"Class divide hits learning by age of 3 " says a report

[mylittleimps]

very sorry if there is already a thread couldn't see one though

www.guardian.co.uk/uk_news/story/0,,2100032,00.html

do you agree? i realy don't know if it's helpful to label children at this age (perhaps it's the labelling that decides the future result, if johnny is only expected to do x he will only achieve x type mentality i.e. you get what you expect out of people)

Cammelia - you need the AAWE Guide to Education in France, look at www.aaeweparis.org.

There are bilingual schools, mostly subsidised by the French state and not very expensive, and there are English only schools, all private and with English type fees.

The best schools academically are bilingual - Ecole Active Bilingue Jeanne Manuel and Lycée International de Saint Germain en Laye.

I agree with Blu. And sorry Anna, but I don't agree. I did one of the most academic high schools in Milano (state, mind you, private schools used to be frowned upon by intellectual middle classes), and the most successful of my classmates came from full-time working families, grew up with nannies, ecole maternelle etc and all learn to read and write at 6. Most of them, proceeded to get phds in the Uk and the States. They are also emotionally well functioning .
Ds - nearly 5 - is probably the most ignorant pupil at reception.

Franca - I don't think that a comparison across time and countries is valid.

The private versus state school debate cannot be exported. The private school sector varies hugely from country to country and serves different functions in different educational systems. The whole structure of life from one country to another is completely different and allows for different working patterns parents and different childcare arrangements.

However, issues such as breadth and depth of vocabulary at a given age are comparable (it is another issue as to how they are acquired).

I think my oldest son's wide vocabulary has come from the internet most of all so hook them to a pc like an intravenous drip and all will be well.... am I joking?

Xenia - presumably he didn't start learning from the internet before he was three though?

True, we barely had it then. The twins and I were chatting about reading the other night and they hadn't done it this week as it was voluntary as it's exams week. The words they read on computer games are much harder than those in the school books and their desire to read material that interests them is the key. My mother who was a teacher always had no truck with people trying to say - X is a good thing to read and Y isn't. Having the children read at all and keenly was the key.

I have to say that I agree with Blu also.

I was discussing 'Alpha Mum' syndrome (yes, I do believe it is a syndrome) with my sister last night. It is a middle class scourge that parents seem to be actively competing for the top slot at absolutely everything. Not content with having a child who shows aptitude for something - they have to be the very best at it, and thus the hothousing begins, whether we are aware of it or not. I am guilty. I speak to my 3 yo DD in French occasionally and we read several books a day. But she loves it. She also watches TV, plays in the garden, trashes her bedroom, eats sweets sometimes, pogos around the sitting room to the sweet sounds of the 'Kerrang' music channel and does all the stuff 3 year olds like to do.

We can get too caught up in the notion that formal education is the be-all and end-all. I get really cross when the 'Muzzy' adverts come on TV and the woman declares 'In today's competitive world, isn't it good for your children to have an edge' (or words to that effect). Why is life a competition? I'm sure it hasn't always been thus. If you want to succeed, you will. No amount of parental pushing will accomplish anything for you in the long term - you have to want it for yourself. We need to take a step back and let children enjoy childhood as it is so very fleeting.

As for Sure Start, my very excellent childminder who has been a nanny, nursery nurse and childminder co-ordinator for the area has decided she can't take any more paperwork, goal recording and all the other complete crap now being thrust upon carers and has retired from a role she was a natural for. I understand the principles for monitoring progress, but do we really need to do this much and at such a tender age?

Life has always been a competition. Not that everyone is competing for the same goals - fortunately.

The saddest thing, to my mind, is when children are denied opportunities for development early in life, aren't then able to join in with things they would have enjoyed and been very good at, and never catch up.

There will always be disadvantaged children, and that on it's own is very sad. They are not only being denied access to things they may have enjoyed and been good at, but usually end up living down to the expectations of those around them.

Positive encouragement is invaluable but is entirely separate from enforced achievement. It is possible to encourage without pushing but it is also just as important to let children know their limitations. Sometimes we are so hellbent on telling them they can be whatever they want to be that we give them false expectations of life and that can be just as damaging, as it could lead to a constant feeling of failure.

You talk sense, horsewoman.

GOH - you are quite right about giving children overly ambitious expectations of life and their own achievements. I see adults who are often very discontented with their lot when really they work hard and have achieved a lot.

But surely that is a separate issue to wanting to give your child opportunities to develop?

