Interviews to Inform the National Curriculum and Assessment Review
Interviews with concerned professionals - November 2024 - Kendal Primary Care Network
The following seven interviews were completed by Dr Cathy Betoin in November 2024 with experienced education professionals who share a concern about the impact that the national curriculum is having on children's learning and wellbeing. The purpose was to share our experience with a national review on this topic.
Cathy is a practising clinical psychologist with children and families, an experienced teacher who practices in the Kendal, Morecambe Bay Area. She is working with colleagues to progress understanding of Relationship Health - an overlooked holistic approach to supporting wellbeing of adults and young people.
The concern we share about the national curriculum is the serious consequences of the lack of emphasis on supporting social emotional development after the Early Years Foundation Stage.
A summary of the conclusions and five recommended key action points are listed below (with a little help from ai tools!)
Here are details of the call for evidence
https://www.gov.uk/government/groups/curriculum-and-assessment-review
https://consult.education.gov.uk/curriculum-and-assessment-team/curriculum-and-assessment-review-call-for-evidence/consultation/subpage.2024-09-19.1061807458/
The documents state: Through this review we’ll focus on the most significant areas for improvement, with particular concern for supporting children and young people who are from socioeconomically disadvantaged backgrounds, those with a special educational need or disability (SEND) and those who are otherwise vulnerable.
Sample Recent News Items - Relevant to Social Emotional Development - November 2024
Primary school pupil suspensions in England double in a decade - BBC News
SEND System has burst - children sent to schools 200 miles away
Children and families being forced into home education
Serious youth violence more far-reaching than many realise - GOV.UK
Seven Interviews with AI Generated Summaries and Action Points
1. Paul - Head and Teacher Trainer - The impact of national curriculum policy since 2010
Paul is a primary teacher with 40 years of experience in the primary sector, 13 years as primary headteacher. He now trains prospective primary teachers. Paul discussed the evolution of the national curriculum and its damaging impact on children's education. He highlighted the shift from a holistic approach focusing on the whole child to a more academic-centric model under Michael Gove's reforms. This shift has led to a decline in emotional and social development, with schools becoming more like factories focused on SATs and attainment. Paul emphasized the need to return to a holistic curriculum that includes multiple intelligences and emotional intelligence. He also noted that current teacher training is de-skilling new teachers, leading to a lack of creativity and problem-solving skills in education.
Action Items
- [ ] Advocate for a curriculum that is more focused on the "whole child" and developing critical thinking, emotional, and social skills.
- [ ] Explore ways to provide more training and support for teachers, especially younger teachers, to help them develop more creative and engaging teaching practices.
- [ ] Identify and implement strategies to help students develop problem-solving and creative thinking skills, rather than just focusing on rote learning.
2. Kirsten - Primary SENCO - The evidence of so many children struggling in every class,
Kirsten is an experienced primary SENCO working with several small schools. She discussed the challenges in tracking social-emotional development in primary schools. She noted a significant increase in children struggling with emotional regulation and resilience, often first identified in reception but neglected in subsequent years. Current assessment focuses on cognition and learning, neglecting emotional development. Despite the introduction of ELSA (Emotional Literacy Support Assistant) roles, schools increasingly struggle to afford classroom assistants and the needs for help far outstrips supply of adults able to listen and serious school funding challenges are actively limiting what schools can manage to provide. Kirsten emphasized the need for formal assessment of emotional development, similar to the Early Years framework, to better support children in a timely fashion. She believes addressing these issues early could prevent future problems.
Clarification: In the recording, I threw Kirsten with my question asking about the 4 strands of the EYFS. This was my mistake, in fact, the Early Years Foundation Stage has 7 strands and the Early Years Development Journal used for SEND children has 4 strands.
Action Items
- [ ] Obtain and review the assessment data from the early years foundation stage to understand the level of social-emotional development of students as they transition to primary school.
- [ ] Investigate the use of Emotional Literacy Support Assistants (ELSAs) in the schools and the potential to expand this support.
- [ ] Explore the possibility of incorporating a structured assessment of social-emotional development into the primary curriculum, similar to the early years framework.
- [ ] Consider ways to prioritize the development of students' social-emotional skills within the primary curriculum.
