Primary Teacher UK

Breastfeeding may help to offset early disadvantages, researchers say

Breastfeeding may be particularly important to the educational and emotional development of children from single-parent and low-income families, new research suggests.

Previous studies have reported that the high nutritional content of breast milk can increase a baby’s IQ. Other research has found that breastfed children are at an advantage because their mothers are, on average, better-off and more articulate.

However, a new study from the Institute of Education, London, which involved 1,136 mothers, strengthens the argument that breastfeeding is also associated with more positive parenting practices that can continue beyond infancy.

Researchers who analysed the behaviour of mothers reading a storybook to their one-year-old children found that, on average, those who breastfed made more effort to engage their infants in the book than mothers who bottle-fed. In general, mothers with more positive attitudes towards breastfeeding also appeared to have a warmer relationship with their babies.

The greatest differences in behaviour were between two groups of single and low-income mothers – those who breastfed for between 6 and 12 months, and those who bottle-fed. Poorer women who breastfed interacted with their babies during the book-reading exercise almost as well as more advantaged mothers did. However, low-income mothers who bottle-fed their babies tended to communicate with them much less well than other mothers, the researchers say.

Marital status had no effect on the quality of a mother’s interaction with her child, provided she had breastfed for 6 to 12 months. In fact, single mothers who had breastfed for this period made slightly more effort than other mothers to explain the storybook to their child.

A repeat experiment four years later found that mothers who had been on a low income when their child was one, but had breastfed for more than six months, had a higher quality of interaction with their five-year-old than other mothers. They also made more effort to engage their child in the book-reading exercise than mothers who had not breastfed. By contrast, breastfeeding appeared to have no lasting effect on the parenting behaviours of married and higher-income mothers.

The report’s principal author, Dr Leslie Gutman, research director of the Institute’s Centre for Research on the Wider Benefits of Learning, says that the age five findings underscore the “protective” influence of breastfeeding for lone parent and low-income families.  Future studies should investigate the processes behind the findings, she suggests. Researchers should attempt to establish, for example, whether skin-to-skin contact forms stronger bonds between breastfed infants and their mothers which, in turn, lead to more positive parenting practices.

Dr Gutman also says that the findings provide support for government policies that encourage breastfeeding, particularly for more disadvantaged mothers. “Mothers in such challenging circumstances may face more obstacles to breastfeeding, especially for a longer period of time,” she points out. “They may lack role models and encouragement, or they may be under greater pressure to return to work when their child is still very young.”

If a mother works on a short-term casual basis, or is an agency worker, she may not qualify for maternity leave, and if she earns less than £90 per week, on average, she does not qualify for Statutory Maternity Pay. This may act as an incentive to stop breastfeeding and return to work as soon as possible, the study says.

“New mothers, particularly in deprived communities, may therefore require more than information leaflets,” the researchers comment. “Rather, interventions that offer early and ongoing support and encouragement to manage breastfeeding may be needed: this may come from financial support in order to enable a delay in return to work and/or workplace nurseries where mothers can visit and breastfeed their babies during the day. Meanwhile, campaigns such as ‘Be a star’, run by Blackpool Primary Care Trust (PCT) and North Lancashire Teaching PCT to provide role models for young mothers, may be a way of highlighting the issue.”

The Institute of Education research, which was funded by the Department for Children, Schools and Families, is based on a new analysis of previously unreported data that were originally collected as part of the Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children in the mid-1990s.

Dr Gutman and her colleagues also found that mothers with extensive social networks interacted with their infants more positively, on average, than mothers with more limited social circles. “At a community level, the finding implies that the networking and social interactions that go on between parents in children’s centres, early-years settings, community groups and many other community venues,  such as libraries, and health and leisure centres, are of great value,” they say.

Efforts to improve maternal health could also help to build parenting capabilities as post-natal depression impairs communication between mother and child, the researchers add.

Nurturing parenting capability: the early years, by Leslie Gutman, John Brown and Rodie Akerman, can be downloaded from the website of the Centre for Research on the Wider Benefits of Learning www.learningbenefits.net from today.

