Early intervention to prevent the NEET issue
by Sonia Sodha
The current generation of young people that are not in employment, education and training (NEET) has confounded policy makers – despite huge efforts to bring numbers down, almost one in seven young people aged 16-18 are NEET. The personal and social costs are enormous- the costs to society are estimated to be in the region of £4.6bn a year. Too often, it is assumed that all the answers lie in post-16 services and jobs. Of course, these are important. But our new report published today reveals how some children are being failed by the system long before they turn 16. Our analysis reveals that just over one in ten children – 11.5 per cent – are starting school with behavioural issues that impact on their ability to concentrate and to form relationships with their friends and teachers – and to get the most out of school. And in some deprived areas, up to half of children are starting school without the speech and communication skills they need. Later on, 8 in 100 children leave primary school with literacy and/or numeracy skills below those of an average 7 year old. These are children who face an uphill struggle throughout their school lives to catch up their peers. They are, in effect, set up to fail before they've even begun. We need to rethink how early years services and schools support these children to fulfil their potential. Our report sets out a range of recommendations spanning early years and parenting services and schools. In the early years, too many children’s needs go undetected despite the fact there are very simple screening tools that could be used to direct the children and families to the extra support services that they need, like speech and language therapy, mental health services and parenting services. We therefore recommend universal, light touch screening of all children in the years before school. We also recommend a ‘toddler pupil premium’ for Sure Start centres and nursery education – which would mean higher levels of funding for children from poor backgrounds. With respect to schools, the current education system is poorly serving children at the bottom of the attainment spectrum. The report therefore calls for radical reform to our systems for supporting children with special educational needs, and the system of exclusion from school for children with poor behaviour. Unless we rethink how the government supports schools and families in giving some of our most vulnerable children a decent start in life, there will be a generation of children waiting in the wings to take the place of current NEETs.
Mo
Exclusion may not be the answer for an individual pupil but one disruptive child prevents the whole class from learning. Why should the rest of a class suffer!
Tregony
It's very interesting to see this done on the millennium cohort, but can you also see the links to Sue Palmers work on 'Detoxing childhood'? Young children are often driven to nursery, whilst there taught by often fantastically committed but poorly trained staff who don't necessarily make sure they are outside and getting muddy, then driven home and plonked in front of the telly by frazzled and untrained parents who have never handled a baby before one landed on their laps.
They need to play! They need to be given time, space and encouragement to just play. And if they are not ready for the national curriculum at 5 then, as the wealth of experts on the Cambridge review said, they should be in play-based provision up to 7.
This is especially so for those who are from 'deprived' backgrounds, whatever form that takes - if you grow up in a flat with no garden in an area where your parent(s) have little support and little understanding of the needs of a baby or toddler, or if you have cerebral palsy and have been repeatedly in hospital then how can you possibly have the social and emotional foundation that means you are ready to learn at only 5? We all know stories of children not ready to read at 6 or 7 but, if they weren't put off schooling entirely, quite happily digging into Harry Potter by the age of 11.
Please stop pushing the Government towards yet more directives about 'better' schooling and please push them towards ensuring children get the holistic experiences, as part of a family and community, that mean they are ready for schooling in their own time. And that means the space and time and encouragement to play.
Bernard Clayson
No Child Left Behind = No Child Gets Ahead.
Exclusion is not the answer, segregation is, like most things it's a matter of perception.
Putting children of different abilities in the same class increases the stress on the lower capability children and increases the frustration of the higher ability children.
The consequense is stress on the children and the teachers.
Re: NEET's, the cause is technology and it's labour-saving 'improvements'.
The jobs are not there, and it's not just the current financial situation.
The population is growing, people are living longer, jobs are decreasing, is it too much to ask for the causes to be addressed instead of the symptoms?
Andrea James
Hello, we need to move beyond looking at this for just children with special needs and looking at ensuing that social emotional skills is integrated and taught in early education and school.
All children need these skills, and for children at risk for futher difficulites a more intensive approach can be taken.
David Vinter
'TREGONY' says children arrive to untrained parents unable to cope. It really makes me wonder how my farm labourer grandparents managed to raise 5 children between 1904----1924. George had left school at the age of 10, yet he could read and write OK. His parents were illiterate.
Amazingly 3 of his 5 children went to our local grammar school, his son became a county cricketer. How come my grandparents succeeded without any training, an earth closet down the garden, and a pump for water, homework was done by paraffin lamp. The simple fact is, that some children are winners by the age 3, and it's not money.
Tregony
I suspect David's grandparents - like mine in Lancashire cotton mills and Cornish quarries with similar lack of secondary education - had lives rich in social networks and the kind of practical understanding of the world that can't be taught and have nothing to do with money. They are learnt through living in communities, playing on the street, roaming the countryside and engaging with life. Through this life experience families develop the 'capabilities' that Sen & many of Demos's current strands of thinking talk about.
Today families of all types are often boxed in, alone, many have a baby never having held one, and know far fewer others to help them or to provide informal childcare. David Willett's chapter on childhood in 'The Pinch' illustrates this well, where he describes the reduction in 'everyday adventures' that give childhood its special meaning. Children are seemingly 'battery reared' now, and the impact this has on behaviour and readiness for school needs to be taken into account when understanding the findings in Ex Curricula.
My main thought, looking at the ex-curricula findings, is that we should not immediately leap towards yet another educational package, but rather consider raising the school start back up to 6 (or even 7 like most of Europe), and think about how local services/communities can support families so that children can play outside and build social networks early.
David Vinter
The thing is a two year old child treated properly will be happy to ask his mother or father---WHY! A television can never take the place of a curious child, and a fun parent, money plays little or no part in answering questions. So dad why does the fire get hot?
Christine Ahmed
Parents refering to 'school', 'books', 'education', 'teachers' .. with a sound component that conveys they are 'a waste of time', create an effective ground bass for children to under-achieve, create an everyday sound which children have to ignore if they want to achieve. As a nation that loves and values sound in its popular songs, many ignore the effect of negative sound in speech and the negative emotions/values it conveys.
Christopher Curtis
Although I share some of the concern about the outcomes for people who are excluded from school, this report is riddled with the woolly thinking and uncritical assumptions that bedevil political and educational thought in this country.
To give one example. Your are concerned that such a high proportion of students in PRUs have special needs, but do not question the definition of special needs which includes an assumption that a student whose behaviour is causing sustained problems for their learning has SEN (of the EBD or "complex" kind). In that conceptual framework it is more worrying that less than 100% of excluded pupils have SEN not that a high proportion of them do.
In short, if your model of learning, behaviour and human development simplistically assumes that everyone will grow up to be productive, sociable and well-adjusted unless something negative happens to them, you will see NEETs and other people who fail to reach these goals as victims of the system which should be changed in order to accommodate them - usually by imposing additonal external control on schools and the people who try to do the best with the resources they have - making an astonishing positive difference to millions and sadly failing with a very few.
Unfortunately, reality is much more complex than this. People make their own choices only partly influenced and affected by circumstances. Some subcultures are antagonistic towards and corrosive of the success you seem to assume is in-built. The difference between this country and others in educational outcomes is not a result of different education systems but is to do with attitudes and even morality. Even so, there simply is no education system which is universally inclusive - we are transparent and highly accountable in this country - in other systems, some people just fail.
A very important topic that demands clarity and honesty - not prescriptions which ignore most of the important elements of the problem.