Achieving
Quality in South Africa
We
have heard that NACCW (the National Association of Child Care
Workers) has had another cracking Annual Congress. Faced with
massive problems, the social care services have responded,
not just with traditional ideas such as residential care,
but a whole raft of community responses. The numbers of children
in families left parentless by AIDS, for example, has meant
that the older children have had to be trained up and supported
to act as parents to their brothers and sisters. Not all measures
are successful though; it was reported that the provision
of welfare benefits for young mothers has made teenage pregnancy
popular.
To
ensure a high quality of child care, NACCW has been in the
forefront with quality assurance systems, providing training
at different levels and successfully arguing for a national
registration system.
The conference itself was pretty lively by all accounts, with
each of the provincial delegations entering the hall with
banners, singing and dancing as they came. Intervals between
speeches were filled with more singing. Despite a challenge
from a woman candidate, Francisco Cornelius was elected again
as President, a popular choice.
In
the parallel conference for children, a party was taken by
an 89-year-old poet – a friend of Nelson Mandela –
to see Robbin Island and so keep alive the memory of what
people had to go through to overcome apartheid.
We
were told that South Africans have a self-image that they
are second-rate. If so, they are wrong. In many ways they
are ahead of the game. And in any case, what matters is whether
people find solutions for their own problems, and NACCW is
doing a valiant job in achieving that for South Africa.
Achieving
Quality in Care in England
Ofsted
has produced a report on day care services for young children
called Early Years : Firm Foundations. The overall
conclusion from David Bell, the Chief Inspector of Schools,
was that parents can be reassured that the vast majority of
child care providers in England are “doing a good job
in keeping children safe and preparing them for life at their
big school”.
In
particular, 48 per cent of England's 94,000 childminders were
classed as good - the highest mark available, 48 per cent
were satisfactory, and just one per cent were unsatisfactory.
Of course, we would like 100 percent to be deemed very good,
as a lot of them are providing first rate services, but Ofsted
is not prepared to use the label. As the bottom line, though,
as long as they keep a close eye on the unsatisfactory 1 per
cent, and take action to deregister them if necessary, we
are happy that the system is worth its cost.
Achieving
Quality in Education
The
results of this year's GCSE examinations show a pass rate
of 98 per cent, while 61.2 per cent of pupils obtained A*
-C grades and 18.4 per cent of entries were graded at A* and
A. A couple of Comprehensive Schools and over fifty Grammar
Schools achieved 100 per cent scores.
The
figures for A Level passes are similarly high, having gone
up by 0.2% to 96.2%. As one might expect there has been the
usual furore about exams getting easier on the one hand, and
pupils doing better on the other. We suspect that, since high
percentages represent success, schools are progressively putting
fewer candidates forward who may fail. If so, it is arguable
whether it is in the pupils’ best interests or not.
They are not exposed to potential failure if they are not
put forward, but they are also denied the off-chance of success.
Of
greater importance, more than 40 per cent of employers are
unhappy with the skill levels of the school leavers they hire
and half say school leavers lack communication, team-working
and problem-solving skills.
We
think it is time to review examinations and the whole education
system more fundamentally. There is obviously much more to
education than preparing people for jobs, but if schooling
is to fit children for life, the qualities listed above are
some of the sorts of competences which children will need
in life. Yet we still teach by subjects – history, physics
and so on. Is this the best way to provide the competences,
or should we realign the whole curriculum to target the key
requirements? In the course of achieving them, children will
presumably still need to know about history and physics, but
maybe taught in an entirely different way.
Alcohol
It
has been reported that in Scotland, one in ten 15-year-olds
is spending £1,500 a year on alcohol, cigarettes and
drugs, according to a survey of 3,500 secondary school pupils.
The charity Alcohol Concern has blamed lax policing for the
problem and says that it is too easy for children to buy alcohol,
while even a modest increase in police patrols around off-licences
could reduce sales to children by 35 to 40 per cent.
£1,500
is a lot, and drink, drugs and cigarettes are not good things
for children to spend their money on. They can damage their
health, they can lead to antisocial or uncontrolled behaviour,
and they are habit-forming.
