Posts Tagged ‘Family’

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Cyberbullying Even More Prevalent Among Girls

May 18, 2011

A recent survey found that girls are especially affected by cyberbullying:

Tweens and teens are both flocking to social networking sites like Twitter and Facebook to stay connected with each other. While used correctly this can be a positive thing the sites are also being used as weapons to facilitate cyberbullying.

Norton Canada recently completed a study called The Norton Cyberbullying Survey asking Canadian parents about their children’s online experiences. A quarter of the parents said that their child had been involved in a cyberbullying incident. Of those children 66 percent of the parents said their child was a victim and 16 percent admitted that their child was the bully.
More shocking is that 32 percent of parents are unsure of their children’s online behaviours but 44 percent fear that their child’s online behaviour could involve coming in contact with an online predator.

While on the schoolyard the victims of bullies often are male when it comes to the cyberspace playground girls are the ones being bullied. Parents revealed that 86 percent of those bullied were their daughters compared to a rate of 55 percent when it came to their sons.

Computers are not the only tools being used as a weapon for cyberbullying. Cyberbullies turn to cell phones with middle schoolers using this tool more often.

Even though it’s not legal for children under the age of 13 to access social networking sites 43 percent of parents are comfortable when their children aged 8-12 have an account as long as the parents can supervise them. While almost half of parents claim they have an open dialogue with their children about their online behaviour 32 percent feel that they can’t control all the environments where their children have access to social networking. This access includes what their children are doing in school.

One wonders how parents can be comfortable with their underage children on Facebook considering these damning statistics.  Firstly, aiding your children in breaking a law is not a good example to set, and secondly, supervising your child’s internet and social media use is easier said than done.  Why does an 8-year old need a Facebook page anyway?

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Posted in Cyber Bullying, Social Media | Leave a Comment »

Parenting, Like Teaching is a Balancing Act

May 17, 2011

Society only knows two ways of dealing with a given problem.  The two ways I speak of, are the two extremes at opposite ends of the spectrum.

Take teaching for example. On the one hand you have the advocates for a teacher centred approach.  This philosophy maintains that the teacher must be strong, exact discipline and be emotionally distant from the students.  It considers empowering students to be weak and counter productive.

Pretty extreme, huh?

Well unfortunately, so is the alternate philosophy.  The child centered approach to teaching, puts the emphasis on the child to direct learning, make critical choices and set the agenda.  Discipline takes a back seat in this approach as does rules and the authority of the teacher.

Both approaches are extreme.  Both have good ideas, but miss the most important aspect of any philosophy – balance.  In truth, both approaches can be melded into one by a teacher who can incorporate both styles of teaching through constant adjustment and introspection.

Unfortunately, parenting experts tend to take on unbalanced and incredibly extreme positions.  A few months ago we had the infamous Tiger Mother, who postulated that restricting her children from enjoying play dates and leisure time helped instill happiness in their lives.

Of course, there will always be an extreme position, advocating the exact opposite:

MEET the “serenity parents” – pizza and cartoons are in, too much sport or trombone lessons are out.

A US author is urging parents to lighten up and let their children have more fun, instead of obsessing over their lives.

Dr Bryan Caplan said modern mums and dads worried too much, and should take a back seat.

He advocated “serenity parenting” as an antidote to tight control and a plethora of extra-curricular activities, saying they would make no difference when children grew up.

Dr Caplan gives guilt-ridden parents the nod to let their children watch more television, and quit activities they don’t enjoy.

The father of three, including twins, has penned the new book, Selfish Reasons To Have More Kids: Why Being A Great Parent Is Less Work And More Fun Than You Think.

Dr Caplan, an economics professor at George Mason University in Virginia, said research on twins had shown genetics was more important than upbringing in moulding children.

“The most prominent conclusion of twin research is that practically everything – health, intelligence, happiness, success, personality, values, interests – is partly genetic,” he wrote in a Wall Street Journal column.

“With a few exceptions, the effect of parenting on adult outcomes ranges from small to zero.”

South Morang mother of two Renee Mayne relates to serenity parenting, saying she strives to create a stress-free home for daughters Maddison, 4, and Milly, 2.

“If we can balance a relaxed environment, where we listen, create boundaries and instil good values it’s not only serenity parenting, but a balanced lifestyle,” she said.

Parenting is the hardest job in the world.  So-called parenting experts try to give us quick fixes that sound easy, but miss the mark on two crucial factors.