Grandparents are not always the most effective childcarers, researchers say

Many babies who are looked after by grandparents while their mothers are out at work might be better off in nurseries or crèches, a new study suggests.

Grandparents can often help to develop a baby’s vocabulary but they may be unable to provide other educational and social experiences that an infant needs, say researchers at the Institute of Education, University of London.

They have found that children looked after by grandparents at the age of 9 months were considered to have more behavioural problems at age 3 than those who had been in the care of a nursery, crèche, childminder, nanny or another family member. The research involved 4,800 UK children born in 2000 and 2001 who are being tracked by the Millennium Cohort Study. All of the children had mothers who worked when they were babies.

According to their mothers, children who had been cared for by grandparents – more than one in three of those studied – were more likely to have difficult relationships with other youngsters at age 3. Boys were said to have particular problems relating to their peers. The behaviour issue affected families of all social backgrounds.

Dr Kirstine Hansen and Dr Denise Hawkes also found that three-year-olds who had been in nurseries and crèches at 9 months were often more ready for school than those who had been looked after by grandparents, childminders, family members or friends. On average, they achieved higher scores in an assessment that measured their understanding of colours, letters, numbers, sizes, comparisons and shapes.

However, children with highly educated mothers tended to have more extensive vocabularies if they had been looked after by a grandparent – the maternal grandmother in most cases. Grandparents also had a positive effect on the vocabularies of children living in two-parent families, those with older mothers and those in families that were not claiming benefits.

"This may, of course, reflect the better vocabulary skills of grandmothers in such families," says Dr Hansen, research director of the Millennium Cohort Study. "But it may also be partly because grandparents talk to children more than other carers, not only because they have more time, but because they compensate for a reduction in physical activities with the child.              

"There is also evidence that older people are more likely to use grammatically correct sentences and speak more slowly to children. They are also less likely to tolerate grammatical errors and will correct their grandchildren's language.”

The study did not investigate why children looked after by grandparents appear to exhibit more behavioural problems. But the researchers point out that some previous studies suggest pre-school settings such as nurseries can help children to develop the social skills they need to get on with their peers. “Children who are looked after by grandparents, on the other hand, spend more time with adults," they add.

However, the researchers argue that grandparent childcarers deserve support rather than criticism. "Our research shows that grandparent care contributes both positively and negatively to child outcomes, and perhaps with government support this situation could be improved,” they say.

There are currently no allowances, tax breaks or grants for grandparents who care for grandchildren. If grandparents register as child minders they can receive support and training and can be paid by the parent who can claim back some of the cost through Working Tax Credit. However, at present, grandparents can only do this if they also care for a child who is not a relative.

"Understandably, many grandparents are unable or unprepared to take on this additional burden," Dr Hansen says. "Perhaps a more flexible approach which offers training and support for informal carers should be considered rather than encouraging them down the formal care routes. It should be possible for grandparents to receive recognition and reward for the caring they are already doing."

The study also found that girls appeared to benefit especially from time spent in nurseries and crèches, as did children from two-parent families and those with better-educated mothers. However, children with younger mothers and those living in households claiming benefits were also found to be more ready for school if they had attended nurseries or crèches.

"This is almost certainly because nurseries and crèches are more likely to offer structure and content to daily activities with children and their staff are more likely to be trained, to have better facilities and resources and to provide more educational stimulation," the researchers say. "This is another of the study's important findings because it suggests that this form of childcare has the potential to reduce inequalities.

“Our study therefore delivers a reassuring message for the UK government, which has invested a great deal in policies that are aimed at improving child outcomes and reducing the achievement gap between advantaged and disadvantaged families.”

The study’s findings will be reported in an article, “Early childcare and child development”, that will appear in the forthcoming issue of the Journal of Social Policy, published by Cambridge University Press. The online version of the article can be accessed via the CUP website http://www.cambridge.org from today (February 10).

6hrs a day in front of a screen

Television is now less than half of children's viewing time, in competition with the internet and computer games.  More than one in three children told researchers the possession they could least live without was their computer.

The overall time spent in front of screens by five to 16-year-olds in Britain was nearly six hours a day. The survey by the Childwise research agency found that YouTube was the most used website, followed by various social networking sites.