The
spending may be part of a larger pattern. Deaths from alcohol-related
illnesses have risen by 20% in the last five years. Young
Britons now have an appalling reputation abroad for their
behaviour on holiday, for example, especially when under the
influence of alcohol. One in three girls and one in five boys
aged 15 and 16 admitted to binge drinking three or more times
in the previous month. In the news this month was the death
of a teenager who had had eleven alcoholic drinks in forty
minutes at a party. Judges and police are warning against
the increased availability of alcohol.
In
the nineteenth century there were massive campaigns to encourage
teetotalism and overcome the demon drink. Since then, attitudes
have softened a lot, partly because a lot of people can manage
modest social drinking, and even groups such as Methodists,
who used to be strongly opposed to alcohol consumption, have
dropped their opposition.
The
statistics in the latest report, though, suggest that it is
time for another campaign, a serious drive to reduce drinking
among children and young adults. Of course, there is a rebellious
phase that many young people go through, when they test out
the limits before deciding on their own way of life, but the
picture painted by the data suggests that for those involved
it is their way of life. If so, there is a real risk that
they end up with serious physical and/or mental health problems,
unable to cope with higher education or work, open to exploitation,
probably incompetent as parents, and likely to die before
their time.
It
may need a jolting campaign such as teetotalism to counter
such a bleak prospect.
Accidents
Traffic
is reported to be the single biggest cause of accidental death
for 12-16 year olds. In 2004, 57 children aged 11-16 were
killed as pedestrians on Britain's roads along with 1,407
serious injuries and 6,013 slight injuries.
Six out of ten have either been in an accident/near miss or
know someone at school who has been. They get distracted when
they cross the road by talking and having fun with their friends,
chatting on the mobile phone, listening to music, or just
thinking about something else.
The Government is aiming to make teenagers aware of the dangers
of not concentrating on what they are doing when they step
off the kerb with a new hard-hitting road safety campaign.
Our experience is that even when they are aware of the traffic,
they still play chicken or dash across the road, assuming
that all will be well.
Did
You See?......
......
Kids Behind Bars, a
Channel 4 documentary shown on 25 August, which six young
offenders were interviewed in Aycliffe Local Authority Secure
Unit, for young offenders aged between 10 and 16, and Castington
prison, which has 170 prisoners aged 15 to 18. They were asked,
without commentary, how they felt about the crimes they had
committed, and their own words created a powerful picture.
For
some, the reality of what they had done and its impact on
their victims had clearly not sunk in; for others, a more
mature understanding of life, of the way they had behaved
and of what they could do to change their lives appeared to
be emerging.
It
sometimes seems that offenders and people with other problems
cannot be reached until the time arrives when they themselves
are ready and willing to address their problems. Until then,
any efforts by helping agencies or individuals fail, though
they may be sowing seeds which bear fruit at a later stage,
and they have to continue in the hope that the right time
is about to arrive.
.....
the BBC 2 programme, Children of
Beslan on 30 August 2005? It consisted almost
entirely of the spoken contributions of the children who were
among those who survived their ordeal as hostages a year ago
in North Ossetia, with occasional written headlines to provide
a framework for the events as the narrative unfolded. Letting
people tell their own story is a very effective method of
getting a powerful message across, and a number of themes
came through.
The
children themselves were at times very trusting and naive
(believing that the terrorist activity was for a film, for
example) but also at times insightful and very adult. They
looked to their parents for explanation and help, but saw
them powerless and even witnessed their deaths. There were
poignant moments, such as the way one mother dealt with the
children’s thirst by dunking a furry toy in water and
the children all sucked on it. There were children casting
around to think of solutions, such as the boy who hoped that
Harry Potter would arrive with a cloak of invisibility.
Finally,
there was the sad emptiness which has settled on Beslan, the
grief of children who miss their friends, the recognition
that they will never forget the horror of those three days
and the understandable wish for revenge. One child reported
that a terrorist said that they themselves were seeking revenge
for the deaths of their families at hands of Russian troops.
It is a process which might never end. Unless the children’s
feelings are addressed, there will be the makings of retaliatory
attacks, perhaps fifty years from now when they are in positions
of responsibility, as happened following the break-up of Yugoslavia.
