Please don't 'baby' your children

[pineapple95]

Where do I start?

Parents of my y3/4 class routinely carry their children's bags in, take their lunch bags to the hall, hand in letters and money, put their reading diaries and spelling books in the right places on the right days, linger in the corridor chatting ... for goodness sake MAKE YOUR CHILD LOOK AFTER THEIR STUFF!

7-9 year olds can carry bags and remember books. Don't baby them. Even 3 year olds can carry their bags - don't be that parent who mollycoddles their children.

Actually, mathanxiety, the context of the discussion was whether or not early teaching of phonics was harmful to children's self-esteem and sense of self. You then started focusing on fine motor skills in an attempt to demonstrate why learning phonics at age 4 is harmful to self-esteem and sense of self - or to try to get away from the fact you could not prove your earlier assertions, I'm not sure which...

As for whether or not teaching synthetic phonics at age 4 was done for cynical political reasons, I think you'll find it is not a subject that any political party is likely to have thought was a massive vote winner, given that synthetic phonics was an alien concept to most voters. Also, synthetic phonics as opposed to any other form of early reading teaching is based on extensive research into how children learn to read, even if it was done on older children (and it was not done on older children because younger children are scientifically proven to be incapable of learning it, it was simply done on older children because that was the age the children happened to be when being taught it where the tests took place...). Plus, school is not actually compulsory in the UK until a child reaches the age of 5, and parents are entitled not to send their children to school until year 1 if they were born between April and August, if they so wish - hence phonics not being the hugely important focus you claim it is in a child's reception year at school, anyway. (Phonics teaching in a very basic form also goes on in pre-schools with children before they are even 4 years old...). So I think your analysis as to why the UK did what it did is wrong - it was not as a political vote winner or to make teachers look busy. I think the decision was made as a reaction to the massive gulf that has already opened up between children from well-off families and children from disadvantaged families in terms of development before children even start school. Rightly or wrongly, it was thought it might be a way to speed up the academic development of disadvantaged children who were getting less input from home, to make teaching of reading more consistent and of a better quality, and to identify earlier on children who might need more intensive intervention to help them learn to read.

Brilliant post ^

I’d love to know the political reason for introducing SP.

Again, not sure if you have really followed the discussion, Roundaboutthetown.
My posts were in response to comments by other posters.

The majority of children start school at four, and the EYFS covers all centres where children of four spend their days.

The decision was made to teach disadvantaged children to decode instead of providing libraries and high quality, community based childcare so parents could work and children could be exposed to good quality preschool provision. Teaching decoding was far more appealing to voters than providing genuine play based educational environments where fine and gross motor skills could be developed, where children could scribble and experiment with different writing materials and script, where vocabulary could be developed.

It is very appealing to suggest that the problem of disadvantaged children starting far behind their peers and falling even further behind over the course of their school lives is caused by slack teachers, backed by their unions, allowing children to waste time playing.

Reasons that are related to increased taxation and funding for early years education and experiences are thus discounted, among them parental disengagement and disempowerment (outreach programmes that seek to involve parents as active educators of their babies and young children cost money), poor quality language environments (no money for libraries or for high quality nurseries).

link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11125-017-9415-8
Is it a surprise to posters here that there is a significant political component to decisions about education?
If yes, then there is a lot of naivete at play.

Why, and how, synthetic phonics has come to dominate the teaching of early literacy in these countries, and the extent to which it is currently funded and supported, are crucial questions. The implementation of policies forged in the debate over teaching strategies shapes how professionals, parents, and students think about and engage with early literacy.

The struggles for power between different discourses and associated lobbying groups—with their conflicting educational and social visions—also have implications for how early-reading programmes have been legislated, funded, socially recognized, and carried out. For example, in England, political and commercial rhetoric associated with increased commercial synthetic-phonics resources are linked to decreased government spending on—and an increasing privatization of—literacy resources over the last decade. Strong neoconservative views on education have driven this rhetoric and their results. Some observers have directly linked the oratory over the past three decades concerning “efficacy”, “performativity”, and “market-driven” economies to the influence of neoliberalism on literacy-related educational policies.

We also, however, need to look at how increasingly dominant perceptions of these two teaching approaches as antagonistic (and the ensuing dominance of synthetic phonics) can be linked to how a neoliberal ethos that emphasizes technique and functional literacy has taken precedence over social and communicative views of literacy. The complex interaction of different agendas concerning reading have given rise to “commonsense” assumptions about the links between, on one hand, improving reading and, on the other hand, literacy to serve the needs of the economy. The politics encompassing the teaching of reading have, therefore, endorsed the rhetoric of efficacy, performativity, and a market-driven need to improve literacy.

