We learn and absorb more during childhood than at any other time. But how do we best support our children through this process? Is it all about getting your child into a decent school? And if so what lengths would you go to, to secure a place?

Children learn through school, play and by spending time with friends and family. So how do we ensure they get the best out of all theses situations? If you have asked yourself any of these questions you’ll be pleased to know that we have two childhood experts dropping in to discuss these and other questions related to childhood and learning.

Anne Tinklepaugh - advice worker from the Advisory Centre for Education and Kathy Evans, Head of Policy of The Children's Society will be listening to your concerns and questions and offering you some comprehensive information and advice on this issue. He is well aware of the pressure parents are under to ensure their children get a decent education, and will be talking about what steps you can take to alleviate that pressure.

Our experts will also be talking about the increased amount of stress on kids and how this is impacting on family life. He will be highlighting the evidence submitted to The Children’s Society’s on-going Good Childhood Inquiry, which has explored the various elements of childhood such as learning, family, friends and health to see what factors make a good childhood possible.

Thanks for watching and for those who would like to contribute to the Good Childhood Inquiry, you can help by sharing your favourite childhood memory at www.hundredsandthousands.org.uk. For more advice and information on some of the areas covered in today’s show please visit www.goodchildhood.org.uk

H: Jayne Constantinis, host
A: Anne Tinklepaugh, ACE
K: Kathy Evans, Children’s Society

H: Hello and welcome to the Parenting Show. I’m Jayne Constantinis. Now, are you worried about the amount of testing your children are undergoing at school these days? Do you think the school postcode lottery is unfair, and would you ever consider moving house to get your children into a desirable school? Well, a survey released by the Children’s Society reveals that 51% of respondents say they would consider moving house to get their children into a good school, and one in seven, that’s 14% would even consider lying about their faith or where they live. Well, to discuss that and other issues to do with the schooling of our children, I’m joined in the studio today by two education experts, Anne Tinklepaugh is from the Advisory Centre for Education, ACE, and Kathy Evans is head of policy at the Children’s Society. Thank you very much for coming in to talk to us about this. And can I just remind you that we are live, so if you want to ask a question of Anne or Kathy just type it in the box below the screen, press send, and we’ll get through as many as we can during the course of the show. Can I just begin by asking you about the survey and what it sets out to achieve?

K: Well the survey is part of the Children’s Society’s Good Childhood enquiry, and we’ve been gathering views from children and young people and from parents and from academics and from professionals about all sorts of issues to do with childhood, so this is part of a bigger picture, but the survey that we’ve released is particularly trying to address a range of issues in relation to schooling, so there were these findings in relation to the lottery so to say, where 51% of respondents said that they would be willing to consider moving, and that really quite a high proportion, 14% nationally, 23% in London said that they’d be willing to lie if that was what would get their child into their desired school. But that’s not the only issues that we’ve been looking at within the survey or indeed within the enquiry

H: But that sounds like a very gloomy picture. Is something going seriously wrong with our education system?

A: Well I think part of this is media induced I think, I think what the figures show is there certainly is parental anxiety out there and I think particularly in London as Kathy says there’s anxiety because there is in many local authorities there’s a shortage of places, but there also are statistics that show for instance in 2001 Sheffield Hallam University did a study and they showed that over 9 out of 10 parents actually got their first choice school, so the anxiety may not actually always meet the reality of what parents are finding on the ground but I certainly agree that the statistic show that there is something going on out there that makes parents very anxious about the whole process

H: And the issue of testing is the other one that gets parents very – I mean I’ve got a 3 year old and already I’m hearing conversations, admittedly parents with older children, about private coaching and tuition to get into the best schools and so on – are they over-tested, our children, these days?

K: Well the survey also asked that question of adults, not necessarily of professionals but there was a strong view, 60% and over who said that they felt there was too much, the balance was wrong. From the evidence that we gathered as well as the survey, the research evidence, there was a general view that the balance on testing is focused on academic skills and learning and that most people agreed, whether in the survey or in their evidence to the enquiry, that schools should also be a place that focuses on social skills and emotional development, and that testing put all of the pressure onto the academic curriculum

H: And what is meant – what is the point of all this testing, is it for the children, or is it for the parents or is it for the schools?

A: I think it was partly to address the inconsistency between schools, and to try to establish a sort of level playing field so that children in every school would have an opportunity to reveal strengths and weaknesses, and it should be very much about strengths as well. I mean certainly on our advice lines at ACE we hear quite a number of parents who feel that possibly their children should be tested more because they’ve got special educational needs. Now that’s a very tiny minority, but the testing probably has benefited those parents but I agree completely, the testing has been skewed, and I think particularly the way with league tables, the pressure that’s been put on schools has meant that a lot of children feel that pressure

H: And it’s all adding of course to this – what we were talking about, the postcode lottery thing because people are going for schools that have the highest results, so it’s a kind of self-perpetuating thing. Is it possible that there could be some long-term damage to these children who are being over-tested, or tested so much at a very early age?

