You must teach your children basic speech at home, parents told
‘A disadvantage that lasts for life’
EduCATIon Secretary damian Hinds will today vow to take on the ‘last taboo’ by challenging parents who do not teach young children basic speech at home.
In a major speech on social mobility, Mr Hinds will say it is a ‘persistent scandal’ that almost a third of five- year- olds do not have the basic speaking skills they need to participate in class.
This severe lack of speech skills means they cannot follow lessons or make friends, and they quickly fall behind – a disadvantage which can last for life.
Mr Hinds will say that parents must understand they need to start teaching their children skills such as speaking and listening at home.
It comes after the chief inspector of schools warned that many children are not receiving bedtime stories, nursery rhymes, or even toilet training from their parents.
Campaigners have welcomed the Government’s focus on the ‘home environment’ and pointed out it can be ‘difficult’ to get parents ‘involved in their child’s learning’.
In his speech today, Mr Hinds will announce his intention to cut in half the proportion of five-yearolds without communication and literacy skills by 2028.
He will call on businesses, charities and tech firms to help him target parents to get more of them reading with their youngsters at home. Mr Hinds will say: ‘It is a persistent scandal that we have children starting school not able to communicate in full sentences, not able to read simple words.
‘This matters – because when you’re behind from the start you rarely catch up … the gap just widens. This has a huge impact on social mobility.’
Mr Hinds, who will speak at the Resolution Foundation in London, will stress that while it is up to parents to decide how best to bring up their children, he wants to offer them more support in preparing youngsters for school.
The latest statistics show 28 per cent of children do not have the ‘expected level’ of communication and literacy skills for their age group at the end of the first year of school. This includes being able to talk in full sentences and offering their own ideas.
Mr Hinds’ aim of cutting the proportion of struggling children in half, to 14 per cent, would potentially mean a reduction from an estimated 182,000 to 91,000 depending on the population of pupils. The announcement builds on the £20 million pledged in April to provide practical tools and advice to parents on reading and singing nursery rhymes.
This includes a £5 million trial run by the Education Endowment Foundation in the north of England, £6.5 million for voluntary and community group projects, and £8.5 million for local councils.
Amanda Spielman, head of schools inspector ofsted, warned last month of the vast swathe of ‘unlucky’ children who do not get nursery rhymes, bedtime stories or ‘ABCs’ at home. Some are not even toilet-trained or do not know how to dress themselves, she said.
She did not explicitly blame parents, but said they ‘ clearly have the most important role here’.
Research from the oxford university Press this year found that in some schools half of five-yearolds are behind in language skills, with disadvantaged children disproportionately affected.
And the department for Education said children with poor vocabulary at age five are more than twice as likely to be unemployed at age 34 as children with good vocabulary.
Mr Hinds’ pledge has been welcomed by campaigners. Education Endowment Foundation chairman Sir Peter Lampl said: ‘The minister is absolutely right to set an ambitious target for closing the early literacy gap by focusing on the home learning environment.’
WITH his fat Brussels pension, ultra-rich oligarch friends and contempt for the democratic will of the people, lord mandelson is the living embodiment of the smug, self-serving political elite.
So his dismissal of committed Brexiteers as being unpatriotic and hating foreigners – though odious and offensive – should hardly come as a surprise.
like so many diehard Remainers, lord mandelson thinks the 17.4million people who voted to leave the EU must be either stupid, or racist, or both.
In fact they are simply democrats who believe Britain should be a free, sovereign nation once again. and they are heartily sick of being talked down to by supercilious, unaccountable, Euro-fanatics like him. HOW truly shaming that in 21st century Britain, three in ten five-yearolds don’t have the basic speaking and listening skills needed to participate in a lesson. How can a child possibly succeed in education if it can’t even understand what’s being said? Schools can do only so much. Parents must take responsibility.