INTRODUCTION
1. The National Union of Teachers (NUT) welcomes the opportunity to respond to the Good Childhood Inquiry. As the largest teachers’ organisation in Europe, the NUT has members in all phases and sectors of education, from early years to post-16 provision. Its membership also includes those who work in local authority children’s services and youth and community workers who hold qualified teacher status.
2. The NUT has traditionally promoted the educational interest of children and the needs of teachers side by side, as it believes that they are fundamentally linked. It is therefore in a unique position to comment with authority upon a number of the thematic areas identified by the Inquiry, with a particular emphasis on the “learning” strand.
1. What do you understand by childhood? What does a good childhood mean to you?
3. Many of the more intangible aspects of a “good childhood” are reflected in the five Every Child Matters outcomes, such as the need for children to feel safe and secure, happy and healthy and to be able to achieve their full potential in terms of their social and cognitive development. In addition, the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child sets out the material prerequisites for a “good childhood”, such as the right to education, health care and state protection from any activities which could harm their development.
4. It is necessary for children to have both time and space to grow and develop as individuals at their own pace. Yet for many children, “free time” is a rarity. In some cases, this is due to their lives outside school being filled with organised activities, which may be highly competitive and related to improving their performance at school and/or their prowess in sport or the performing arts. Other children have no option but to undertake full-time caring responsibilities for their families. Neither of these situations allows children the opportunity to be, think and do what they so choose, which is a vital aspect of the process of growing up. A key characteristic of childhood should be that it is the only time when one is free from the day-to-day concerns and anxieties of adult life.
5. Closely allied to this is the need for children to experiment and experience, as a means of developing their own identity, interests and tastes. Whilst there must obviously be limits to such freedoms, in order to protect children from harming themselves and others, it is important that society is not over-protective and that children are provided with opportunities to develop their own abilities to make judgements about risks for themselves within a supportive and enabling, rather than highly restrictive and prescribed, framework.
6. Above all, it is also essential that children enjoy the love and support of “significant adults” in their lives. Irrespective of the composition of the family unit or whether a child is “looked after”, children need to feel loved and cared for and to experience very close personal relationships if they are to be able to develop and sustain such relationships themselves. The United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child prioritises, correctly, the importance of family to children. Equal attention is needed, however, for those children who are looked after by the state rather than by the family and those whose family life is not supportive and loving.
2. What are the conditions for a good childhood?
3. What obstacles exist to those conditions today?
4. What changes could be made that would be likely to improve things?
7. For ease of reference, the NUT’s response will address the issues raised by each of these questions simultaneously, under a number of thematic headings.
INTRODUCTION
8. The NUT’s Education Statement, ‘Bringing Down the Barriers’[1] sets out the NUT’s vision for comprehensive education. Education is a fundamental human right. All children and young people have a right to high quality education. Education is central to the personal development and health of children and young people. It encourages them to think and acquire knowledge. Education enables children and young people to make sense of and contribute to society. At the heart of education are teachers. Teachers inspire children and young people and unlock their potential. Teachers enrich their countries and societies.
9. As a human right education is special. It promotes other rights and responsibilities. Globally and at home education can play a central role in the elimination of poverty. It has the power to help liberate not only individuals but also whole groups of people. These ideas have underpinned the policies and practises of the National Union of Teachers for over 130 years.
10. All children and young people must not only have equality of access to high quality education but they must also be able to learn new skills and disciplines throughout their adult lives. Education is vital to each young person. It is vital to all communities in which they live.
11. If an education service is to meet the needs of all children and young people, it must be comprehensive in its approach. Primary and special education are as much examples of the success of a comprehensive approach as secondary education. There is nothing ‘standard’ about comprehensive education. There is nothing in comprehensive education which holds back high expectations of young people’s achievements. Comprehensive education can contribute as much to the talented and gifted child as to the child who is currently struggling to learn.
12. Comprehensive education is about tackling barriers to high quality education. No government committed to raising the living standards of its people and to playing a progressive role internationally can afford to have an education service which is shaped by barriers arising from, for example, the influence of social class and economic and health issues, race, gender, disability or sexuality. No civil society can permit itself to be anything other than vigilant in seeing that its leaders live up to their responsibilities.
13. The terms ‘comprehensive education’ and ‘equality of opportunity’ are synonymous. As the OECD’s Programme of International Student Assessment (2000) report demonstrates, the best education service is one where there is a single, non-diverse, system of well resourced provision within which the needs of all children and young people are targeted and met.
14. Within such a system, there should be a sustained attack on the root causes of social and economic deprivation. Social class still has a powerful influence on the achievements of children and young people. To its credit, the Government has recognised this. There needs to be, however, proper joined up thinking, to use a familiar phrase, on how initiatives in communities to tackle social and economic deprivation can link up with education locally.