The survey of 1,800 children, taken last autumn, found they were spending 2.7 hours per day watching television, 1.5 hours on the internet and 1.3 hours on games consoles.

You can read more information about the findings at on the Guardians website: http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2008/jan/16/television.socialnetworking

How much money do you spend in school?

A poll of more than 1,000 teachers and school support staff found that the vast majority - 91% - have reached into their own pocket to buy items for the classroom.  More than half said the items they buy are essential for their job, a similar proportion said it was because the children were interested in something, while 86% said it was to make learning more fun.

28% however said they spent their own money because their school was short of money.  Almost half of those questioned for the ATL survey said they have not tried to claim the money back from their school.  Other statistics revealed include:

• Of those who had claimed money back, more than a third - 35% said their school had refused to reimburse them.
• 56% said the reason for the refusal was because the school's budget had already been spent.
• 40% said they had been told that the items were not essential.
• 25% said they spend between £51 and £100 a year which is not reimbursed, while 13% said they spend over £100.
• Prizes for pupils were the number one items bought by teachers (77%)
• 64% pay out for display items
• 51% spend their money on buying pens, pencils or stationery.
• 25% had bought text books.
• 57% said they do not claim mileage or travel expenses, with 45% saying they don't do it because no one else does.

Rose Curriculum Report

Schools need to move with the times and teach much secondary school Information Communication Technology (ICT) knowledge earlier at primary, said Sir Jim Rose in a major report published yesterday.

The report also says that summer-born children should start primary school the September after their fourth birthday and some children should start part-time.

Children’s Secretary Ed Balls today welcomed these and other findings in the interim report of Sir Jim’s root and branch independent review of the primary curriculum. Sir Jim unveiled plans for a new curriculum that would mean a smoother transition between early years and primary and offer more opportunities for play and child-based activities, easing parents’ concerns about an abrupt change from play in early years to formal teaching in primaries.

Mr Balls asked Sir Jim to lead the review so the Government could build on the last decade’s successes and create fresh momentum in raising standards. Sir Jim says schools should continue to make literacy and numeracy priorities but also develop speaking and listening skills and put greater focus on personal development.

Provisional recommendations are made to smooth the transition between primary and secondary schools, reduce prescription and give teachers more flexibility within a richer curriculum.

Provisional recommendations and findings include:

• The curriculum should include the best of subject-teaching and cross-curricular studies in six new areas of learning. This would dovetail with the new Early Years Foundation Stage framework and enable strong links to be forged with the new secondary curriculum;
• Children should get more opportunities to use and apply knowledge and skills across the curriculum, e.g. in mathematics, science and technology;
• Pupils’ progress from early years to primary to secondary should be maintained, including a better record of a child’s achievement when they begin secondary school;
• Children should acquire a range of personal, social and emotional qualities essential to their health, well-being and life as a responsible citizen in the 21st century – getting the right skills, knowledge, understanding and attitudes;
• The value of play to children’s learning and development should be made explicit in any revisions to the primary curriculum; and
• Building on Lord Dearing’s report recommending foreign languages be taught in primaries, schools should focus on teaching only one or two foreign languages at primary school and, where possible, the same language should be taught at secondary school. However there should still be opportunities for pupils to study the likes of Mandarin and Urdu.

Sir Jim Rose said:

“The demands of society on primary schools have risen and continue to rise but if we are to establish a ‘world class’ high quality curriculum, we must face the reality of prescribing less so that teachers can better teach and children can better learn.What some regard as the piggy-in-the-middle position of the primary years from age 5 to 11 presents a considerable challenge for curriculum design and choice of content. While primary education must build upon the EYFS and prepare children for education post-11, it is far more than either a post-script to the early years, or a prelude to secondary education.

Good primary teaching deepens and widens children’s understanding by firing their imagination and interest in learning. One highly promising route to meeting the demand for in-depth teaching and learning is undoubtedly emerging through ICT.

The primary curriculum needs to be forward-looking. Advances in technology and the internet revolution are driving a pace of change which we could not have imagined when the National Curriculum was introduced twenty years ago.