K: Well we haven’t got that evidence but what I was going to refer to in terms of long term damage is actually still on the lottery and the choices issue, one of the messages from the research is that we know that if a family is in a deprived community who are the least likely to have the possibility of moving or manipulating the system to get the best choice, we also know that they are statistically less likely to have a choice of what we might broadly call the best schools or the good schools, and that their choices are more likely to be in the lower performing schools than those who live in more affluent areas, so the particular concern there is that actually for those children for whom education is precisely what we want for them in order to potentially enable them to move on, to improve their situation from the one that they’ve been growing up in, that actually we need the best schools to be available to those children but we may be entrenching deprivation by this kind of lottery of choice that doesn’t give the winning tickets to those who are already in the most difficult circumstances

H: So presumably some testing, and testing is about competition essentially isn’t it, is good because that’s what happens in the real world when you’re an adult, so there should be some, should there? Or is it just too soon?

A: Well I think it would depend on what kind of testing you’re talking about, if you’re testing the strengths as well as weaknesses and testing across a broad range, but I think it’s not so much the testing as the pressure that’s being put on the children through the testing. The tests – teachers have always done assessment, and even in reception teachers have traditionally done considerable amount of assessment and those should have been shared with parents so they knew, you know, what to help children with if they were struggling in a particular area. I think it’s the pressure I think is what really we’re talking about that’s arising and that really comes very much from the league tables I think

H: So in some ways it’s been more formalised than it ever was, and that’s causing parents to know that it’s going on

K: And I think some of the really strong messages coming to us from children and young people in our evidence gathering were about their sense that however well they do is just not quite good enough, that even we had some really upsetting comments really from young people who are clearly doing extremely well at school but for who then this idea that actually we need to create more pressure, that’s what incentivises them. They were essentially feeling that getting a B wasn’t good enough, they needed next time to get an A or an A+. And some comments from them were they felt, were they were saying quite clearly they knew that wasn’t because they knew it was for them but for the school and I think children can be very perceptive about whether or not these efforts are focused on them and their interests and their well-being or whether it’s part of the bigger picture in a machine in which they’re not really as important as something else like a league table

H: Because of course it’s not taking into account is it that different children develop at different rates and it may well hold back a child from development if they do badly early on, whereas in fact – do you think that’s true?

K: It’s certainly true that children develop in their own way and in – at different paces, and also that they have different abilities that we need to play to their strengths of as well as addressing any problems that they’re having. I think the other thing is that some children, undoubtedly because of their life circumstances, unavoidably will be better able to engage with education at different points and at some points it will be quite difficult for them to engage, particularly for children who are at real risk of lifelong deprived experience if school is not what we aspire to it being for them, so a bereavement, a divorce, you know problems at home that mean their attention is simply not going to be focused on pushing their attainment. We need to ensure that they have the space to look after themselves and for us to look after them as a whole person, and to get back to the education and attainment agenda when it’s right and when they can best sort of grow and develop

H: How do we compare with other European countries, because what I hear, you know anecdotally is they start all of this later and of course they catch up. Is that true?

A: Well on the continent typically children would start school at age 7 but there is a great deal of early years provision, so there will be a lot of childcare centres and they will follow a fairly rigid early years curriculum. I mean it may not be quite as set as they would get if they were in school, but it’s not true that they’re usually simply at home, so I think there is a bit of fallacy, but certainly in terms of having an expectation of a very young child to sit still, and that’s quite a difficult expectation for some children, particularly if they’ve come from a background where there isn’t a great deal of discipline or there has been difficulties within the family or housing difficulties or whatever, that’s obviously going to be trickier for them

H: So what can parents do to ameliorate this feeling of pressure?

K: Well I think one of the other key messages coming from the research is emphasising that learning doesn’t stop at the school gate, in fact children learn enormously from their parents, from their experiences outside of school, from playing, and that their interest and their approach, parent’s approach to encouraging and rewarding and recognising growth, qualities in a child that they’re demonstrating outside of school, can be a way of recognising that actually you are growing, you are developing, you are achieving and we don’t think it’s all about the test results, but I’m sure that Anne will also talk about what can be done within the school in terms of alleviating pressure

H: Well in fact we’ve had a question in from Elaine Bruce who I think touches on that – ‘do you think that teachers bear the main responsibility for educating children and young people? Shouldn’t parents be taking more responsibility for their children’s learning?’ Well you’ve answered the second part of that question, what about the first part?

A: Well I mean all of the research shows that the most important thing is families, and what’s happening at home as Kathy has said. I think what hopefully we’re all kind of moving towards is looking at schools a bit more broadly, so we’re not looking simply at league tables but we’re looking at what are the values added for schools, and when parents talk about a good school, of course there’s no actual definition of a good school, and there’s no one size school for our children

H: It’s different for each child isn’t it?

A: Absolutely, it’s looking at your individual child and that’s what’s really important when parents are making choices about schools. And so therefore looking at what sort of pastoral support there may be, what their anti-bullying policy may be, all of those things, special educational needs policy, they’re very important when parents are looking at schools, and they’re the kinds of things if parents are concerned they should be asking their schools about

H: Ok.

