and implicit acceptance that its impossible for schools to close the gap when children start with different abilities.

I think this is a perfectly ridiculous way to think of the problem.

If you have kids in classes of 30 with a single teacher, who range in age from 4 to 5 (which is a BIG gap at that age) then I can perfectly believe the kids who start behind get left behind. But its in his actual control to change that.

Is it really impossible to imagine a system that has a better teacher ratio (for example) that would make it far less likely that those behind end up further behind?

No matter what you do, some kids will start behind. Because they are younger, or have delays, or come from homes that simply cannot support them to learn. So school HAS to be reorganised to allow children to catch up! Surely.....

Wouldn't that be nice M3 ? School should need to double their budgets though. Mine struggles to pay measly part time TA wages.

*would not should

I always assumed that part of parenting was teaching your child to go to the toilet, to use cutlery, to behave, to speak, to read etc. And yet now I find that actually many parents think that's all a school's job instead. No wonder teachers give up and look for alternative careers. They're not teaching at all, they're surrogate parents and childminders
Here's an idea - don't have kids if you can't afford to look after them and can't be bothered to parent them.
(Note that none of the above includes children with special needs - there would be plenty of resources to help them if non-SN parents actually parented)

Is it really impossible to imagine a system that has a better teacher ratio (for example) that would make it far less likely that those behind end up further behind?

More teachers would be great but I doubt it would have much impact on those children of parents who are unable or unwilling to support their child’s development outside of school.
Free full time nursery from 6 months is probably the only thing that would come close to helping close the gap.

M3 - I agree that the schools should be working to close the gap but this should be with those children that genuinely need the support not those children whose parents are just lazy/neglectful. If this can be identified then parents can be told that they need to ensure that their child is toilet trained etc and ready to learn. Schools need to raise expectations of these parents. We cannot keep throwing money at schools and the NHS only to see it wasted because people won't try and fix some of the underlying issues first.

Can you read? It says that it is an outrage that children can't read by the time they get to year one because that allows the gap to widen. It specifies that they should be able to speak in sentences.

I can't respond as a parent because I'm not. However, I spent some time as a a teacher in a private school and have been a primary school governor for nearly a decade. I also volunteer with a youth group for disadvantaged children aged from 5 years to teenagers.

As much as I long to bitch about the Tories and their frankly evil policies and frequently get exasperated by entitled, shit parents, the truth is that it is more complex than that. It's easy also to blame poverty and deprivation and a lack of education in parents.

However, I've seen children from privileged backgrounds that have no identified SEN who start school unable to talk etc. I've seen children whose parents struggled with the most terrible poverty come into a class and speak with such eloquence. The difference between the two (both average ability children) is that one had parents who spoke to her, the other had parents who couldn't be bothered and were of the opinion that that was what they paid the school to do.

Some children do have SEND which don't become apparent until they are in school.

Some children are just naturally bright.

Sure Start centres were great, libraries are great, but what if someone lives rurally and their nearest centre/library is an expensive, long bus ride away - that was an issue with the centre near the school where I am a governor. There were lots of parents who wanted to use it but struggled to access the support because of lack of money and public transport. Rural poverty is a thing where I live.

I have to agree with the PP who had noticed that most of the Mums who frequent the free Rhyme Time session at the library are middle class. Why don't other parents use the library as much? I personally think it can be because those parents parents didn't use one, and their peers don't go (not cool?) And perhaps they're lacking in confidence and self esteem to just walk into a new building and ask about joining up.

I don't know how we build up that confidence though...

lostlemon the problem I have with that is that it isn't the kids of lazy parents that are at fault. An 'abandon anyone who is behind with no diagnosed SEN' strategy seems horribly unfair on already hugely unlucky kids.

race no I can't read...not at all. Neither can my child. HTH

I guess my thesis is that the government should put more money into actual teachers, rather than in chasing around trying to support parents, some of whom are never going to get it, when even if they did then there would still be the whole summer born issue hanging over.....

The answer has to be to support kids in schools and not wash your hands of being able to create a system in which children who fall behind can still reach their full potential.

81Byerley
What a nasty comment! The PP was not being anti intellectual - in fact you're being anti intellectual by ignoring the evidence which very clearly states that pushing formal education on children too you is detrimental.

There is no assumption that children go into YR already able to read - that's what YR is for! Parents are no more obliged to teach kids to read than they are to teach them the Y7 maths syllabus during the summer holidays after Y6.

