Little James is full time at school now. Well he is four and a half, a big boy after all. It’s wonderful, we drop him off for breakfast club at 8am on the way to work and we don’t need to collect him until 6! Well, the after school club’s marvellous you see – he really loves it. He seems happy enough anyway – he’s been full time at nursery since he was three months anyway, bless him. And of course the school ‘holiday’ club is really good as well so he can go there at half term and we can carry on working. Sometimes I feel like we hardly see him at all!
Sorry for butting in with a blindingly obvious question but, isn’t this a child we’re talking about here? And, no I’m not making it up.
The government’s latest education attempt – their Ten Year Strategy on Childcare details plans of what Tony Blair calls “The biggest expansion of nursery provision since the second world war”.
“Extended Schools” offering childcare from 8-6 every weekday are to become the norm, so we can work even longer hours while state education churns out mini workers for Britain’s future….
How can we afford to go down this route when studies have shown that the more time children spend in childcare from a young age the more likely they are be aggressive and unruly? *
“Children can easily catch up on cognitive skills later on but they can’t catch up on emotional development,” says Penelope Leach sensibly. Wouldn’t you rather have someone like her advising government?
You only have to type ‘violence in schools’ into an internet search engine to discover the wars being fought in schools up and down the country. It makes shocking reading. And don’t get me started on bullying. Why can’t those in charge of childcare see any link?
What is Blair thinking? In his speech to the Daycare Trust last November he says, “The more parents are involved with their children the more it helps them learn, the higher their aspirations are and their self-esteem.” And yet here he is preparing the way for a scenario where parents are less and less involved. And look what good it’s doing the children. The number of children being excluded from schools for anti-social behaviour is spiralling out of control (government figures put it at 10 plus a day) and Conservative party leader Michael Howard has approved plans for boot camps called ‘Turnaround Schools’ outside of mainstream education to contain unruly pupils. Mmm that should do it…
Ever since the 1880 Education Act in which the Victorians managed to make going to school a legal requirement for young children, (so parents wouldn’t have to spend precious time educating and rearing the pesky things) children have spent less and less time with their families from an increasingly early age.
Unsurprisingly the home education movement is growing, and so is the number of people considering non-mainstream education for their kids. Mine are very happy at their Steiner school – a place they area allowed to be children for longer. While not everyone has the freedom to make such choices, I believe it’s time there was a major shakeup in the schooling of young children and more nurturing environments provided for little ones.
Little James probably makes his parents very proud. He may indeed appear to be a very independent and mature child by the time he’s in formal learning at five, but does he have any choice in the matter?

*A 10 year study by the University of Minnesota showed children who had been in childcare for 30 hours or more a week developed behavioural problems.
Jan 2006 CE