1.  No child is the same.  There is no perfect parenting technique that will work on all kids;

2.  These methods almost uniformly lack balance.  Whilst it wouldn’t sell books, the best approach to take is to try a whole series of common sense ideas, whilst continually modifying and adjusting ones style according to what works for a particular child at a particular time.

I find that the best experts don’t preach to others, because they are aware that every child responds differently to situations and parenting styles.  And every child presents a unique challenge to their parents.

No, Dr Caplan, parenting children effectively invariably isn’t  “less work  than you think.”

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Posted in Parenting | Leave a Comment »

Injecting Botox into Children Should Be a Crminal Offence

May 15, 2011

This is no joke.  This should not be treated like a one-off case by an unstable parent.  These awful child beauty pageants, which contribute not even an ounce of worth or purpose to this world, are responsible for the flagrant abuse of children.  They must be shut down!  They are horrendous excuses for entertainment and the practices they espouse from parents borders on the criminal.

Take the case of the mother that readily admits to injecting her poor child with  Botox to eliminate any possibility of a wrinkle:

How sick is that?  How do we allow these pageants to continue when they provide us with nothing and instead encourage parents to treat their kids like circus animals!  I totally agree with John Kass:

… when I think of little-girl beauty pageants — after the story last week about Kerry Campbell, the idiotic mom injecting Botox into the face of her 8-year-old daughter Britney — all I can think of are three little words:

Shut them down.

Shut all those kiddie pageants down.

It’s easy for us to slam one ignorant parent who lives vicariously through her daughter, or slam a few parents who treat their children as if they’re painted dolls. We pronounce such parents fools and think we’ve won a great victory.

But this really isn’t about isolated cases, or even the entire, weird little-girl pageant scene. The larger story is how we Americans feel about ourselves, how we define beauty in the age of facial injections and lip shots and tummy tucks and liposuction and breast implants and hair transplants.

And as millions endure all that poking and prodding and tying and cutting, can’t you hear America groaning, begging: Desire Me, Want Me, Please Want Me Forever.

We put all that pressure on women to be young and cute into their old age, until even an 8-year-old isn’t young enough or cute enough, if her name is Britney, getting Botoxed.

It all starts with those little girls painted with lipstick, sprayed with tanning powder, with big hair and heels. They strut down those runways with that JonBenet Ramsey pout, training to become princess victims.

And the parents cheer as their young are sexualized.

In today’s age. how do we let these blasted things continue?

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Posted in Child Welfare | 4 Comments »

When Do Kids Begin Forming Memories?

May 13, 2011

I stumbled across a fascinating article about when children begin forming memories:

New research challenges the notion that very young children do not form memories, finding that they do but that the memories often fade over time.

Most adults remember little before their third or fourth birthdays, and the thinking has been that prior to this age children do not have the cognitive or language skills to process and store events as memories.

But psychology professor Carole Peterson, PhD, and colleagues from Canada’s Memorial University of Newfoundland confirmed in earlier research that this is not the case and that even very young children can recall past events.

Now they report that young children’s earliest memories tend to change over time, being replaced with “newer” earliest memories until around age 10. As this happens, memories occurring in the preschool years tend to be lost.

“As young children get older their first memories tend to get later and later, but around age 10 their memories crystallize,” Peterson tells WebMD.

Checking Children’s Memories

In an effort to better understand how children form memories, the researchers asked 140 kids between the ages of 4 and 13 to describe their earliest memories and then asked them to do the same thing two years later.

On both occasions, the children were also asked to estimate their age at the time of each memory, and parents were questioned to confirm that the events happened.

The researchers found that children between the ages of 4 and 7 during the first interview showed very little overlap between the memories they recalled as “first memories” during the first question session and those they remembered two years later.

“Even when we repeated what they had told us two years before, many of the younger children would tell us that it didn’t happen to them,” Peterson says.

Conversely, a third of the children who were age 10 to 13 during the first interview described the same earliest memory during the second interview. More than half of the memories they recalled were the same at both interviews.

The researchers are now studying why children remember certain events and not others.

Peterson says traumatic or highly stressful events made up only a small percentage of the earliest memories reported by children in the study.

Cultural Differences Influence Early Memory

Earlier research suggests that culture plays a big part in early memory.

When Peterson and colleagues compared early memories in groups of Canadian and Chinese children, they found that the Chinese children’s earliest memories tended to be a year or more later than the earliest memories of Canadian children.

Emory University child memory researcher Robyn Fivush, PhD, found the same thing in a study comparing Chinese and American children.

