In praise of....Frank Field

 A couple of weeks ago, Frank Field MP set off a small firework on the Today programme by suggesting in a very honest way that some children reach Nursery School age at 3/4 unable to say or recognise their own name.    It seemed to shock John Humphries at the time and even led to a question on Any Questions last weekend.  No-one working in Early Years will have been surprised.  By the age of 5 it is possible to predict with chilling accuracy the life chances and future achievement of every single child.

You can predict the ones who will go to prison.
You can predict the ones who will never find a job.
You can predict the ones who will have mental health issues...at 5.

That's because the gap in achievement on entry to Primary school between those at the top and those at the bottom does not narrow as they progress through to Secondary school.   Even though children pick up basic skill sets along the way, that achievement gap remains broadly the same.  How depressing is that?

Well Surestart was meant to address that.  ' Narrowing the Gap' it's called in the jargon.  Except that it hasn't really worked.  The political view which is easily expressed was that professionals could work some magic and re-start those children's life chances with early intervention, if only there was more investment.  The alternate view which was held by many of those professionals and not so readily expressed by politicians (for obvious electoral reasons) was that actually parents are much more important and unless they are engaged with their children and have aspirations for them, nothing is likely to change.

Another jargon term:  'Hard to reach families' a euphemism for those parents.  Trouble is that they have more children than their better educated and more aspirational peers and their lack of engagement and aspiration is replicated in their own children.  So in very crude terms, the problem is growing.  How to break the cycle?  I'm not sure anyone has a magic solution but it starts with honesty and Frank Field has been telling it like it is for some time now.  And he does offer solutions but no easy magic formula; just better targeted engagement with those families using a whole range of measures adapted to individual circumstances.    Not sexy, not 'bite-size news' and therefore unable to be picked up by any ambitious politician...

BM is back... and not altogether optimistic about the world.

Pre-Budget nerves

News of some of the measures due to be announced tomorrow have been gradually leaking out and speculation simply adds to the anxiety for BM who worries on behalf of the schools she is responsible for.   Cuts in year to higher education, which have been highlighted over at Normblog are beginning to take effect, with whole departments being cut in some instances.  Locally, a friend whose husband works as a lecturer at City of Westminster, is worried because his contract has just been re-written offering him £2,000 per annum less with more responsibility or he can take redundancy and several secondary schools which had followed the then DCSF guidance and offered Diplomas as an alternative to GCSE/A Level have had to give staff notice overnight, as that funding has been cut in-year as part of the £6bn savings announced by George Osborne 2 weeks ago.

That earlier 'mini-budget' included cuts to local authorities early years improvement work with private, independent and voluntary sector daycare and early years providers, which will come to an abrupt end.  That alone makes BM nervous about the commitment to Surestart and Early Years provision in general.    If I thought that any of these cuts were driven by evidence based research which showed that the services provided were inefficient or ineffective, I would be less worried but that is palpably not the case.

Whilst I have great sympathy for third level educators, all of the research evidence shows that that is the most expensive sector in education.  If one thinks of the funding of 0-19 education as a pyramid, it is inverted in that the bulk of the spending occurs from age 12 upwards and yet, this is in direct contrast to the research which shows that funding of the Early Years is crucial to success in later education and life chances generally. 

Early Years education is complex, dealing as it does with issues such as behaviour management as well as early appreciation and development of literacy, numeracy, science and physical development.  The success of early years intervention is not easily measured and certainly not in the short-term which makes it an easy target.  To someone not familiar with the sector and the research, it just looks like expensive childcare. 

Will the Budget display an evidence-based approach to the distribution and allocation of cuts ?  We will get our answer tomorrow.