Unfit for the classroom?

Some five-year-olds can't tie their laces, others can't use scissors. Are pupils wasting teachers' precious time? A Labour MP thinks so and is asking Tony Blair to take action. Jim Kelly reports

An inner-city head teacher checks that new pupils know their colours. When she gets to purple, the children as often as not say "Tinky Winky?", a sure sign that they watched the BBC's Teletubbies programme in formative years but did not get beyond learning the characters' names. It's one anecdote among hundreds which has prompted an increasingly urgent question in government: "Are our children fit for school?"

The debate was sparked by David Bell, the chief inspector of schools, who said many children led "disrupted and dishevelled" early lives and were too often left in front of the television. "This isn't something that schools can solve on their own - but this is not necessarily a case for more out-of-family care," he says. "It's about finding practical ways to enable parents to deal with problems, like the behaviour of young children."

Labour MP Graham Allen has taken up the cause. He has had "incredible support" from Government, including informally from Downing Street, he says. Now he plans six months of consultation to fashion some pragmatic solutions to developing what he calls social behaviour.

"I was like most people in the UK fortunate enough to have two parents, who although working class - my father was a coal miner, my mother a textile worker until starting a family - instilled the self-discipline in me to make the best of the education I was offered."

But critics have accused him of harking back to a golden age which never existed. So what do teachers think? Hilary Bills, head at Holyhead Primary, Sandwell, says children who go to nursery, playgroup, or pre-school have better skills than those who do not. "They learn to socialise, they learn a routine, and they learn to share. They know when there are times that they should sit still, and be quiet."

But it is not just these softer skills that are needed. She thinks those arriving at school should have certain physical skills - such as using a knife and fork and dressing and undressing. "At Christmas, when they all had the meal, it was actually a bit scary to watch," she says. "It makes you ask how many of these children have a dinner table in their house."

Tying shoelaces is another big issue. So is the use of scissors. It is one of the finer motor skills like using Lego, or putting pegs into a peg board, she says. One of the problems is that parents have become scared of letting children do things like use scissors. Some children are deprived of physical adventure, which is a useful learning experience. She has also detected the loss of a household routine - with television or multimedia replacing bath time, tucking in, reading, and a goodnight kiss. "Parents think this all costs money. It doesn't - it costs time," she says. Judith Elderkin, head at Marlborough Road Primary, Salford, agrees that many skills are lacking but says things are getting no worse in her school. She believes the middle-class home, where the mother may work, is also sometimes failing. "You go to houses that are more like something out of Ideal Homes. There is nowhere for kids to play, or their friends," she says.

According to Ralph Bonnell, head of Stoke Primary, Coventry, the media is taking over the entertainment of children at a very early age. But he also points to unemployment and a transient local population as some of the root causes of the decline in skills. Half his school is Punjabi speaking, but Mr Bonnell scotches suggestions that is behind the problem: "I find that they are not falling as far behind as the white community," he says. "Their family networks are still established and strong."

There are sceptics of such claims. "I think this is something you can look at both ways," says one of Ralph Bonnell's neighbours, Tony Flynn, head at Spon Gate Primary. He points to research undertaken at Ultralab, at Anglia Polytechnic University, showing that young people are acquiring remarkable abilities to process multimedia data - in this case by being able to watch four televisions at the same time and answer detailed questions on programmes they have seen. "If you are not learning one set of skills, you are learning another. I feel duty bound to start where the child is, not where they ought to be."

Alan Wells, the director of the Basic Skills Agency, bemoans the decline of children's conversational skills to the level of the "daily grunt". The Agency has produced the only real evidence for poor and declining skills (see box). He thinks, ideally, skills should include recognising books, knowing how they work, and being ready to read. Concentration should stretch to a 10-minute story, he believes.

"I think there needs to be a major investment in parents," he says. "Some new parents think having a baby is like having a dog for Christmas - they just don't have the the skills afterwards. We need very serious parental education - almost pre-womb."

He praises the Government's Sure Start programme - which offers support for families in poor areas and benefits 389,000 children - but points out that it only reaches those in the most deprived and does not cover the disadvantaged living in better-off areas. He favours a range of new policies - such as asking health visitors to deliver books to the parents of young babies. "This kind of initiative can have a really dramatic effect," he says.

Margaret Hodge, the new Children's minister, says that while Sure Start is targeted, national universal provision of childcare for four-year-olds is universal and the take-up close to 100 per cent - with provision for three-year-olds to come. A further £435m is being spent on a network of Children's Centres - embodying the best of the Sure Start approach. The Government is investing £1.5bn by 2005-6 in the area after being convinced by recent research produced by the EPPE project (see box), she says. This showed that good parenting in the home can make more than 10 per cent difference in the outcomes at school. But she sounds a warning note: "This is a difficult area of policy for the Government because it touches on the privacy of the family and leads to accusations of a Nanny State."

The views of Charles Clarke, the Education Secretary, are similar - if less guarded. "To really fly we have to have parents fully engaged - not just turning up once a year for the parents' evening," says a spokesman at the Department for Education and Skills. What might we expect in a Labour third term? Most likely is an extension of the "reward and penalty" system that is being used to deal with the parents of truants. Loss of benefits, perhaps, for those who do not attend parenting classes?

A flavour of just how radical this area may become is in Michael Barber's book The Learning Game - a must-read for all aspiring education ministers. The head of the Prime Minister's delivery unit writes: "The early months, never mind the early years, of a child's life are critical to their life chances." He suggests the retraining of health visitors so that they dispense advice to parents on the importance of early years education, and says that parents should attend classes and talks on child development. He also has a key role for GPs. Supermarkets should become learning centres, employing trained nursery teachers, he says. It is a vision whose time may have come - but one which may prompt some of the Government's critics to go Tinky Winky in the face.

education@independent.co.uk

'ONLY ONE IN FIVE CHILDREN COULD WRITE THEIR OWN NAME'

Fewer than half the children entering school look at books and stories, recite nursery rhymes and numbers correctly, or sing well-known songs. These are the findings of research published by the Basic Skills Agency, about the only data available on the subject gathered by a research company in Wales who talked to teachers. But Alan Wells, the Agency's chief executive, believes it can be extrapolated to England.

But he points up one danger: "Information based on perception is rarely seen as certain as objective research. We all think summer was warmer when we were young even if the objective evidence doesn't support our feelings."

Teachers were asked about the skills of new pupils. More than two-thirds were able to engage in play and talk audibly. But only one in five were able to write their own name. The research honed in on whether things had got worse over the past five years. Sixty-four per cent said fewer could speak audibly, 61 per cent said fewer could recite rhymes and songs, and 54 cent said fewer could listen with interest.

The Government's enthusiasm for tackling the problems of early years learning stems from the work being done by the Effective Provision of Pre-School Education (EPPE) project. It is tracking 3,000 three-and four-years-olds in a unique study. The report found the impact of pre-school was "over and above" that of the family. Likewise, the impact of the home learning environment was a "separate and significant" factor. Pre-school experience was seen as vital, and the earlier it began the better. But, EPPE noted: "Full-time attendance led to no better gains for children than part-time provision."

The home learning environment was very important, the researchconcluded. Its influence outweighed the social class of the parents or their own educational experience. "What parents do is more important than who they are," it concluded.