By definition, this interim report is work in progress. It identifies and seeks to clarify issues, examine options and set out directions for fulfilling the remit of the Review. The report takes into account what we know about how learning and standards are advanced in our leading edge schools through high quality teaching.”

The full interim report can be read at:http://publications.teachernet.gov.uk/default.aspx?PageFunction=productdetails&PageMode=publications&ProductId=BLNK-01010-2008&

You can find out more about the Independent Review of the Primary Curriculum and comment on the interim report through its website http://www.dcsf.gov.uk/primarycurriculumreview/

Intolerance of children according to Barnardo's

A poll by Barnardo's shows that society casually condemns all children, with more than half the population (54%) thinking that British children are beginning to behave like animals.

The research conducted by YouGov shows that the public holds a negative view of all children, despite the vast majority of children making positive contributions to their communities, attending school, taking part in activities and a significant number volunteering.

The findings show:

• just under half (49%) of people agree that children are increasingly a danger to each other and adults
• 43% agree something has to be done to protect us from children
• more than a third (35%) of people agree that nowadays it feels like the streets are infested with children
• 45% of public agree that people refer to children as feral because they behave this way
• nearly half of people (49%) disagree with the statement that children who get into trouble are often misunderstood and in need of professional help

The public’s intolerance is also reflected in the British Crime Survey, which indicates that the public felt young people committed up to half of all crime when in actual fact young people are responsible for only 12% of crime.

Commenting on the findings Barnardo’s Chief Executive and former Director General of the Prison Service, Martin Narey said:

'It is appalling that words like "animal", "feral" and "vermin" are used daily in reference to children. These are not references to a small minority of children but represent the public view of all children. Despite the fact that most children are not troublesome there is still a perception that today’s young people are a more unruly, criminal lot than ever before.

'The British public overestimates, by a factor of four, the amount of crime committed by young people. The real crime is that this sort of talk and attitude does nothing to help those young people who are difficult, unruly or badly behaved to change their ways.'

Launching the report Breaking the Cycle alongside this survey, Barnardo’s demonstrates that children who are troublesome and engage in antisocial and criminal behaviour are often those most in need of support. Evidence shows that the children most at risk of criminality and antisocial behaviour are:

• most disadvantaged – they come from the poorest families and communities
• have the poorest educational experiences – leading to lack of training and employment opportunities
• more likely to suffer from poor health, including mental health and substance misuse

Martin Narey continues: 'Barnardo’s is not naïve: we recognise that a minority of children are anti-social and some commit crimes. When that happens, both in the interests of the child and in the interests of the victims, firm action needs to be taken. But the vast majority of children are decent, enthusiastic, caring and conscientious. The minority who are not, and those who do start down the path of bad behaviour can be helped to change direction. Simply expelling them from school or locking them up frequently does nothing to help them mend their ways.'

Children want and need more internet protection

Following consultation by the Children's Rights Director for England, Roger Morgan, with 686 children and young people who came to the national children's conference in July 2008, a new report has been published, highlighting that children living away from home, or using social care services, want to feel safer online, be protected from unsuitable sites and have adult supervision. 

To read the report, visit the Rights4Me

Early assessments help to identify children at risk of blighted adulthoods

The vast majority of children who will go on to experience serious deprivation in their adult years can now be identified by the age of 10, a new report suggests.   Researchers at the Institute of Education, University of London, believe that between 70 per cent and 90 per cent of youngsters heading for blighted adulthoods can be spotted while still in primary school from what is known about their personal and family circumstances.

They have also found that a simple copying test that gauges a child’s ability to replicate shapes and simple patterns at the age of 5 is an extremely accurate predictor of later success in school and early adulthood.

The predictive power of the new generation of educational, social and psychological assessments that can be carried out in primary and secondary schools is described in a report published today. It reviews some of the key findings that the Institute’s Centre for Research on the Wider Benefits of Learning has produced over the past nine years.

They add that the Centre’s research into young children’s ability to copy patterns and shapes such as diamonds, crosses and circles has confirmed that too many bright children from disadvantaged backgrounds are failing to fulfil their potential.   

