(Image: Newsquest)
'Parenting lessons could improve exam results'
With reference to the apparently intractable problem of the ever-widening gap at GCSE and A-level between those from the poorer socio-economic groups and the rest, I think there is a solution but it won’t be popular because it smacks of demonising people.
I don’t wish to demonise anyone, but I do want to help kids who are victims of circumstances they are born into.
Speaking as a retired English teacher - putting on one side the ‘good schools v bad schools’ debate (they exist, as do good and bad teachers) - the inescapable truth is that if you come from the poorer socio-economic groups you are less likely to fare well academically anyway.
Obviously, there are exceptions to this - children of migrants who live in reduced circumstances while they find their feet, for example, or those few who emerge against the odds - but in general, the unpalatable truth is that parents from this group are unable or unwilling to give their children the start they need.
Research shows that much of what we become is laid down in the first five years of life and it is then that we are provided with the tools essential for learning in the formal education system - or not!
It isn’t rocket science or a complex programme of study.
It consists of introducing and pointing out things, feeding an interest - commenting on a caterpillar crawling across a leaf as the child passes in its pushchair, for example - or simply reading to them and, essentially, giving love in a child-oriented environment that is not violent or discordant.
My recommendation is - given that the child’s needs must always take primacy over the parents’ needs/society’s woke sensitivities - that the Government introduce an obligatory programme of effective parenting based on the above precepts.
The child will obviously benefit, the parents - though reluctant initially to do what they should have been doing all the while - will find their lives turned round in ways they couldn’t have imagined and there will be far-reaching benefits for society too - youth unemployment will be addressed, for example, and it is no coincidence that the socio-economic group with the poorest academic outcomes is the one that overcrowds our prisons!
Guy DowseMeadowfields Dr, YorkRecommended reads:
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