3. Gill - Reception and Primary Teacher - impact of the current curriculum on pupils
Gill is an experienced reception teacher who now works across the primary range in a support role. She discusses concerns about the National Curriculum's impact on social-emotional development in young children. She notes a shift from child-centered, in-the-moment planning to a knowledge-focused curriculum, which neglects personal, social aspects. Gill highlights issues such as lack of early intervention support, budget cuts, and the rigid adherence to a knowledge-based curriculum. She emphasizes the importance of early intervention, nurturing relationships, and play-based learning for developing emotional resilience and social skills. Gill argues for a holistic approach that prioritizes personal, social development over academic knowledge, including work with parents.
Action Items
- [ ] Advocate for a more balanced curriculum that prioritizes the development of social-emotional skills, particularly in the early years.
- [ ] Explore ways to provide more flexibility and autonomy for teachers to respond to the immediate needs of their students, even if it means temporarily deviating from the prescribed curriculum.
- [ ] Engage with policymakers and education authorities to emphasize the importance of early intervention and the need for a robust support network for families, including access to speech and language therapists, mental health services, and other resources.
- [ ] Collaborate with other schools and education professionals to share best practices and advocate for a more holistic approach to education that values the development of social-emotional skills alongside academic achievement.
4. Jane anonymised Primary Teacher - The serious impact of the curriculum on pupil and staff wellbeing
Jane is a former primary school teacher with 27 years of experience. She discussed the negative impact of the national curriculum on both students and teachers. She highlighted the shift towards rigid, memory-based learning and the lack of flexibility in lesson plans, which led to stress and ineffective teaching. Jane emphasized the need for a more child-centered approach, such as play-based and continuous provision learning, which were effective but not supported by the current curriculum. She also noted the disconnect between evidence-based practices and the curriculum, particularly for children with additional needs. Jane suggested that recognizing relationships and social-emotional development as integral to learning could improve educational outcomes.
Jane - Audio Transcript - CLICK TO READ
We made a decision to share this by transcript only as the speaker Jane was speaking about experiences that had been extremely stressful and distressing for her and others.
Cathy: Okay, so it's November the 18th, and I'm sitting here with Jane. Jane's, it's not her real name, has agreed to speak with me about her experience of being a teacher in the classroom, and we're responding to the request for feedback about what's happening and the impact of the national curriculum on young people and on staff, and we just want to have a conversation about that experience. So Jane, if you'd like to just share your experiences: Why are so many children not coping with the national curriculum? Start wherever you want,
Jane: so. I've been a primary school teacher for over 25 years, and the last couple of years I've not been in school. I stopped being a primary school teacher, and the reason I stopped was I could see that I was being pushed into a way of working and a way of making the children do things in primary schools that I knew wasn't right for them, and we were having massive difficulties with a limited number of pupils, but they were having a massive impact on the whole school.
There were a small number who weren't able to be in control of themselves but the impact that their behaviour had on everybody else in the whole school, all the staff, all the children, whether they were in the class of that child or not, was huge.
I could also see that there was this massive shift in the curriculum affecting how I was expected to teach the children with a move towards a massive focus on memory based learning, and on me preparing plans way in advance with a little room for any flexibility or adaptations.
So if I got into a lesson and thought, Oh no, I've pitched this wrongly. I still had to do the plans I'd made weeks and months in advance.
My timetable was so full, I had no time to address the issues that I knew were absolutely there in the classroom. Children needed space and needed time to do things that were theirs so I used to do some play based learning, not a lot, but some play based learning. I was told that was not what I was there for, and that there wasn’t time and I shouldn't be doing that sort of learning, because I hadn't got the same evidence of learning that was happening and it wasn’t on a plan and didn’t follow a scheme.
It had to be increasingly formal. Children had to record things in books that had to look a very certain way. It became a matter of how well we underlined the date and the learning objective in books, and I just lost the will to follow that, because I knew that wasn't what the children in front of me needed. It was exactly what they didn't need. They needed time to explore things themselves and with me guiding them and to rediscover the delight of learning something that they needed to learn at the time they needed to learn it, rather than on my timetable. I stand by this quotation of learning that minds are not vessels to be filled but rather fires to be kindled. (Plutarch)
Cathy: You are describing being part of a system, which is absolutely what I also experienced - being part of a system that's been telling you to do something which is out of alignment with what you're experiencing in the room, in the space that you're in, yeah. And the experience is one of extreme stress for you as the adult, but also extreme stress for a child who's not getting a fit with where they're at.
Jane: Yes, absolutely.
Cathy: What were the age of your children? Which was the age that you were teaching?