Fivush tells WebMD that Western children tend to have stronger early memories because their dialog with parents and other adults tends to be more autobiographical.

The first lasting memory I have is from when I was 4 years-old, which seems to be consistent with these findings. When was your first lasting memory?

Click on the link to read Experts Push for Kids to Start Driving at 12

Click on the link to read Study Reveals Children Aren’t Selfish After All

Click on the link to read Catering for Four-Year Old Transgendered Children

Click on the link to read What Happened to Honesty and Integrity?

Click on the link to read Kids Need Meaningful Relationships More than Mobile Phones


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Posted in Child Development | Leave a Comment »

Children’s Books Deemed Sexist

May 6, 2011

It turn out the classic children’s books I have grown up reading have “enforced gender equality.”  Books I appreciated as a child have been among those labeled sexist for featuring a male hero instead of a female one, according to a recent study:

A large-scale study of children’s books published between 1900 and 2000 revealed that they were almost twice as likely to feature a male central character than a female one.

The gender bias was even worse when it came to books with animal characters – often favoured by publishers as ‘gender neutral’ with male animal heroes featuring in three times more books than female animal heroines.

And female characters were even overlooked when it came to star billing – kids’ books were twice as likely to include a male character’s name in their title as a female name.

Researchers from Florida State University, USA, also discovered that while books printed during the 1990s came close to equal representation of male and female human characters, animal characters were twice as likely to be male as female.

In a conclusion that will baffle fans of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, Anne of Green Gables and The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, researchers said their findings indicated a ‘symbolic annihilation of women’.

They warned that the role of kids’ fiction as a ‘dominant blueprint of shared cultural values, meanings and expectations’ could send a message that ‘women and girls occupy a less important role in society than men or boys.’

Evidence of this inequality was noted in how readers ‘interpret even gender neutral characters as male’ and in the way mums ‘frequently label gender-neutral animal characters as male when reading with their children.’

And in books where the characters are animals – such as The Tale of Peter Rabbit, Fantastic Mr Fox and Winnie-the-Pooh – leading and positive female roles are scarcer.

The likes of Jemima Puddle-Duck and Mrs Tiggy-Winkle had key roles in just 7.5 per cent of children’s books. Male rabbits, bears, owls, dogs, foxes and toads were more prevalent – they were the lead characters in 23 per cent of books.

The study, results of which are published in Gender and Society journal, looked at almost 6,000 children’s books published between 1900 and 2000.

Books were chosen from three different sources, including those which had won the prestigious Caldecott Medal, awarded annually to American kids’ fiction.

Study author Professor Janice McCabe, professor of sociology at Florida State University said: “We looked at a full century of books.

“One thing that surprised us is that females’ representations did not consistently improve from 1900 to 2000; in the mid part of the century it was actually more unequal. Books became more male dominated.”

And on the problem of animal characters, Prof McCabe added: “Together with research on reader interpretations, our findings regarding imbalanced representations among animal characters suggests that these characters could be particularly powerful, and potentially overlooked, conduits for gendered messages.

“The persistent pattern of disparity among animal characters may even reveal a subtle kind of symbolic annihilation of women disguised through animal imagery.”

The study found that the imbalance has worsened since the turn of the 20th century, when the split was even.

In the early 1900s there was a move away from books about fairytales based on heroines such as Cinderella. But there were numerous strong female characters. Nancy was the captain of the Amazon in Swallows and Amazons, and What Katy Did was a major series. Male characters such as Harry Potter and Alex Rider now dominate.

I have no issue with the general findings, and I fon;t think too many would be suprised that there is a disparity between central male and female characters in children’s story.  What I do have a problem is with two statements:
As a huge fan of The Wizard of Oz in all forms, I find it absolutely mind-boggling that the researchers have called it a ‘symbolic annihilation of women’.  Talk about over analysis!  I find this label deeply offensive.

And then there’s this bold statement –“The persistent pattern of disparity among animal characters may even reveal a subtle kind of symbolic annihilation of women disguised through animal imagery.”

Annihilation?  Is that the best word they could come up with for books that didn’t pass the gender test, but surely passed the good intentions test?  Is it not possible that while these classic books are a sign of the times when it comes to gender disparity, they are also largely brilliantly written and conceived stories that were written to entertain and engross children rather than to symbolically annihilate women?

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Posted in Literacy | Leave a Comment »

Encouraging Kids to Use Social Media is Not the Way to Go

May 2, 2011

My experiences in teaching has taught me that while we try to empower our kids to act responsibly at all times, reality suggests that the message doesn’t always filter through.  Sometimes, as unfair or overbearing as it sounds, it is simply naive to suggest that children can act with the responsibility and maturity required to warrant the rights and privileges of older individuals.