K: I think it’s important to recognise that children are hard wired to learn, it’s actually very difficult to stop a child from learning, one of the biggest concerns is what they learn by having negative experiences or pressurising experiences. Some children learn that they’re destined to fail by constantly failing tests. We have to kind of think if you like put it the other way round – children are learning, whatever their ability, whatever their environment, they’re learning at home, they’re learning at school – we want to make sure that it’s a process and an environment that supports their natural process of learning, rather than thinking that it’s the teachers who make children learn

H: Yes

K: Children learn and it’s teachers who stimulate

H: Very interesting way of turning that around. Tom Chaplin wants to know, we’re back I’m afraid to the postcode lottery – ‘how are we supposed to get a good education for our children if all the schools’, he says schools, and presumably he means best schools – ‘are in areas where property is unaffordable?

K: Well this is one of the concerns that we’re raising today, it’s not just about the fact that that’s often the correlation, but actually we know that having a good school – quote – in the area actually sends property prices up, which means that those parents who might be inclined to make their moving decisions with reference to the school choices available, even fewer are going to be able to afford to do that as a way of negotiating the school system. I think it ties to the bigger point, we’re looking at an education system which unfortunately appears to mirror geographical patterns of deprivation and wealth rather than countering them, and I think that you know it’s a bigger question of trying to solve that than thinking that parents can negotiate that on a one by one basis. I think that our biggest concern is seeing the survey finally today was the general picture that parents feel that it’s a system to be negotiated and manipulated, even if the reality is that their local school is good and they will get into it

H: We’ve talked about London being a particularly bad example of that, Clare Howells wants to know ‘do you think there’s a big difference in raising your children in an urban as opposed to a rural environment?’

A: There’s certainly less choice if you’re in a rural area. Parents who ring us on the advice line say ‘I’ve got one school and that’s all there is’ and transport is often a very big issue for parents in rural areas. The government has brought out new transport policy and it’s looking at this as an issue, but there’s no getting away from it if you live in a rural area, you probably will have a choice of one school, possibly two. And most parents are not in a position to start driving children, possibly getting children to two different schools if you’ve got a younger and an older child

H: But the plus point of that is you’re not going to have the pressure of trying to get into the catchment area of a school

A: Yes it simplifies things, yes

H: And some people would say that a rural environment is better generally for children don’t they?

A: And most parents, if you actually ask them what they want is a good local school, they don’t want their child travelling miles across –

H: Oh I know loads of families who’ve moved out of London to get to a good rural environment where everything, as you say, is just simpler. Sarah Carrington wants to know ‘my husband and I feel we put too much pressure on our son to do well at school. He’s 13, is it right to be pushing him too hard?’ She’s really answered her own question hasn’t she?

A: Yes

H: Pushing him so hard

K: Too much of anything isn’t good, I think that it goes back to that question of sometimes a very subtle difference but one side of the line to the other between encouraging a child to understand that their potential is possibly greater than they imagine and they should explore and they should feel that they’re capable of achieving, and having that kind of support behind exploration and learning, and actually saying we don’t – giving the impression that we don’t think you’re working hard enough, doing well enough, catch up, pull along – in some ways –

H: And what about reward for doing well, is that a good thing or is that adding more pressure?

K: Well I mean certainly within parenting generally you will find people talking a lot about making sure you reward and praise and recognise good qualities and achievements, so it’s certainly part of it and just in that conceptual way rather than necessarily –

H: Cash

K: Money or those sorts of things, but I think that other, the other point that I was raising about saying that your child is learning all the time, and they’re learning from you as role models and as parents, so what they’re learning is that pressurising someone is a way of getting them to achieve rather than enthusing them and motivating them, and I think it’s a fine balance and it is difficult

H: Tough isn’t it on the parents?

K: All parents want their children to achieve well and to have a great time, but I think you’ve always got to look at the whole person and what impact that might be having on their happiness

A: And I think this goes back to the whole thing about league tables and good schools, because a good school surely is a school that’s looking at a child as a whole and acknowledging all of their different abilities and not just an academic extreme, and that’s why I think parents who feel that they may be living in an area of deprivation and may only have access to poor schools, should try and actually visit and look beyond that because in fact those schools may be working very very hard and may have a lot to offer their child

H: We’ve almost run out of time, there’s one question here if you can give me a one word answer that’d be fantastic. ‘Is this catchment area policy going to be changed?’

A: Probably not because I mean there has been a lottery brought in Brighton and that goes some way towards removing some of this kind of postcode lottery where you are stuck with what happens to be your local school, and it’s fine if you happen to be the one that gets your child in, you think it’s an absolutely fair system, if not, not, but it’s - it is really a very interesting model and it may be something that we look at again and certainly Brighton is being looked at as an area –

H: So watch this space

A: Absolutely, yes

H: Great, thank you. Well we could go on all day couldn’t we, it’s such an interesting subject. Thank you very much for coming in to talk to us, I’m afraid we’ve run out of time, but if you’d like to contribute to the Good Childhood Enquiry, then you can send your favourite childhood memories to hundredsandthousands.org.uk. Thanks very much for watching, see you again soon. Bye bye

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