Jane: They were year threes and year fours, okay. So they were coming out of a brilliant Early Years Foundation system that was doing all the right things, I thought, in terms of having short structured teaching times, then working with what the children were interested in, working in the way the child was interested and having fun and exciting learning. Working in ways that I think we should have done more of, not squashed away, you know, by going into more formal learning too quickly and doing it when the when we knew the children weren't ready for it. And that just continued with more and more pressure as you went up the primary school year groups.
Cathy: So that was the feeling …there's an agenda to push. At this age, you're supposed to have done this, and therefore the assessment of where the child social emotional development actually is at has been kind of overridden.
Jane: It hasn't been overridden? It's non-existent. Yeah, it was you. You've got somebody in year two, they need to learn these things. You've got somebody in year three, they have to learn these facts.
And if children didn't know those facts, or those facts were not on display in books that would be criticized and a point for improvement. The learning of facts in such a formal manner I thought was absolutely not, not appropriate for children of that age.
Cathy: Well, and for me, there's a disconnect around, we're told to do evidence based practice. And it seems to me that the science says, we know, that the brain develops, but it doesn't all develop at the same rate. So for me, there's also this disconnect around, we're told to follow the research, and yet, in this evident, we're not following it. We're not following it for all children, but it is particularly serious for children who have had additional needs such as SEND or trauma.
We're not following it because those children are clearly developmentally younger, therefore clearly need an adapted curriculum like you say, that allows them to learn how to learn, not just to learn how to listen.
Jane: Yeah, definitely.
Cathy: So if you were to think about the children who were particularly challenging, say couple of those eight year olds. If you had been given a free reign to meet their needs as you saw, it, would that have been possible in the classroom as it was, had you been given permission, or would it be impossible to meet those needs within because the difference was so big,
Jane I think for some of them. I didn't know how to meet some of their needs because they were so different from the children, their social emotional needs were so different from the other children that were in my class. They needed to be doing more Early Years Foundation Stage in year three and year four. Yeah.
We did manage. Eventually. We had years of struggling with managing a particular individual in school, and nobody was listening and nobody was helping from the outside world. Nobody else was listening to us and our difficulties and no one was offering any help.
Eventually they did, and we started to do those sorts of things, and the person had a one to one support, and they did make progress with what we knew they needed to do, but it was nowhere near the levels of progression that would brought them back up to where they should have been
Another child was from care and had had massive trauma in their life, I don't think I, in the middle of teaching a whole class, had all the skills that were needed. We were making progress, but they were very different from what the other children were managing to do in the class.
Cathy: And would they? Would they have responded, you think, to a more Early Years Foundation approach?
Jane: Yeah, yeah, I do. I really do think they could but it wasn't allowed. But that need was not understood, for these most vulnerable children.
Cathy But the impact was on everybody.
Jane: Absolutely, the impact was on everybody, because I was trying to shoehorn children into doing what everybody else was doing, and they mostly couldn't. They could manage five or 10 minutes of concentration, and then they had to have time to do other things. The rest of the class would see this and want to be doing those less structured things too. That caused unease and a sense of unfairness.
We were told not to do much differentiation. We were supposed to be teaching all the children, keeping the children together, teaching them the same thing and that was just mysteriously difficult because it didn't work. We had to stick to our timetable increasingly rigidly with little variation of input or way of working - lots of use of PowerPoints and videos.
Cathy: So if you had a magic wand. You know, they're asking for ideas about what would need to change with the national curriculum to make your life as a teacher or your ex teacher more manageable - because I have to say, Jane when I heard that you were leaving teaching, I was absolutely gutted to think that people like you were feeling they couldn't stay.
That’s what I heard you felt you couldn't stay. You wanted to stay, but couldn't stay. And I think, you know, I've met too many people like yourself, severely traumatized by this system. It's not just children being impacted, but also staff.
Jane: It's very much so. I just felt that what my teaching experience was telling me to do with children was completely different to what I was being told I had to do with children.
There were changes in the curriculum. Some, I could see were good in lots of ways. So there was a moving away a bit more from the concentration on literacy and numeracy and that being the be all and end all of everything in terms of assessments.
Other subjects were beginning to be valued, but they were being given the very formal treatment. So we had to plan a long time in advance exactly what we were going to do, and then we had to evidence the learning that had happened. And teaching just lost all its joy and creativity and flexibility to see what the children needed and wanted to do that day and be valued for providing that space for us to do just that.
Cathy: And as you're talking, I am thinking about the essence of a relationship, I guess this is where I feel this term is so important in a relationship health approach. Relationships don’t work If you come in with an agenda already before and it's already fixed. Relationships can't work. And the essence of the way that we're wired, is that you have to be able to shift and move. Otherwise, it is not a relationship.