Xenia iirc from my Sociology days (1995 so bear with me) there's a really jhigh heart disease rate amongst Indian famillies, and to somemeasure that has indeed been attributed to diet- ghee was supposedly a factor for example. Of course the world moves on and that may be outdated now

Research like this makes me bang my head against the wall a bit I am afraid, partly because I used to work in a sure start funded post and used to watch MC families effectively takein over resources- for example, they offered a lovely gardening day for familes once a week- and the MC mums would turn up with several mates, and the WC mums / isolated mums (and we were part of the initial targeted help scheme so these were the peole we were trying to reach- wider surestart came later) would feel intimidated and move on. Also we did note that whilst MC mums used nurseries with lots of lovely facillities, WC mums often used their iwn aprents who couldnt get out to parks etc through sheer financial hardship.

So suggestions that wc kids might be behind because of some laziness in not reading with kids amkes me arrgghhhhh. Of course it happens in some famillies. We all know that. But there are so many other factors too. For example:

Mum and dad work back to back shifts to cover childcare. Mum comes home at 6 after a 12 hour shift 9common in lower paid jobs back home), kisses the kids, gets their school tjhings ready and sends them off to bed. Dad has spent the last hour and a half colecting from brownies, feediing them, washing up and then getting ready for work. Where is the reading time?

Mum and dad are on low income because Dad has a disbaility and his care needs are high. Evenings are the most work and Mum struggles to fit in a book whilst just aboput managing to keep the hosue and kids going optherwise, and holding down a job.

Just examples.

I know I rant abit over this, but I was the first child of WC parenst and I could read from the paper at 2.5. So I know that many WC aprents care!. I also know how many of the aprents on our estate were illiterate or poorly educated, or indeed have Sn themselves and simply couldn't help. I also know that at some point this will be used to get at aprents like myself who ahve kids with low reading ages- in no way are they deprived but DS1 for example has a readinga ge 3 years behind. I am alreadya ware of a large group of sociaety that feels the need to blame aprents for invisible disablities and can't wait to hear the altest installmenyt now (we are WC origin but mc existence, iykwim). Intrestingly ds1 also has a berbal spoken age of 16 - 21. Soc ante xactly have been placed in a cupbpard and refused conversation.

Sorry am ranting anything to avoid that ssignment that needs finishing eh?

Why, thank you expat

That is my point, Anna. It is important to give your child the opportunities to develop. My DDs have done everything from gumnastics to athletics, horse-riding, drama, languages, Irish dancing....you name it, they have done it (well, DD1, anyway) I like to let them try new stuff, but I'm never going to be one of those Mums who starts planning their careers for them or mapping out their lives because they showed an aptitude for a particular thing. In Britain the education system has a manic obsession with testing children at every stage of their lives. They can't play in the playground without it being analysed, recorded and assessed. DH would have confounded them as he was a shy, introverted child from a fairly negligent and underachieving family (if that is fair to say) but is now a mad overachiever with abundant confidence and obvious intelligence. Funny thing is, so are his 3 brothers. They didn't develop their personalities until much later in life. Sometimes the parental input is negligable.

gumnastics?

I meant gymnastics, obviously

Surely the trouble with school (not just in the UK) is that it is often very narrowly focused on academic skills, when, for all their importance (we do need to know how to count, read, write, analyse, synthesise, debate, present arguments etc), personality is often the driving force in a person's life path - but governments and exams don't measure personality, so it gets forgotten about until adulthood? Good parents and good schools give children opportunities to develop their own personalities and aptitudes, and that requires a lot of time and skill that busy parents and average state schools don't have sufficient resources for.

Barnardo's and other care organisations have recently been measuring 'resiliance' in children, and I do think that what will make the greatest difference in long-term success, achievement etc is self-esteem, self-confidence and the ability to take advantage of opportunities that are presented. Far more important than reaching for the phonics book at the earliest possible stage.
Academically, our children are moving towards GCSEs and A levels in certain (set) years. Each will follow that journey at their own level, scraping by or appreciating the more sophisticated points deending on intelligence, subject aptitude, quality of teaching, motivation and interest, and support. Turbulent disruption in a classroom will interfere with the quality of teaching and opportunity to learn,, but being with children who at 5 may be in the first term of quickly learning the second (or more) language they are fluent in wil not 'hold back' other children, automatically, as Xenia intimated earlier, and seems to be the basis of many people's fear of state education.

I am v happy if this study helps ensure greater long term equal opportunities - but sceptical that it will cause even more panic amongst middle-class parents.

