Cathy and Clare

Cathy and Clare: stability please…

I refer, of course, to Professor Nutbrown (a qualifications review) and Dame Tickell (an EYFS initiative). Both these are key in shaping improvement, change and progress.

But we do need to get on with it. Speaking to some workers in the sector this week, there’s no doubt that that change isn’t something to be afraid of…indeed, if you were, you’d have left the work a long time ago




Respectively...

 

Naturally, it’s important to make the right adjustments and that means we need time to think about it. It’s also vital that responses are co-ordinated with other thinking (parents, early intervention, a graduate-led workforce, more reflective practice, funding, benefits…I could go on).



 I also know that setting work means you need to have your wits about you and be ‘on form’ – does all this stuff going on in the background not make people edgy and uncertain?

Practitioners working daily with young children need a solid base from which to exercise their important skills and approaches…when we add ‘cuts’ into the equation, we may become even more unsure?

Andrew Sanders

Lecturer

University of Derby

November 2011

Child Detention

I see that the old chestnut of child detention has come up yet again (Gentleman 2011). When are we going to accept that this is just plainly wrong?

This article refers to many issues related to child with family detention; we may well have moved on from Yarl's Wood (as mentioned elsewhere on the web, LS) as Nick Clegg demanded last year but there remain some difficulties.

Famously and controversially Barnardo's have become involved in managing the Cedars; a new, re-branded centre used for short-term holding of families prior to departure. New furniture, pleasant grounds and gardens and even a child’s play area are surrounded by a high fence which basically means this hotel is effectively a prison, a place where people go against their will… with an associated culture to match

Day-to-day it’s staffed by officers of the philanthro business G4S, some of whom are being ‘trained’ by the charity – a challenge, to say the least? Especially that they are paid by their employer who is funded by the UKBA to do a job.

Another question is one which Barnardo's is asked relentlessly, that of why they’ve become involved in the first place? This is certainly a pragmatic (financial?) decision and we can see their reasons but the consensus seems to be that their involvement has enabled the Coalition to get away with  carrying on holding children, albeit for a shorter time in a different guise.

This isn’t just about ‘pre-departure accommodation’ though, Tom Brake indicates that the issue exists the other way round, that is with numbers of children (and families) entering the UK as well. For anyone who can find anything about what Heaven Crawley (Swansea Uni) says about this, I'd be grateful. She's mentioned and certainly hasa history in the field but nothing specific...

Gentleman A (2011) This is Cedars. Is it: a, b, c ? Guardian G2 18^th October

Toynbee Tales

Just remind me, was it in March 1999 that Tony Blair indicated that we should be looking to eliminate child poverty in the UK within a generation? And did I miss the fact that things were going OK till the mid noughties but all was fine as the albeit adjusted objective was written into law in 2009?

The original promise was in a Beveridge lecture in East London's Toynbee Hall on the 18th.

I note now that children haven't got a chance, it is suggested (Johnson 2011) and this is supported by a comprehensive prediction by the IFS (Jin et al 2011). The former is alarmed that there appears to be nothing in the can to address this...save for ideas from Frank Field and Graham Allen which remain it seems at a consultation stage. I remain pessimistic about the pupil premium - whether this is any larger than previous SEN money and, of course, the lack of ringfencing at LA level.

One again, the real argument is probably, to my mind, that there's simply not enough in the purse - but we must remember that, looking at the bigger picture, there is. It's just that the size of each cake and the total recipe dimensions are political decisions.

Maybe it's sound tactics to delay (at least)?


Johnson P (2011) The poverty claptrap Guardian 11th October 

Bins and SureStart

Catalogue Cover 1924

I've said things about the balance between local and central government before especially bins. And I see this is rearing it's head again. I see that £250m is being dangled in front of local authorities to offer weekly collections (paid for by special money only meant for this - ringfenced) and it seems that electorally this is an such an important point that this takes precedent over the provision of children's services like SureStart.