Jane: Before, that ability to shift and adapt was seen as a great skill of a teacher. You could recognize what those children needed, and you were able to fulfil some of that. I mean, I'm not saying I could do it all the time at all, but there was a massive squeeze on that idea – that that skill was even valuable.
Cathy: Yeah, so, if there were specific changes that you know, people who are making these policies could make, what? What would it look like? I mean, what changes would they need to make?
Jane: I think they need to make this recognition that the relationships of children in themselves and children with other children and children with the adults who are with them is really important. I think it’s like what you said in your book about teachers not being able to respond with children who were finding things difficult.
It wasn't part of my remit to explore much what was happening at home with parents, and that was not part of what I could do. And yet I can so see that the child is part of all those communities they grow up in. You need more joined up thinking between parents and teachers and other professionals, and the skills that those adults bring.
Cathy: Yeah, the skills that the adults who are outside the community need in order for a child to arrive in a classroom able to receive your what you're sharing.
Jane: If a child doesn't come in having already had some preparation for relationships at home, it's extremely difficult, particularly now you have a large group to be able to respond. So to say it's not our business parenting, to me, seems to completely miss the blooming obvious that you can't educate young children without that complete team all understanding each other’s roles.
Cathy: I mean, do you think you came across anything that was like an extension of the ideas in EYFS for older children? I mean, I've been to multiple meetings with professional asking please, can you tell me what you use to track social emotional skills in older children? Thinking it's so obvious, but I haven't come across anything that's being used consistently that would help us capture the skills that we know are necessary to be able to succeed in in life, in school, in transition.
Jane: The idea of continuous provision that is used in Early Years has been used throughout the whole of primary schools, that idea of setting up learning in different areas of your classroom and then allowing pupils to make decisions themselves about which areas they want to tackle at different times, not all the time. You wouldn't do that for the whole of your day, okay, that you would use part that part of your day for more formal teaching and part of your day or week, would be set up with choices. I thought some schools were using that all the way up to year six. That's what I was using but had to stop because the sheer excess of demand of the curriculum.
Cathy: So continuous provision, in my understanding, would be it giving the young person a feeling of some choice, some control over so when they come in, they're not just expected to sit there and tolerate being told. Now, do this. Now, do this for six hours. They've got a sense they're going to come in and be able to choose and have some ownership of what they decided to do, when they decided to do it, and how they went about doing it, and that the practitioners who were there in the classroom would be trained to recognize what they were Interested in, and then lead the child through learning experiences that you knew they needed to do, but they could do it in a way that they felt like they'd got some ownership of it.
Jane: I loved doing that sort of thing.
Cathy: It felt good to you as a practitioner as well.
Jane: It did. It really did. And with that sort of way of working, children interacted with each other at a much higher level than they ever did in the teaching classes, where I was teaching them facts. They’d help each other, they'd help refocus each other on what they were doing. They would be talking to each other in a way that they never did whenever they were doing a task that had been set them.
Cathy: Yes, they were problem solving, and if you think from a brain point of view, they were triggering off all these abilities to solve problems and understand their ideas and other people's ideas. To me, that's it. If we don't develop that part of the brain, well, we're setting up a whole group of adults who can't do that sort of thinking in any of their relationships.
Jane: We want children who are going to be good workers as adults, we want them to be able to do exactly that, have an issue, and be able to find out, work together in a little group or on their own, to find out something that's going to help move that forward. Yeah? And to me, that idea of setting up that sort of thing helped to get the children to do that brilliantly. And you can do that in lots of different curriculum areas all at the same time.
Cathy: Gosh, thank you so much for sharing this. I feel we could talk all day, couldn't we? But thank you so much.
I wonder if - for those people who haven't come across my book, as I haven't yet pressed go on actually publishing it - , could you say a couple of words about whether you would encourage people to read it.
Jane: Yes. So Cathy’s book, it's called Relationship Health and The Missing Link. And the book goes on a journey through not understanding what's going on that's wrong with our world and our system and the way we're doing things at the moment, and realizes that Relationship Health is one thing that, along with Physical Health and Mental Health, is the one missing link that we're not we're not appreciating the impact of and has been kind of ignored. Together, you go through a structured realization of why this is important and how it has an impact on lots of different areas in the world that we know is difficult at the moment, and signposts people to what they might be able to do next.