From this perspective, the relationships in early-literacy education that have formed and reformed over the past two decades have also challenged previous understandings and ethics in the field—for example, the hitherto-accepted assumption that professional judgment should be prioritized over programmed instruction and commercial interests.

cprtrust.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/research-survey-9-1.pdf
A discussion of practices and focus in different countries.

Take a look at section 6.1, on the impact of age of starting school (and in the case of the UK, this means the age when children will first be exposed to formal teaching of phonics).

You are aware that the age for compulsory education is five (actually term after fifth birthday)
EYFS is a play based curriculum

The decision was made to teach disadvantaged children to decode instead of providing libraries and high quality, community based childcare so parents could work and children could be exposed to good quality preschool provision.

I think that’s going to be news to the Labour government who introduced SP into the curriculum.

Somewhat unsurprisingly the author of that article appears to be a member of the UKLA. I’d be quite careful of taking it as gospel tbh.

mathanxiety - the cprtrust.org.uk report you linked makes it very clear that the 4-5 EYFS curriculum is play-based. It does raise the concerns that I have already raised several times in this thread about the appropriateness of trying to do justice to the curriculum in a school setting, but does not say the EYFS curriculum itself is at fault. The concerns raised also date back to when the EYFS curriculum was first introduced and schools have done a lot to improve this since then (although this government's cutbacks put everything under threat). You seem to be finding it strangely difficult to acknowledge the massive difference between the EYFS and KS1 curriculum and teaching (and are still harping on about synthetic phonics, which I can only assume means you haven't seen how it is taught in EYFS, as you seem to be labouring under the impression that it is incredibly formal and dull and target driven).

I also note that the report does imply that an earlier school starting age may benefit children in economically disadvantaged countries, as it states that any advantage seen with a later school starting age is entirely reversed when you take a country's wealth into account. The question is, does the earlier start benefit economically disadvantaged children in wealthier countries, if they are not getting the input from home that more advantagd children are getting? Possibly not if schools assume the disadvantaged children are getting the same input from home as the wealthier ones. It does seem to be the wealthy countries with smaller gaps between the wealthiest and poorest which do OK with a later school starting age, not countries like the UK, where inequalities are massive throughout society. I also note that Germany's ridiculously short primary curriculum causes problems. It seems, in fact, that there are multiple ways to set up an education system and that no one way is likely to work everywhere, as every society has its own unique history, culture and set of challenges.

@zzzzz

Interestingly I think the US response to underprivileged children’s poor literacy rates was Sessame Street. Perhaps TV is seen as “learning through play” there?

Oh do fuck off.

I’m not sure why you feel “childcare” is better than “reception/kindergarten” or why you think those classes in school are rigidly teaching literacy. That’s NOT what they are like in my experience of seeing them first hand.

WTF?

This is like "Alice Through The Looking Glass".

Perhaps you can explain why you choose to believe (wrongly) that EYFS is "formal" or indeed what your mean by formal.

Rafals - how does the fact of it being a Labour government make any difference? Labour under Tony Blair was in many respects Tory Lite.

One of the chief issues, apparently, with Jeremy Corbyn, is that he is dangerously left wing, a virtual commie. The Red Scare is trotted out as an election ploy and as a means of keeping MPs in line in Brexit related votes in Parliament. Tony Blair's electoral success involved rebranding Labour as New Labour and moving away from left wing positions. The English electorate has a taste for government and for services on the cheap and underlying instincts tend to be right of centre.

does the earlier start benefit economically disadvantaged children in wealthier countries, if they are not getting the input from home that more advantagd children are getting? Possibly not if schools assume the disadvantaged children are getting the same input from home as the wealthier ones. It does seem to be the wealthy countries with smaller gaps between the wealthiest and poorest which do OK with a later school starting age, not countries like the UK, where inequalities are massive throughout society.

Yes, and that rather proves my point about a politically inspired policy, doesn't it?

The emphasis on an early start to reading is a politically inspired policy, motivated by realisation that other countries do better in PISA reading tests later on, but refusal to acknowledge the reason is less inequality, and stemming from that the refusal to do anything about the inequality. Instead, children are exposed to target driven education. School is used to plaster over the cracks in society, and the rollout of the policy is used to insinuate that the problem is leftie teachers who don't really have the interests of the poor at heart if they advocate for pure play based early years education.

And yes Mrz, as I have already stated, I am aware of the official compulsory school starting age, and also that the vast majority of children are in school or a formal educational setting by four. Roundabout - There is a rigid, target driven EYFS curriculum that imposes specific academic expectations on practitioners and children in EYFS to prepare them for the rigours of Y1 and subsequent years. The problems with the expectations in Y1 and Y2 curriculum in the UK are also mentioned in the link I provided.

There is a direct line from many Dickens villains to the idea of measurable progress in SP for four year olds and the overly content heavy Y1 and Y2 curriculum.

