In the News
Unicef Report on Childhood
Posted by
Kathy Brodie on December 13, 2008.
I read with no surprise the results from the Unicef report, and the resultant reporting in the Times yesterday (11th December 2008). When all the hype and comment has been cleaned away the nugget of truth left is that a child from a disadvantaged background does not benefit from poor quality day care. Hardly earth shattering. Maria Montessori had spotted this over 100years ago. More recently the EPPE research has proved it.
The interesting part for me was that the Times had chosen to dedicate two full pages and a half page of comment to this. There were even references to research – EPPE appears on both for and against childcare, again demonstrating a balanced piece of research. You do have to read to the penultimate paragraph before you come to the obvious conclusion –
“Either the Government must help these mothers to recognise that looking after their young children is a serious job or they must provide these children from deprived backgrounds with highly skilled, well-paid nursery teachers who can help to improve their chances in life not damage them.” http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/guest_contributors/article5321347.ece
(As an EYP I am assuming here that the author, Alice Thomson, is referring to a ‘teacher’ as all those who educate and care for early years children).
This did give me great hope that the discussion about early years education is becoming news worthy and of interest to the general public. If nothing else it prompts the questions which may be asked by parents – is my nursery/childcare arrangement of sufficiently good quality? Of course, demographics tell us that those parents who are most likely to be reading the Times have already worked this out for themselves. Those parents who need the help to identify a quality setting have been missed again.