Facebook is a two-edged sword.  It has its benefits.  But even adults can’t ignore that there are risks to privacy involved.  The call to bring down the age restrictions of Facebook users from 13, to accommodate Primary students lacks foresight and ultimately makes little sense.  Sure you can teach them about privacy settings and warn them about cyber-bullying and cyber-safety, but sadly, there will always be frequent cases of misuse and bullying should the current restrictions be softened.

Soraya Darabi, social media correspondent for ABC America, disagrees:

PRIMARY school students should be receiving lessons in how to make the most of social media and how to protect themselves from its dangers and pitfalls, says a US specialist.

Soraya Darabi, social media correspondent for ABC America, says platforms such as Facebook, Twitter and a raft of newer sites have taken social media to a point where kids need to know how to control what they post online.

“We’re reaching the point where schools should be teaching best practice for social media, right from primary school age, and the importance of protecting their images and information online,” says Darabi.

“They need to know, for instance, that if they are using Twitter they should only be conveying information they are happy to have recorded in the Library of Congress for all time, because that is what’s happening.”

Four years ago, at the age of 23, Darabi helped The New York Times move into social media and she has more than 400,000 followers on Twitter. She says she uses a variety of sites to secure online privacy.

“You must have a few networks that are sacred. For me, anyone can follow me on Twitter. I only accept people as friends on Facebook if I have personally met them. And there’s a site called Path that I reserve for my closest 50 friends, and where I feel safer posting more personal stuff.

“My personality has changed so much online. I still post some personal things. I’m still playful on Twitter, but nowhere near as much as I used to be.

“There’s this whole thing with the personal-professional hybrid that social media is that we’re all still getting used to,” she says. Darabi is reticent about the future of social media; a five-year horizon is far too distant, she says.

Do you honestly think ten-year olds would uniformly accept only the friend requests from people they have met?  What is the point of a Primary aged child having a Twitter account anyway?  I have absolutely no issues in teaching the importance of privacy settings and alerting my students to cyber safety practices.  This is something I currently do.   But what is gained from lessons that “make the most of social media?”

Whilst it is essential to enlighten our children of the issues that arise from improper social media use, there is simply no good reason for Primary students having their own Facebook and Twitter accounts.

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Posted in Cyber Bullying, Cyber Safety, Social Media | 4 Comments »

Monitoring Your Child’s Facebook

April 28, 2011

It’s never ideal to secretly review your child’s activities, but sometimes it’s an imperative that cannot be avoided.  Rather than recommend that parents use this new innovation that allows them to oversee their child’s Facebook page without being classified as their friend, I think it’s important to alert parents and teachers of its existence.

INTERNET security firm Check Point overnight launched software that lets parents watch over offspring on Facebook without being “friends” at the online social network.

ZoneAlarm SocialGuard alerts parents to signs of trouble in a child’s Facebook account without them being privy to all posts, comments, pictures, videos or other digital content shared between friends at the website.

The program scans Facebook profiles, communications and “friend” requests and uses algorithms to identify potential bullying, sexual overtures, or talk of drugs, violence or suicide.

SocialGuard software runs unseen in the background, flagging suspicious activity and sending alerts to parents, according to its Redwood City, California-based creators.

“It’s about protecting your kids from the social threats out there, while still respecting their privacy and fostering open communication,” said Check Point vice president of consumer sales Bari Abdul.

“We are offering Facebook users a simple way to embrace social networking safely,” he continued.

SocialGuard is crafted to detect hacked accounts, malicious links, online predators, and cyber-bullies, according to Check Point.

The software also checks to determine whether people contacting children online are being deceptive about their ages or if a stranger is trying to become a Facebook “friend.”

“Parents are increasingly concerned, and rightfully so, about the dramatically increasing trend of criminals, predators and bullies targeting children over social networks,” said analyst Rob Enderle of Enderle Group in Silicon Valley.

“SocialGuard provides a strong suite of tools that can effectively protect children from these types of social threats that are keeping parents awake at night.”

Check Point cited a survey indicating that 38 percent of teenagers have ignored requests from parents to be friends on Facebook, and that 16 percent of children have only done so as a condition of using the social network.

SocialGuard was available online at zonealarm.com for $US2 ($1.85) monthly or $US20 annually.

