Poorer children twice as likely to start school with behaviour problems

[BetsyBoop]

so says the sutton trust

Surely it isn't just me that thinks that behaviour problems are down to poor parenting skills, not a lack of money?

Yes there is probably a higher concentration of parents with poor parenting skill in lower income households for all sorts of reasons, but poor family does NOT have to equal misbehaving kids IMHO, and it's an insult to poor families who bring up their children "properly" to suggest it is.

I heard it first on radio 4 today programme. Frank Field talks some sense, but I'm not sure it should be down to schools to teach parenting skills.

Maybe some of the parents who are poor enough to qualify for FSM are working shifts/are absolutely exhausted and at the end of their ability to cope/are worried they will just hear negative stuff about their kids?

Its easy to quote stats though ..I can give you examples of real life poor parents that do give a shit and middle class kids that take drugs etc its not so cut and dried as you like to think

Interestingly when I grew up the only kids expelled from my school were kids of the wealthy family, Irish working class man became millionaire and developed a drink problem. 3 out of 4 kids were expelled, the boys from their private school and the girl from the state school. As you can see he was also sexist. In this case, Dad was working all the time and never at home without a drink in his hand.

Was a bit at what dh said, but he's in charge of intervention for his subject and also for year 11. They already know who needs intervention but have to use data to access the govt funded support, and it pretty much always correlates. It also is used for early intervention with yr 7. They are a tough crowd (a few now are in young offender units, including stabbing/murder). I don't dispute that parents are worn down by it; dh mentors 4-5 boys who are problematic in school and he works with their parents as far as is feasible.

I'm not surprised, the poor are the punch bag of society, blame everything on them, call em all scum and chavs, chuck em all in shit housing, force the kids to go to the shit schools, where they get treated like shit by the teachers because they will never amount to anything because they are scum etc etc.

Then you have people moaning about them spending all the benefit money on fags and booze, tell you what, if I ever have to sign on again I'd be drinking al my JSA money (again), it's the most depressing place to be, jumping thru hoops for those little hitlers.

Excellent post, Ryoko. (Some) teachers were like that in my day - I had the misfortune to go to a bad school briefly when we moved house. The teachers thought there was no point making an effort as the boys would go down the pit and the girls would be hairdressers or cleaners.

To be fair, one teacher did get very excited about having me in his class, as I actually put my hand up to answer questions. (Stupidly as I got bullied as a result.) Chicken and egg - teachers didn't have high expectations of working class kids, working class kids didn't see the point of school given they were treated as only fit for manual labour and therefore, in the teachers' opinion, not worth bothering about.

(Btw, I wasn't posh or snobby, had just come from ordinary state junior and middle schools in a different area. Which had a genuinely mixed intake in terms of social class. It never occurred to anyone to bully someone for putting their hands up. So I had no idea this was a Bad Thing.)

It's interesting you know, when I was at college (and signing on the dole and drinking) all the working class people I knew smoked or drank daily but where perfectly fine functional people that society seemed to have a problem with for no real reason.

where as all the middle class/ people with a bit of money, smoked more a day (out of the smokers) and went out on the town at the weekends binge drinking spending over £100 on a friday night on booze and taking drugs in clubs and stuff, and no one seemed to care even when they turned up hung over and proudly telling everyone what they had done and why they couldn't be arsed turning up on monday etc.

Yeah, I can believe that. A magistrate on here once told us how cross she'd been when her fellow JPs tried to give a speeding driver a lower fine because his living expenses included school fees. He knew he had school fees to pay when he chose to break the law, and he chose to send his kids to private school - she asked, very reasonably, why they should take that into account.

(And of course if you are middle or upper class and fuck up, your parents can get you out of trouble. Paying for the Priory or using Daddy's connections to get you a job when a working class kid with a similar history would be rejected by an employer.)

There will always (thank goodness) be exceptions that buck the trend, but I think the correlation between poverty and underachievement is real, growing, and well understood - from what I've seen on here.

What I don't understand is why it got so bad under Labour, and and why the Coalition are going to make it even worse.

I brought three kids up in a council house on an estate a mile from the notorious Moss Side (which, btw, I walked through on my own late at night on numerous occasions, and never got stabbed or shot, in spite of what the media used to say about it).

We had a decent 3-bed house with two big gardens, wide streets and lovely neighbours. Kids went to excellent local primary and comp - I really feel they had the best education and the happiest childhood they could have had, given that they were from a broken home. I supported them entirely on my own - once I got my degree.

What has changed? Well, I certainly wouldn't have been able to afford £6000 or £9000 to go to uni, for a start. Our lovely schools would probably be opting out of LEA control now, and would take one look at our address and suddenly find they were full. The streets are clogged with cars; council houses are no longer yours for life. (The number of sleepless nights I had wondering what on earth would happen to my kids if I died. The only thing that reassured me was that they wouldn't be kicked out of their home. Even that consolation is not going to be available to people in council accommodation for much longer).

