You see, I send my DC to school to be educated; to learn to read, write and basically grasp the knowledge our current society, of which they and I are a part, has deemed useful and necessary. Yes, along the way the social skills I have taught them will be reinforced; new social skills will be introduced that I will help reinforce at home.
I do not expect a teacher with 30 4 to 5 year old sitting (or rolling around, shrieking!) in front of her to become my DC's de facto parent. I would hope that she or the TA would assist by lagging in milestones DC to achieve them along with all the focused work I myself will be doing (and I will have discusses these issues with the teacher and asked advice!), but I am aware that if she has 30 such DCs, meaningful learning is unlikely to take place across the board!
Waaay earlier on in this thread, when someone asked what could be done, I listed my thoughts- or rather, I listed several moves that a society, via its government could make that may well have an impact on the number of DC born who are so badly parented. I also said that some of these things would be unpalatable, like making (usually!) women who are unsupported financially and socially attend mother and baby units to provide the support that might help them not introduce their own newborns into a cycle of welfare dependency and chaos. I suggested that handing paid-for flats available to such women was actually not necessarily in their best interests. I suggested that making the father financially responsible would both reduce the burden on the public purse and maybe encourage him to consider the consequences of unprotected sex. In short, preventing the conception of unplanned, unwanted DC rather than slamming the stable door after the horse has bolted. You'd have to read it all to get the gist!
I am also considering the point already made that many of these DC have 'undiagnosed SN' and wondering how much of the 'SN' has been caused by the rubbish, neglectful parenting? BUT once it has the 'SN' label, it 'becomes' the school's problem to deal with- and be judged for their 'failure'.
An interesting thing that has arisen in all this, almost as an aside, is the suggestion that a number of the infant offenders (joke!) who come to school with the skills of a 3 year old happen because they have parents who believe all development should be 'child-led' i.e. entirely at the pace the DC dictates. I have said that these families are not necessarily the focus of the DM article at all, but I guess they still constitute 'DC who are not school ready' thus may have a more difficult early school-experience as a result.
Finally, sadly I think decades of 'failed' intervention in the lives of these chaotic families demonstrates that chucking money at it doesn't seem to help- these families can't and won't access SureStart anyway, are suspicious and aggressive towards any 'intervention' thus their DC are doomed to repeat the cycle. Do I recall a figure stating that there are something like 250,000 'unreachable' families in the UK? Possibly recalled from a Labour 'initiative' where the plan was to tackle them on a family by family basis? Maybe that sort of focus might work but there'd have to be sticks and carrots in order to try and improve the outcome for the poor DC in such families to avoid an endless repetition.