It sort of focus on the individual, because the problems that are talked about are so massive, nobody feels they can necessarily have any impact on any of those but what it does brilliantly is bring it back to the individual who's reading that book and saying, well, what could you do? What are your next steps? What are the things that you can do that might make a change in your life and in the lives of other people that you have a relationship with?
Cathy: Well, we so profoundly know that some change is needed, don't we? We just profoundly know that we're in the wrong place at the moment. And I hope this is going to be shared with people who can hear what we're trying to say. Yeah. Thank you so much for sharing. Jane.
Action Items
- [ ] Explore the use of more continuous provision and more flexible, relationship-based approaches in the classroom, even in upper primary grades.
- [ ] Advocate for a more holistic, joined-up approach that recognizes the impact of home and family factors on a child's ability to learn and thrive in the classroom.
- [ ] Investigate the availability of tools and frameworks to track the social-emotional development of older primary school children, beyond the Early Years Foundation Stage.
- [ ] Consider reading the book "Relationship Health and the Missing Link" to further understand the importance of relationship-based approaches in education.
5. John anonymised Secondary Teacher, The Decline in Social Emotional Competencies in Secondary Children
John is an experienced secondary teacher of PE and math with over 35 years of experience. He discussed the decline in children's social-emotional and motor skills seen over his career, and noticeably at entry to school in Year 7. He noted that by the time students reach secondary school, many lack coping skills, resilience, and the ability to work in groups. Girls generally develop these skills faster than boys, creating challenges in co-educational settings. John emphasized the need for a curriculum that addresses social-emotional development, noting that current practices focus too much on academic attainment. He highlighted the lack of training for secondary teachers in this area and the tension between pastoral and teaching staff. John suggested practical subjects like food tech could improve engagement and behavior.
Action items
• [] Explore ways to incorporate social and emotional skill development into the national curriculum and assessment framework.
• [] Provide targeted professional development for secondary school teachers to equip them with the skills and strategies to
support students' social and emotional needs.
• [] Consider curriculum reforms that prioritize practical, interactive, and collaborative learning experiences over passive,
lecture-style instruction.
• [] Investigate the feasibility and potential benefits of separating boys and girls into different classrooms or learning environments
during the critical adolescent years.
6. Rachel - Educational Psychologist - Lack of focus on social emotional priorities after Early Years
Rachel is an experienced educational psychologist who has been working in the education sector since 2003. Her role involves understanding and addressing the developmental and educational needs of children. Rachel is passionate about bridging the gap between early years education and mainstream schooling, especially for children with special educational needs and those who have experienced developmental trauma. Rachel has observed significant challenges within the educational system, particularly how current education policy means that schools often prioritize academic goals over the social-emotional development of students. She advocates for a more holistic approach to education, emphasizing the importance of emotional literacy and supportive relationships in schools. Rachel actively works on training educators and support staff to become more trauma-informed and emotionally literate, aiming to create environments where all children can thrive. Rachel highlights the need for systemic changes within the national curriculum to better address the needs of vulnerable children.
Action Points
- [ ] Recognise the priority of the social emotional developmental needs of all children for a longer period in core provision
- [ ] Ensure that children who have had developmental trauma access informed embedded support for their delayed social emotional needs.
- [ ] Make the priority of supporting social emotional development a national issue (ie top down directive) not just something that schools feel that they have to ignore other important priorities for or have permission to progress
- [ ] Recognise the need for educational reform as too many children are currently poorly served
7. Elaine anonymised - Small Rural Primary How do we progress a social emotional focussed curriculum?
Elaine is a teacher and SENCO in a small rural primary school. She discussed the impact of the national curriculum changes and COVID-19 on students' academic and social-emotional well-being. She noted that academic skills are now expected at younger ages, leading to increased pressure and mental health issues. Elaine emphasized the importance of nurturing relationships and a holistic approach to education, highlighting the need for better support for parents and early intervention. She suggested that training should start at the top level and be ongoing, involving both new and experienced teachers. Elaine also stressed the importance of understanding and tracking social-emotional development to provide effective support.
Action Points
- [ ] Explore ways to incorporate more social-emotional learning into the curriculum.
- [ ] Advocate for a review of the national curriculum to better balance academic and holistic development.
- [ ] Investigate training and professional development opportunities for teachers to develop skills in supporting children's social-emotional needs.
- [ ] Initiate discussions with parents to understand their needs and explore ways to provide more support for parents in understanding of how to promote social emotional development at home.