In effect, I was given just enough help from the state to allow my family to survive and flourish. Now they're going to take it away, and people who make mistakes early in life, or who are just unfortunate, will never be able to raise themselves from poverty. Why are they doing it??

I really do think the moment came when the salt of the earth became the scum of the earth, at that moment when the middle and upper classes starting losing respect for the working class everything started falling apart and the thoughts of a possibility of a good future or reaching for success where lost.

And I really do think that moment came about simply because it became unacceptable to be outspokenly racist in this country, mans need for prejudice, someone too feel superior to, someone to blame for everything thats crap etc lead them to a new target that wasn't protected by any law, and it suits politicians to have a target other then them and the work they do, so they feed the beast and let it continue to eat away at society.

I agree with you ryoko on many points.

The 'poor' are seen as undeserving and poor because of their own fecklessness. Societies attitudes are becoming more and more Victorian and I fully expect to see invitations for tender to supply 'Segregated, Fully Inclusive Live/Work Facilites for Low Income Families' in a year or two.

This exciting new initiative would invite families struggling to find work to live within a caring but strict environment where their children would be cared for and men and women could live seperately to avoid the need for contraception and allow maxium focus. Work opportunities offered would include Picking Okam and Rock Breaking.

Applications from those living in disirable parts of London would be particularly welcome.

Anti-racist laws do offer some protection, thank goodness, but you're right that these feelings (wanting someone to blame and look down on) do get manipulated by politicians. But I can't really see how it benefits them to stir up social divisions.

They want to take away our benefits, our homes (if we are poor and live in London), our education. I still don't understand why!

I think it's this fecklessness attitude that makes a big difference. Both my dad and my maternal grandfather came from poor backgrounds- my granddad in particular- but the "narrative" they had with them from a very young age was that they were brave and worthy for coping with adverse circumstances. Which must have made it rather easier for them to carry on coping.

Yes, Cory, it's a pity about the 'feckless' stereotype. Most people still work hard and cope with difficult circumstances imo.

Who are the poor people in our society? I mean, the very poor?

Teenage parents. Asylum seekers and refugees from war-torn countries. People with problems - mental health, disability, addiction.

Of course the poorest children are more likely to have issues. Anyone whoworks with children and young people knows this. It isn't rocket science.

Yes, poor parenting contributes, but ask yourself why people are poor parents? Because of the reasons above - too young, too traumatised, suffering in their own lives in some awful way.

Agree, Faaamily.

I think we have actually (perversely) put too much emphasis on education as a way of escaping poverty. In that if you are not at all academically talented there is no place for you any more, there is no respect in unskilled work any more and many of those jobs have disappeared anyway. If you start on the supermarket floor you can't progress to management (graduate training program anyone?) even though you might well make a ten times better manager. So, unless you are Alan Sugar, it seems you pretty much stay put.

I think part of the reason council estates have gone downhill is because it seems you need to have very serious problems to be considered for council housing these days. I don't think this was always the case.

Having said all that the poor are not all just victims of circumstance and society. I do believe that some people are poor because they drink/take drugs/ commit crimes etc rather than do all those things because they are poor. Flame me if you want for thinking that.

I don't think that poor parents = bad parents necessarily any more than rich parents = good parents, but poorer children are at a disadvantage in terms of being less likely to have high achieving role models to aspire to within their immediate circle of friends and family.

Also less money = less opportunities/experiences/standard of living/space/money for life enhancing treats/good food/good education/good support system outside of education (eg extracurricular activities).

If the parents themselves have suffered any of most of the above then its harder for them to be able to expose their children to something they don't directly have experience of themselves.

Also, there's possibly an attitude that the world is against poorer people/children which perpetuates a "them and us" divide.

About the council housing when my parents got a place 32 years ago, the whole idea was to help working families who couldn't afford a large enough place have a decent place, you got an inspector round your house to see how in need you was and given priority based on that (my family at the time was 4 people in a 1 bed flat) it was to get rid of the old Victorian ways of a family growing up in a kitchen sort of thing.

Now days things are different no inspectors just a list with grades, top of the list are the homeless (we used to have hostels for them) now they get a 1 bed council place, which they destroy, Nothing against the homeless but if you have been on the street and taking drugs and shit for years you need more help then just being chucked in a 1 bed flat with no support, then you have the immigrations and all that, families now days don't really get a look in.

it's understandable it's ended up that why all the other support has pretty much vanished what with care in the community and all that, but there used to be a lot more now it's just council housing and charities picking up the slack.

and many people in positions of care, who do not care.
protocol tying the hand of those who do...