"t does seem to be the wealthy countries with smaller gaps between the wealthiest and poorest which do OK with a later school starting age" you mean like the USA? 🤔

Also, a 10-year old report is not the best way to assess the effectiveness or harmfulness of synthetic phonics teaching to young children, given that other methods of teaching reading were more popular until about 2006, so there would have been a limited number of 11 and 15 year olds to assess at that point. I would find a recent study much more illuminating in terms of a one-size-fits-all approach to reading instruction. As for the harmfulness or otherwise of having 4-year olds in a school environment, I view that as a different issue to the introduction of phonics to children at age 4.

I recommend beginning with Dehaene

mathanxiety - the report you linked shows that the UK does rather well with reading later on, despite the fact pretty much all children in the UK, whether from a wealthy background or a poor one, start learning to read early on. I note the report says the UK does better than Denmark in this respect (and does better than the US, if you look at the most recent survey). Nothing you are saying indicates that teaching synthetic phonics is harmful to 4-year old children. Yes, I agree that inequality is the real problem, but I do disagree that attempting to find better ways to teach reading is a neo liberal conspiracy to keep the poor downtrodden. Being willing to fund new phonics schemes while simultaneously cutting back on funding to buy other materials, on the other hand, is a political decision with no justification from an educational perspective. That simply resulted in better off schools using pta money to buy more books, not in schools deciding they only need to teach phonics and to hell with all other aspects of child development.

It matters because the labour government that introduced it was the same government that introduced free preschool funding for all 3-4 year olds and at risk 2year olds, that funded sure start and home start and children’s centres, that funded book start. It was the same government that provided enough funding for every child in my deprived area assessed by SALT on entry to school/nursery. All of those pre date the introduction of SP into the curriculum. The idea that it was introduced as a cheap way to close the gap for disadvantaged children in lieu of those things is misguided at best.

The cuts to all of those services happened years after the introduction of SP.

They could only justify the funding if there was some way to measure its value. They thus pandered to the Gradgrinds. And the services were cut because SP was seen as the panacea for all the problems that warranted the services.

Rubbish, mathanxiety - the sevices were cut because that's what the Tories do. The Labour government introduced SP and the other measures, and their intention was never for one to replace the others. There is a lot I hated about the last "Labour" government, but I don't for one second believe they introduced SP with the intention of withdrawing their other measures. As for measuring its value - you are the one arguing SP is harmful for young children and that large numbers are incapable of learning it that young, so I would have thought you would welcome proof of that, if you really want the policy to change.

The Sure Start initiative is/was very similar to the US Head Start programme ...did the US introduce SSP in order to measure the effectiveness of the initiative?

I suspect you might be I need a minority in believing that Blairite education policy was Gradgrindian.

That funding started in 97/98 and was about the same time as the NLS was being drawn up. A document that promoted whole language/mixed methods, despite the govt being advised that they should use SP.

SP wasn’t introduced until 2006 after the Rose review. And was immediately followed up by a wider curriculum review which was very much the opposite of Gradgrindian. The only reason that curriculum isn’t in place now is because between all the documents being published and sent into schools and the start of the new school year labour lost an election.

The services were cut because of Tory austerity policies that to widespread cuts across all government funded departments at every level. You can argue til the cows come home about whether this was the right way to deal with a global economic recession and the budget deficit, the labour government might have ended up doing the same if it had stayed in power, but it had nothing to do with SP being a cheap way too cure all ills. Not least because it won’t. And if nothing else I do believe the government know that.

Yes, they may well know that (if they don't then they are a lot more stupid than I think they are, and that is saying something).

Measuring attainment is a feature of Tory policy that appeals to the Gradgrind mentality. Teachers' and teachers' unions' complaints about the proliferation of tests are interpreted by the conservative (small c) bedrock in England as a case of lazy Reds trying to find a way of sitting on their arses all day watching the clock and letting children run riot. The bedrock likes to see value for money. The bedrock was perfectly happy to see austerity and supported the introduction of academies to replace maintained schools, which were portrayed as a waste of everybody's time and money.

The idea that it was introduced as a cheap way to close the gap for disadvantaged children in lieu of those things is misguided at best.
It wasn't introduced as a cheap way to close the gap. It was introduced as a way to convince voters that New Labour was as solid on making teachers accountable as the Tories were. The notion of 'closing the gap' was a subterfuge that appealed to core Labour voters and the teacher accountability (aka testing) element appealed to core Tories.

I think that is probably right Mathsanxiety. Certainly around the same time I was working in another part of the public sector, and measuring value for money was a buzz mentioned everywhere.

And actually the Labour Party at the time were rather keen on trying to win over some of those gradgrindian types, thoughts I'm sorry to say it.