“Our research has shown that this particular ability is an extremely accurate indicator of reading and maths ability at age 10 and life success at age 30, as measured by the highest qualification gained by that age,” the researchers say. “However, this link with success holds true for all groups except those children who achieved a high copying score but come from families with low socio-economic status. This is a worrying finding that points to a key reason for the lack of social mobility.” 

The Centre’s research has also shown that much can be done to avoid this waste of talent. One recent study showed, for example, that children from disadvantaged families who are given a good grounding in numeracy in infant school are more likely to succeed in not only maths but English at the age of 11.

“It is possible that doing well in maths at age 7 acts to heighten children’s self-confidence and aspirations,” says the report. “It may also encourage teachers to offer them more support.”

However, the report acknowledges that academic success alone does not determine how well a person will fare in adulthood. Another of the Centre’s recent research projects demonstrated that children who gained no qualifications but flourished in school socially were enjoying better health in their early thirties than those who had been unsuccessful in both aspects of school life. Women who had not flourished either academically or socially were almost five times as likely to be smokers at the age of 33 as those who were non-academic but more socially adjusted.    

The report considers what has been discovered about how education affects individuals, families and communities. It also discusses the impact of learning on health, crime, parenting and citizenship. Most of the report’s findings are derived from the Centre’s analyses of two large-scale longitudinal studies based at the Institute of the Education that are tracking the lives of people born in 1958 and 1970.

Study produces unique portrait of UK's millennium children at the age of 5

The findings of the third survey of more than 15,000 children born in the UK during the first two years of the new millennium was published today.

The third Millennium Cohort Study survey was carried out by the Centre for Longitudinal Studies, Institute of Education, University of London, when the children were aged 5.

It has revealed that:

• Children who eat breakfast daily are less likely to become obese.
• Girls are already two months ahead of boys in their learning development when they start school.
• Less than two thirds of UK children are living with their married natural parents at age 5.
• Welsh mothers are less likely to resort to smacking than mothers in other UK countries.
• Mothers in Northern Ireland are more likely to read to their children every day than other UK mothers.

The findings are presented in a report to be published today by the Centre for Longitudinal Studies, Millennium Cohort Study Third Survey: A User’s Guide to Initial Findings. The report can be downloaded from the Centre’s website www.cls.ioe.ac.uk.

Auguest born children struggle right through to University

A report, by the Institute of Fiscal Studies (IFS), from October 2007 and then more recently based on the GCSE results, drew on administrative data from the entire state school population in England has shown a clear gap, in terms of education results, between children born in August and those born in September.

IFS research published in October 2007 showed that, at age 7, children born in August (at the end of the
academic year) were around 25 percentage points less likely to reach the expected level at Key Stage 1 than children born in September (at the start of the academic year). This gap was smaller, but still significant, at age 16, when August-born girls were 5.5 percentage points less likely (than September-born girls) to achieve 5 GCSEs at Grades A*-C, and August-born boys were 6.1 percentage points less likely.

The results show that while 37.0% of September-born girls and 29.6% of September-born boys have started university by age 19, only 35.2% of August-born girls and 28.0% of August-born boys have started  by the same age – a difference of 1.8 percentage points for girls and 1.6 percentage points for boys.  Our work also shows that August-born children are significantly less likely to attend a “high status” institution than September-born children: August-born girls are 1.2 percentage points less likely (than September-born girls) to attend a “high status” university by age 19, while the difference for boys is 0.8  percentage points.

Given that a degree (particularly one from a “high status” institution) often earns its holder a substantial wage premium, these differences suggest that children born at the end of the school year may not only face lower educational opportunities, but also lower lifetime earnings, simply because of the month in which they were born.

Claire Crawford, one of the authors of the research, said “These findings underline the potentially damaging long-term education and labour market consequences faced by August-born children, simply because they were unlucky enough to be born at the end of the school year.”

Lorraine Dearden, another of the authors, said “The government is committed to widening participation in HE. If they could ensure that all children had as good a chance of going to university as those born in September, then around 2,600 more children per year would participate in HE by age 19.”