We're told that the latter are adequately funded but it's a local decision whereas bins seem to be a Westminster concern. The balance is one of convenience which leaves the blame (and therefore the votes?) in a place to be decided and it's very difficult to explain this to people in a rational way, especially when we're in election mode?

Hijab and Batman

Round the corner from where I live there's a large auditorium and gathering place. They'd had a Batman event this weekend. I noticed on the street a young boy with the requisite mask on although my wife had seen whole families dressed for the occasion. She didn't see anyone with the underpants over their trousers though!

I just got to thinking that any role play is probably much more than dressing up; we've all seen superhero play in settings and our response can be ambiguous. Clearly, it's not possible to be Batman but what harm is there in acting? We can recall extreme instances of some people thinking they can fly, like Clarke Kent? You can see an interesting discussion about some surrounding issues in Penny Holland's (2003) book but this incorporates behaviours, expectations, beliefs, roles and the like. He was wealthy, had a big black fast jet car, Alfred looked after him and Robin (was this his son?) and, of course, the professional crime-fighting relationship with his colleague caped-crusader, Batwoman. Good and evil portrayed perhaps by adversaries like Penguin

What joined Batman and hijabs together for me was the news this weekend about some thought in Holland (the place not the person) to fall more into line with bans on 'coverings' in public places. This has been mentioned earlier and similar points apply but it was just that wearing a mask could be wrongly interpreted?

Holland P (2003) We don't play with guns in here Maidenhead OUP

Mr Gove...

I'm sure Michael Gove's comments (Roberts 2011) will, and probably have already, stirred up an early years hornets nest. I'd like to go on record with a few initial points:

Explicit, I think, is criticism of the huge efforts nursery practitioners and other carers put in to support and help all children to develop the skills, behaviours and confidence to cope with what life will throw at them. I'm not sure though that we have got the issue the right way round. Young children being ready for school should perhaps be more about school being ready for them?

And has school got it absolutely right then? I wonder what teachers of older children think?

Here, of course, we are similarly reminded that without this 'school readiness' then the social and individual damage is done and the prognosis isn't good for our future community. Developments of Graham Allen and Frank Field's early intervention strategies may well "improve child development" but against whose standards? We know that considerable adaptation, insight and sensitivity is required to help young children along but I do worry that focusing on the normal may deny difference - and we do have to accept that we are all different and one size never fits all

In the UK we seem to have chosen one route to address the care and education of pre-school children. One based on a mix of part public and mainly private services. This opens the early years sector to variations in provision and the money required to support it; a scenario which permits changes of thinking to be acted upon, changes which can be for many many reasons...some not perhaps entirely based on the welfare and future life-chances of our youngest citizens. It may well be that some of the language used by Mr Gove might give us a clue about some of these reasons?

Roberts L (2011) Education Secretary aims to tackle the underclass Nursery World 111 (4277) 6th September

...Parenting (2)

I see we have some people (Chancellor 2011, Gentleman 2011) who might be noting where the responsibility might lie for looking after and guiding children and young people- this has become especially to the mind as a result of 'the riots'

Textile Design 1923/4

We have, on the one hand, parents being frightened to control their charges given a rights agenda and, therefore on the other, suggesting that, given this, someone else needs to grasp the nettle. And these people are schools and, in the case of younger children, early years services.

We know about absent fathers, lone parents, hard-pressed poor mums and dads, social inequality, lack of an ethic of care and so on. All this no doubt will be wrapped up in a moral decline and a broken society

All this assumes, of course, that the traditional western affluent (sic) family model works - a model set into our minds that this is the way things should be? There are many set-ups where the responsibility is more a community one and, of course, we're in times of blame and counter-blame so any analysis will do for the time-being?

But it won't and the politics of this are that prevailing 'reasons' need to be balanced by a range of opposing explanations from the left (Cowley 2011) as well as the right; I do wonder whether a public enquiry will discover more than a basic unfairness that bankers, over the past few years, have been allowed to ransack the public coffers whereas others' desire for a plasma TV remains criminally wrong?

Cowley J (2011) Don't mention the family New Statesman 22nd August