I'm not sure that the right interpretation of this study is to reach for the phonics book. My interpretation of what I have read is not that I should hothouse my under-3 child to reach school standards earlier/better, but that I should provide a rich cultural environment with lots of reading stories and explaining the world face to face as we encounter it together in multiple different environments. Precisely not what school does, where children are mostly shut in a classroom all day.

Blu - on the issue of holding back brighter children - here in France where there is a very official policy of no streaming or selection before age 15, teachers admit on the quiet that they have to put policies in place that allow for streaming and setting, or else bright children get held back and the slow ones get lost on the way.

I suppsoe another aspect of this- DS1 is part of the millenium cohort age group (well he would be, he was born December 99 LOL). yet our access to resources was limited as we were I suppose 'rural poor' (the surestarts then targetted the big estates in the nearby town)

It would be interesting to develop this fiurther, see how his age group who had access to surestart compared with the same ones who didnt't, of equivalent class etc

afaik, children have generally been put in groups for certain things within a class that reflect their level....the difference is that the presence of children who are in the process of 'catching up' won't necessarily hold back accelarated and/or more intellligent children in the class, and that they shouldn't be put in one group or stream for good, but be able to progress to more advanced groups depending on progress.

it's the opportunity to progress that is important.

My personal feleing is that there needs to be more streaming- as long as it is done well, flexible 9children acn move up or down) and remedial rather than just a form of labelling.

DS3 would benefit hugely from a lower stream in reception when (if) he starts; wheras DS2 lost quite a lot of skills as a result of others playing catch up- skills that as an sn student he found harder to regain later on.

Whereas I was bored rigid in class.

And all three of us have or had a tendency to cause the sort of disruption that is not conducive to learninga nything much

Yes, in the French hidden streaming system children do not receive any kind of official label. Probably better. Though it has the disadvantage of not being transparent to the less educated parents, so the more educated ones easily engineer a better route for their children.

Going back to the thread title.

Let's consider the genetic link in respect of IQ/intelligence.

I'm assuming there is a link and although one definately can't generalise that all middle class people are bright (Tim, nice but dim springs to mind), a far greater proportion of them are educated individuals which to a certain extent shows evidence of intelligence.

Following this reasoning, I would be surprised if there were not an overall difference in the average intelligence level between the genetically related children of the middle classes and the working classes. Nature over nuture. What point then, is the research in this field trying to make ?

Please don't misinterpret my post as saying that if a person is not middle class they are not bright and will have children who should also not be expected to be bright.

I'm just questioning the loss of the nature over nuture link as the research seems to be geared towards finding the magic key to nurturing the relevant group of children into being as developmentally/accademically succesful as the middle class children.

My aim was to give them opportunities which they can tehn take up or not at their own choice and in accordance with their own personalities but without my being overly concerned whether they decide to become nuns, charity workers, house cleaners or MPs. If you love them you want them to do something they will be happy with but if they aren't given the chances they won't take them up. This family is hugely musical and so they all passed a load of exams etc but it was the riding lessons which led to the girls' passion for show jumping. if I were plotting their lives at 3 I'd have said we'd all be playing chamber music at home now but instead they pick other hobbies - their choice.

I find Labour's reforms and tests and stupid checklist and teacher admin can mean children don't get what I buy in the private system - the chance for my children to see the exams as a small bit of their education and their ability to debate, have ideas, talk to all kinds of people, think, rest, play sport and music - that's more what I buy than the fact their schools might always get some of the best exam grades in the country. It's almost buying them a school day and life with lots of space for the things that are not much to do with work.

Also we need some people who won't be very well qualified and a lot of people don't choose particularly competitive jobs so lower levels of education may not really matter. Perhaps we actually want and need a gap.

The genetic link is causative of class urely rather than the other way round? People whoa re less bright will be far more likely to obtain a decent income, although then you get variations of types of intelligence- I suspect my IQ is higher than mr Beckham, but cannot kick a ball to save my life.

Its not a certain link either- partly as kids have more than one parent who may not equally matched by formal IQ (so I'm academic but Dh is gifted at electronics but not academically tested fields) and theat may cause avriations in itself.

And of course SN- and indeed IQ as a measuer of ability in itself- DS1's IQ is huge (somewhere around 140 iirc) but his writing lewvel is far behind because this sort of discrepance is indicated within SN of his type. And ds3 has an extremely low IQ because of his SN> And ds2 is fine and has a decent IQ (I suppose) and is NT