Spying on kids is the very last resort.  You would hope that children are able to use social media responsibly.  Unfortunately, too often that is not the case.  Therefore, for safety reasons, it is important that parents are aware of safeguards like this one.

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Posted in Cyber Safety, Parenting | 3 Comments »

The Benefits of Educational Apps

April 22, 2011

Last week I discussed how technology can be a good thing when the balance is right.  Unfortunately, technology addiction is very common among young children.  The trick is to have firm guidelines for how much time can be dedicated to technology use.  I certainly wouldn’t ban it altogether.

Technology has such a legitimate upside which cannot be dismissed:

Pupils at primary schools who use educational apps on smart-phones and tablets are performing better in their lessons, a new report showed has revealed.

The study reveals that forty per cent of parents who download educational apps say their child’s academic performance has improved as a result.

But the research shows that not only are they helping to raise academic attainment, educational apps are also helping children aged between 5 and 11 every day, inside the classroom. 

The study, commissioned by Encyclopaedia Britannica, shows the vast majority of parents who have downloaded an app claim they have helped their child with school work and projects, while more than half of parents with smart devices actively encourage their child to download apps for exam revision, homework and learning about new topics.

The report also reveals that families with access to mobile devices are fully engaged with educational apps as learning aids, with the average smartphone-owning family downloading more than four since purchasing their device.

The findings comes as two thirds of parents with smart devices are calling for more educational apps to be developed, saying they encourage independent learning and that children prefer to use them compared to other learning aids.

Ian Grant, Managing Director of Encyclopaedia Britannica UK, said: ‘It’s great that families are fully embracing new technologies when it comes to their childrens education and that they’re starting to see tangible benefits to academic attainment, both in and out of the classroom.’

Sue Atkins, Author of Raising Happy Children for Dummies and parenting blogger, said: ‘In a busy, hectic, stress-filled world of trying to get children interested in learning and being curious about the world, we need to engage them in new ways, and what better way than to download smartphone apps.

‘As a parent myself, I welcome this brilliant new way to help my daughter with her revision.’

Research was carried out online by PCP among 510 UK parents of children aged 5 – 11 with access to at least one smart device, in March 2011.

Exposing children to technology is good when properly supervised. Like with everything in Education, and therefore in life – balance is integral.

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Posted in Technology in the Classroom | 3 Comments »

Schools Must Share the Blame With Parents

April 18, 2011

Teachers are great at blaming poor parenting for the bad habits of their students. Often it is completely justified. However, sometimes parents are not the only one that deserves the criticism. Sometimes when students present poorly at school, it is just as much the failure of the school to engage and enforce standards as it is the parents.

Take this case for example:

Teachers are warning that pupils are failing to pack their schoolbags with basic classroom equipment and instead are bringing mobile phones, iPods, hand-held computer game devices and even the latest iPads to school.

Some schools have even begun to introduce new agreements which require parents to ensure their children are equipped with textbooks and pens at the beginning of each day.

“They often don’t come to school with their books, or without their homework and sometimes they are lacking something so basic as a pencil to write with,” said Chris Keates, the general secretary of the NASUWT union.

“They come with all this electronic equipment, it would be nice if they just brought a pen.

“My message to parents is that you can send a very powerful message to your child about the importance of their schooling by making sure that they are ready to work when they get to class each morning.”

The problem will be discussed at the union’s annual conference later this week, which will also hear from schools which have drawn up “learning contracts” with parents to encourage them to take a keener interest in their child’s day-to-day progress.

Frustrated by pupils forgetting the basics but arriving with hundreds of pounds worth of electronics in their blazer pocket or schoolbag, one Sheffield teacher was instrumental in introducing a learning contract at his school.

The English and drama teacher, who declined to be named, said: “I teach children from some of the wealthiest backgrounds in the city but it was getting to be an absolute pain in terms of the day-to-day basics.

“It’s amazing how many devices kids carry around with them these days. Young people aspire to have these Macbooks and other expensive equipment but it seems to me that the priorities are skewed.

“They automatically reach for their MP3 players and so on, but not for the writing equipment.

“I believe they should be able to pick up a pen and construct a sentence, which is correct in terms of grammar and spelling, without resorting to an electronic spellchecking device which will probably give them an incorrect, American version.”

He added: “Our policy sees any forgotten equipment being marked in children’s daily log books for parents to see and I urge all parents in the country to check their child has the basic equipment for the school day.”

The Education Bill published in January proposed new powers for teachers to confiscate prohibited items, including electronic gadgets, and to also enable staff to examine data such as video clips for evidence of bullying or other bad behaviour.

