Parenting classes linked to benefit

PARENTS should have to go back to school to learn how to bring up their children in order to claim child benefit, according to a report on nursery education to be published next week.

The report from the Royal Society of Arts will add that part-time nursery classes should be compulsory for all three-year-olds and that children should not start full-time school until they are six. Parents should contract to stay together until their youngest child has grown up, it will add.

Downing Street advisers who are carrying out a review of nursery education for the Prime Minister have asked to see the report. Mr Major says he wants to offer nursery places to all children, but is still considering different options on how to deliver it.

Sir Christopher Ball, the RSA's director of learning and author of the report, has argued that the cost of part-time education for all three-year- olds could be covered by withdrawing full-time education from the four and five-year- olds who currently receive it.

His recommendations have split the advisory panel working on the report. The Save the Children Fund, the National Children's Bureau and the Pre- school Playgroups Association put their views in a footnote.

Gillian Pugh of the National Children's Bureau, who is researching a book on parents and education, said: 'To say that parents must go on training courses to get benefit assumes that parents who are poor are poor parents. There is no evidence for this.'

Margaret Lochrie, chief executive of the Pre-school Playgroups Association, said that while parenting classes might be useful, they should be voluntary. 'A lot of people will say they are not going back to school, especially if it is made compulsory,' she said.

At Vassall Road playgroup in Stockwell, South London, there was little enthusiasm for the idea. Dawn Wickers, a mother of two children aged seven and four, said parenting should be taught in schools. 'I would rather give back my benefit book than go back to school. It's instinct with us, but it's not with men. They should teach parenting to 16- year-old boys.'

Sir Christopher, a former warden of Keble College, Oxford, was unrepentant last night. He said: 'Learning to be a good parent is not something which necessarily comes naturally. Parents need help, support and some education and training, and they need it when they become parents or soon after.'