It
seemed that the very process of being terrorists dehumanised
the gang, such that a female terrorist who was wanting to
help the hostages was blown up by the leader of the group,
and even at the end they wantonly killed a group of children
who had escaped and were drinking at a tap for the first time
in three days.
We
create terrible legacies when we decide to use violence, and
the process of creating peace out of such a maelstrom is very
hard work.
Whistling
“You
like whistling, don’t you, Grandad?” I made a
flip reply, but the question got me thinking. When I was young,
virtually every man whistled as he worked or walked to the
pub. It is now a rare activity. It is even listed as one of
the most irritating habits.
Why?
Perhaps it has something to do with “the old grey whistle
test”, when new songs were tested out on passers-by
to see if their tunes were catchy enough. That was probably
back in the 1930s and 1940s, but how many tunes from hits
of the last thirty years could you whistle? People know how
the pieces go, but there are not very many that people sing,
hum or whistle to themselves.
Perhaps
the impact of music over recent decades has depended more
on the combined effect of its sounds than its tunes, and one
effect is that it has been less easy to reproduce. It has
been governed by technology – electronic instruments
and means of reproduction, rather than the human voice or
lips.
Of
course, people do still play instruments and sing, but as
a generality, popular music-making has been reduced to passive
listening to recordings of others performing rather than active
participation. There are times, such as football matches,
where mass chanting takes place, but people today do not ordinarily
sing or whistle as they go about their daily business in the
way they used to. Now they are plugged in to an iPod.
Maybe
it’s about time that songs which kids can sing and tunes
they can whistle re-entered popular culture.
See
Him Go!
Another
comparison with the past. What a healthy happy little chap!
And doesn’t he go fast with beans inside him! When this
advert was produced, the pictures gave simple messages, suited
to the times.
Think
of all the alternatives to baked beans now, each seeking its
share in the market. Advertising now is much more sophisticated
and children are probably more alert to its pressures. The
image for the 21st century should probably be an obese child
eating crisps in front of the computer. But was it a golden
age of simplicity when Heinz put the advert out, or was it
in some ways pretty grim, with baked beans the only delicacy
on offer?
Adoption
There
are apparently rumbling noises in the Conservative Party about
adoption, led by Theresa May, because of concern that Social
Services Departments are rushing adoptions through and taking
children away from their parents for insufficient reasons.
During the last month a court case in Essex, when a child
was taken from parents with learning difficulties, has brought
the issue to public attention.
We
don’t know the details of this case and cannot comment.
We have said in the past, though, that the adoption system
was in our view working satisfactorily when the current Government
decided to change it, and encourage social workers to get
more children adopted.
It
was argued that adopted children succeeded more than those
who were fostered or placed in residential care. It was our
view that it was the care taken in selecting children which
led to the success, and that any extension of adoption to
other children would lead to a higher failure rate.
If
social workers have been acting more precipitately, it will
have been in response to Government pressure, led by the Prime
Minister himself. We shall look forward with interest to the
outcome of any inquiry set up under pressure from the Conservatives.
Another
Response to Paedotrophia
A
Thora Pip Ode : Keeping One’s Word
Always
keep your promises
When speaking to your son.*
Be clear in your instructions
About what must be done.
If he can trust in what you say,
The battle is near won.
Remember
how the boy cried, “Wolf!”
And did it to annoy?
Well, when they found it wasn’t true,
They didn’t trust the boy.
So let your infant trust your words
And you’ll have peace and joy.
Make
sure that you’ve the power too
To make your words come true.
No point in threats that you can’t keep:
He’ll just lose faith in you.
And don’t make threats you won’t enforce,
Or he’ll ignore them too.
But
if you yell, “I’ll murder you”,
Don’t do it right away.
Delay, in case you’ve second thoughts :
- Do it the following day?
(Of course it’s best to think twice first
And temper what you say.)
So
threats and promises alike –
Be careful what you say.
But having spoken, keep your word,
And you will win the day.
But if you lie or change your mind,
There’s mayhem on the way.
*This
does apply to daughters too, but they’re harder to rhyme.
From
a Brochure
The
Trust works with those suffering from metal disorders.....
Like
Evel Knievel?