As it happens DS could read when he started YR as he picked it up in Nursery but if he hadn't been ready to read or had shown no interest in learning I certainly wouldn't have taught him.

Parents are actually quite often not great at teaching children to read and sometimes do more harm than good. Enjoy books with your kids, if they want to start reading them themselves go for it but don't force young children to read before they're ready - it's incredibly damaging and makes the teacher's lives much more difficult.

auditqueen

If a child started school unable to speak - i.e. they had massive speech delay due to a parent neglecting them surely you phoned SS? If the parent and other adults did in fact talk to their child the speech delay would have had some other cause (some children just have delayed speech and catch up).

Icecreamface - the parents couldn't be bothered with their child. They were of the feeling that teachers were there to do the things they couldn't be bothered to do. SS involvement was discussed, and the Head agreed to the school making a referral. I don't actually know the outcome of the intervention because it was happening as I was leaving the school and, indeed, my brief stint in teaching.

Interestingly many years later I met the father again in a semi professional capacity. He totally failed to recognise me as his child's one time teacher and was much more polite than he was when he was when he was telling me how useless I was as a teacher and how his child was misunderstood and if I had a brain I'd see that they were a genius etc etc.

Sorry I haven't read the thread yet, but this jumped out at me

I've seen children from privileged backgrounds that have no identified SEN who start school unable to talk etc.

Hang on. No speech at all?!

Had they (obviously more than one instance of this...) been at a nursery or preschool? No other childcare? Were they under SALT?

What is the "etc"??

Interesting. My summer born child is about to start reception. They went full time to the school nursery and there was no reading pushed on them. In the orientation for reception they advised us at least for the first term children would be given books without words for their ‘reading’ homework as they wanted to develop language skills via story telling and imagination as this was the most important thing at this age. They made it clear even if your child could read they were not going to provide books with words until the second term but would continue to work on phonics at a slow pace during the day as there is no rush.

His ill informed comments are making people worry that it’s a national disgrace that children can’t read prior to school. Reading has become the focus, not children’s communication skills

Yes. It is a shame that the reading aspect has distracted from the growing difficulties in speech and communication skills.

Better SALT provision (maybe don't flog it off to Virgincare in some areas for a start)

Education about use of screens and phones

Early Years Education in preschools to be treated as early years education, not 'just' childcare!

As others have said, initiatives like libraries (complete with book reading sessions and all that), Sure Start etc. look great on the surface but there is a persistent pattern whereby middle class parents (who are more likely to be doing the right things anyway) take over these initiatives and gain the most benefit from them.

On the surface, France's initiative of making all children start nursery at age 3 sounds draconian, but what if there is no other way of closing the gap?

France's Ecole Maternelle are quite well known for being effective at helping to close gaps though, or at least they were a couple of decades ago when ED Hirsch wrote about them. They do not (or did not) push academics as such but were very big on structured approaches towards the non-academic learning that they emphasized, like routines, actively teaching children social and language skills, sitting down for shared meals and circle time together, and were not particularly child-led.

A nursery where kids who come in with no language skills end up just wandering about all day long (due to beliefs that children should choose their own activities and that actively teaching children is wrong) is not going to close those gaps.

I see a lot of rhetoric connected with EYFS that seems to be really opposed to any form of active teaching, however (even if we are not talking about actual academic skills, just language and social stuff). Especially some of the silly official guidelines? Like, there seems to be this thing where nurseries are told "children should learn how to put their coats on" but then there is resistance towards the idea of actively teaching them how to do this---you are supposed to enable an environment where they will sort of discover this by themselves and then wander around with a camera trying to capture them in the moment of discovery so that you can document it....? Perhaps things have changed in EYFS over the past few years, but I remember seeing a lot of this madness a few years back.

EYFS does have targets for children related to different aspects. It isn’t all about putting on coats etc

The issue is formally teaching under 5s reading/maths etc - you have to teach the underlying skills first.

As for the “middle class” using Sure start centres who “don’t need it” - that again is on the premise of assuming that rich = can parent and poor = cannot. How patronising. Make it universal and encourage everyone to attend means you’ll get as many children who need help as possible.
Being from a deprived background makes it more likely a child will struggle but it may not be about inherent academic ability, it may be other reasons.
Making it as simplistic as poor = too much use of screens = kids can’t read, well that’s just nonsense and not much different to the stereotype of poor people having big TVs.