A survey in 2006 found that 91 per cent of children owned a mobile telephone by the age of 12.

This article is a great example of teachers blaming parents for a problem they have a share in. The following points need to be made:

  1. If you have a child at your school for 5-15 years and they still haven’t grasped the concept of bringing pens and text books to class, you are not running a very good school. Where are your rules? Where are your expectations? Don’t blame parents for not overseeing their kids’ schoolbag – surely you can do more to enforce standards of organisation.
  2. What has mobile phones and i-Pods got to do with not bringing books and pens to school? If you have a problem with electronic gadgets, ban them or at least set some guidelines. Kids will always be drawn to modern gadgets. Don’t blame mobile phones for the lack of student organisation. There is no reason why kids can’t be taught the importance of balancing educational and extra-curricular activities.
  3. If you’ve got something to say to parents don’t do it through the media. Teachers and parents must work together. Articles that have teachers preaching to parents often create a divide which helps no one.
  4. Finally, and perhaps most importantly, a likely reason for our students being so disinterested in their studies as to come to class unprepared, is due to the lack of engagement on the part of teacher. One of the most important skills a teacher must have is the ability to stimulate and interest their class. If their class seems bored, it is probably because they have a boring teacher. It’s so easy to blame parents and i-Pods, when the real issue is there are too many teachers who offer little and expect a lot in return.

You might accuse me of being disloyal to my profession. The truth is, I am a parent as well as a teacher, and I empathise and relate to both sides of this debate. Sure there is far too many parents out there that don’t get involved with their child’s educational needs. I hear horror stories all the time. But let’s not forget that teachers choose to enter this profession because they want to make a difference to their students. To do this, they must be prepared to work through all obstacles and challenges.

Apportioning blame is fine – just as long as all parties accept some responsibility.

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Posted in Dealing with Parents | 1 Comment »

Poor Children Coming to School Tired and Hungry

April 15, 2011

This is a universal problem that requires a lot more attention.  Teachers are not given enough credit for their role in supporting kids that come to school with inadequate food or no lunch at all.  It is not widely known that teachers often spend out of their own pocket to ensure that their poorer students have what to eat.  But the problem still exists, and it must be addressed.

A concerted campaign from schools by working with charity groups to ensure that meals are provided for students of poor families should ensure that heartbreaking articles like this one will be a thing of the past:

Teachers are reporting a rise in pupils entering the classroom feeling tired, hungry and dressed in worn-out clothes.

A study by the Association of Teachers and Lecturers found almost eight-in-10 staff had pupils living below the poverty line and a quarter believed numbers had increased since the start of the recession.

One teacher from Nottingham told of a sixth-former who had not eaten for three days as her “mother had no money at all until pay day”.

A teaching assistant from a West Midlands comprehensive told researchers that some pupils had “infected toes due to feet squashed into shoes way too small”, while another member from Halifax reported a boy who was ridiculed in the PE changing room because his family could not afford to buy him any underpants.

Some teachers told how pupils were consistently late for lessons as parents could not cover the bus fare to school. Other children from middle to lower income families have been forced to cut out school tips because money is so tight, it was claimed.

The disclosure follows the publication of figures showing a rise in the number of pupils eligible for free school meals as families struggle to stay above the breadline in the recession.

Almost 1.2 million five- to 16-year-olds claimed free lunches last year – a rise of more than 83,000 in just 12 months.

Mary Bousted, ATL general secretary, claimed that problems would escalate further because of Government funding cuts – putting the Coalition’s social mobility drive in jeopardy.

“It is appalling that in 2011 so many children in the UK are severely disadvantaged by their circumstances and fail to achieve their potential,” she said.

“What message does this government think it is sending young people when it is cutting funding for Sure Start centres, cutting the Education Maintenance Allowance, raising tuition fees and making it harder for local authorities to provide health and social services.

“The Government should forget empty rhetoric about social mobility and concentrate on tackling the causes of deprivation and barriers to attainment that lock so many young people into a cycle of poverty.”

It is time that we made the most crucial issues in education our first priority and main focus.  As important as debate over class size, ICT, male teacher numbers are for improved educational outcomes, such discussion often takes over.  We need to get back to basics.  The basic requirement for a school is to look after the welfare of its students.  That makes health and bullying among the most important priorities in my book.Here’s an opportunity for schools and charity groups to work together to tackle a problem that shouldn’t even exist in the forst place.

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Posted in Child Welfare, Nutrition | 2 Comments »

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