15. The greatest potential for such joined up thinking lies in the widely welcomed ‘Every Child Matters’ agenda, which recognises and sustains the idea that every school is at the centre of its community. It is an approach which is equally important for urban and rural communities.
16. The Children’s Society’s survey of young people aged 14 to 16 years on their views of what constitutes a good childhood showed that many of the young people consulted regarded a good quality of education as one of the key factors of a good childhood. The NUT could not agree more.
17. The NUT has a long history of campaigning for a good quality of education, recognising education as essential not only to the quality of childhood but also to the opportunities children are to have now and in their adult lives.
18. However, education systems can often run the risk of replicating within its own institutions and structures the inequalities and injustices that already divide society and undermine social cohesion. Rather than representing an inclusive environment in which diversity is valued as an asset and strength, and which unites a multiplicity of talents, abilities, insights and skills as a model for social transformation and for the benefit of greater equality, education systems have frequently contributed towards the reinforcement of social division.
19. A good childhood cannot be conceived of in isolation from the wider range of social factors and conditions that shape and define our society and infiltrate our schools and colleges. The NUT’s own Education Statement recognises this fact and states clearly that ‘comprehensive education’ and ‘equality of opportunity’ are synonymous.
20. Whilst teachers and schools have a vital role in contributing towards greater equality and justice within our society by giving their pupils and students the skills to challenge discrimination and injustice in all its manifestations and to develop and promote relationships that are characterised by mutual understanding, tolerance, inclusion, fairness and generosity, it is also important to recognise that teachers and schools cannot be expected to compensate for the inequalities within our society.
21. The NUT welcomes the focus of the inquiry on the well-being of the child and shares its concern over society’s contradictory and dichotomous attitudes towards children and young people. In the light of this confusion about childhood and inconsistent responses to children and young people within society in general, teachers and schools face a particular dilemma. Having to provide children and young people with consistency and clear guidance is particularly difficult when society itself is ambivalent about the nature of the required consistency.
22. At the same time, as patterns of family and community relationships are changing, there is also a growing expectation within sections of society that schools should provide extended services and teachers should take over the role of families and communities to compensate for any absences of a nurturing, caring and supportive environment for the child. Paradoxically, this expectation is expressed in a climate where teachers and schools receive less support from Government, communities and parents and are frequently blamed for the behaviour and attitudes of children and young people.
23. The NUT believes that there is an urgent need for a frank, open and self-critical debate involving all stakeholders and hopes that this inquiry will establish the issues, challenges and principles that should inform such a debate, recognising, according to an African proverb, that it requires a whole village to raise a child.
EARLY YEARS
Access and Quality
24. The NUT has welcomed the Government’s increased emphasis on the provision of early years education and childcare. A universal entitlement to nursery education for all three and four year olds has been one of the most significant Government interventions of recent years to address the associated problems of child poverty and social exclusion, which are an essential aspect of ensuring that all children enjoy a “good childhood”.
25. The NUT has supported consistently the establishment of services which offer education, childcare and a variety of other support services in the most disadvantaged communities of England. The recognition that many of the poorest children do not live in these areas, and the expansion of the Children’s Centre programme to cover every community, has therefore been welcome
26. There is, however, a potential for the Children’s Centre initiative to disrupt significantly existing patterns of early years provision. The NUT has held long-standing concerns that the Government’s previous programme of expansion of nursery places for three and four year olds, especially in the most challenging communities, has not, as was intended, built on existing high quality education provision and has, in fact, been at the expense of maintained nursery schools and classes.
27. This represents a significant barrier to children’s early educational development, which would in turn impact on their future school career, a central feature of childhood. For children from disadvantaged backgrounds, this effect would be even more acute. A proper distinction between the kind of provision on offer and, in particular, its quality, is needed if all children are to benefit from the Government’s investment in early years provision.
28. Closely linked to this concern is the NUT’s view that the Government is prioritising the entitlement to early years provision for parents rather than for children, in order to encourage parents into work rather than for the educational benefit of the child. This is an invidious distinction. Both priorities are equally important. In line with the recommendations of the United Nations Committee on the ‘Rights of the Child’, the Government should enshrine high quality early years provision as an entitlement of children, regardless of the home circumstances of the child or the employment conditions of the parents.
29. For this to be so, Government needs to focus on quality as well as quantity of provision. Its current early years policies, however, may endanger the standards of practice in the best settings by “levelling down” requirements relating to the staffing and curriculum. Although there has been significant growth in the private sector, improving the quantity of provision on offer is not enough. Research evidence tells us that who provides early years education is vital in determining its quality and impact.
30. The Effective Provision of Pre-School Education (EPPE)[2] project has demonstrated that maintained nursery classes and schools and publicly-funded combined centres score significantly higher than private nurseries and playgroups across all of the seven criteria it assessed.