A Nottingham Labour MP, Graham Allen is asking for basic social skills to be taught by schools to fill the gap of “poor parenting”.......
A Nottingham Labour MP, Graham Allen is asking for basic social skills to be taught by schools to fill the gap of “poor parenting”. The Labour MP wants the social skills curriculum to teach primary school pupils “to resolve conflict without violence, to highlight the importance of empathy and respecting others and how to make informed decisions.” He mentions an Ofsted report that despite high standards of teaching many children have very low levels of attainment. He says that the Ofsted reports “go on to state that many of these children arrive in school unable to complete a sentence and unable to recognise a letter or a number. In such circumstances it is essential that these children are given the social toolkit to learn rather than squeezed into a middle England academic model which dooms them to failure at five”.
My heart sinks – again responsibilities that belong to parents are suggested to be loaded onto teachers – as if a few hours in the classroom could negate five pre-school developmental years of poor or non-existent language and social development in a dysfunctional family. As the gap between the have and have nots (as related to communication and social skills) widen, I am concerned that so many answers seem to be loaded onto the plates of the state rather than being in-built into responsibilities of parents in receipt of state benefits. Why shouldn’t parents (mother or father or both) in receipt of family benefits be required to attend parent and child playgroups with their pre-school child. Perhaps a bit of social skills development may then have some longer term use. What do you think ?
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