8. Cathy - Clinical Psychologist - An Example From Clinical Practice
Cathy discusses a conversation with a parent of a child with significant learning difficulties who had recently become violent to illustrate one of the consequences of not prioritising social-emotional development in the national curriculum. The child, now in secondary school struggles to engage in conversations about their behavior, express feelings with limited words, and cannot explain the reasons behind their emotions. Using a five-stage model of social-emotional development, Cathy assesses the child as being at stages two or three, lacking the ability to understand and express their feelings effectively. The result is that she is unable yet to benefit from typical coaching methods which support the process take responsibility for their actions. Cathy emphasizes the importance of teaching children to recognize and understand their emotions, suggesting that reflective conversations with supportive adults are crucial for developing these skills. These skills are vital for managing social relationships but have not been prioritized and many children who are excluded may also lack these emotional management skills. Cathy proposes a reevaluation of how time is spent in children's daily experiences to focus on building these essential life skills.
Action Points
• [] Prioritize the development of social-emotional skills for children with learning difficulties.
• [] Provide more support and guidance to parents on how to have effective conversations with their children about emotional regulation and responsibility.
• [] Advocate for the inclusion of social-emotional development in the national curriculum, especially for children with special educational needs.
• [] Provide more opportunities for reflective conversations about experiences with adults who can support the development of emotional and social skills.
• [] Consider the impact of the lack of focus on these skills and how it may be contributing to the high rates of child exclusions.
AI Generated Overall Summary Conclusions
Conversations with Experienced Practitioners - November 2024
The interviews carried out with Dr Cathy Betoin, Clinical Psychologist and 7 diverse highly experienced educational practitioners, collectively highlight significant concerns about the current state of the national curriculum and its impact on both academic and social-emotional development of all students. There has been a clear shift from a holistic, child-centered approach to a more rigid, academic-focused model, which has neglected crucial aspects such as emotional intelligence, resilience, and social skills. Educators across various roles emphasize the importance of returning to a curriculum that values the development of the whole child, incorporating multiple intelligences and fostering nurturing relationships. The lack of training and resources for teachers, along with inadequate support for children with special educational needs and those who have experienced trauma, are recurrent themes. The need for systemic reform and a balanced approach that integrates academic and social-emotional learning is crucial to better serve students and prepare them for future challenges.
Top Five Recommended Action Points:
1. Curriculum Reform for Holistic Development:
Advocate for a curriculum that balances academic learning with a new statutory focus on the priority of the development of social-emotional competencies, for all pupils - much broader in scope than just PHSE. This includes extending and embedding exploratory learning approaches in primary and secondary, to foster emotional resilience and social and thinking problem solving skills.
2. Teacher Training and Support - including Training for Ofsted Assessors:
Implement comprehensive training programs for both new and experienced teachers to equip them with strategies for supporting students' social-emotional needs and skills development. This includes trauma-informed practices and emotional literacy to create more engaging and supportive learning environments that respond to assessed needs.
3. Assessment and Tracking of Social-Emotional Development after Early Years:
Develop and implement structured assessment tools to track social-emotional development and skills alongside academic progress after end of Early Years Foundation and through primary and secondary, for all children but especially for those with additional needs. This will help identify and support students' needs early and ensure a more integrated approach to education.
4. Increased Support and Resources:
Advocate for increased resources and staffing trained in emotion coaching, to ensure adequate support for students, particularly those with special educational needs and developmental trauma. This includes addressing the need for top down policy and priority changes.
5. Engagement with Parents and Community:
Enhance collaboration with parents and the wider community to support children's social-emotional development. This includes providing resources and training for parents to understand and promote these skills at home, and involving them in the educational process to create a supportive joined up learning experiences for children and young people.
These action points aim to create a more balanced and inclusive educational system that recognizes and nurtures the whole child, preparing them for personal and academic success.
Dr Cathy Betoin
Clinical Psychologist, Teacher and Parent
Kendal Primary Care Network
November 22nd 2024
POST SCRIPT 1 A DISCUSSION OF EARLY YEARS DATA FROM 2023 WITH RACHEL
On November 23rd, Rachel contacted Cathy to say she had managed to find some data based on the social emotional competencies of reception children in our own community based on the early learning goals of self-regulation, managing self, and building relationships. In a conversation about this data we note that it shows clear disparities in achievements based on socioeconomic status, gender differences, and the impact of birth season on development. The data indicates that a significant number of children, especially boys and those from less privileged areas, are not meeting expected developmental milestones at age 5 years, which raises concerns about their readiness for the more structured Year 1 curriculum. We express concern over the lack of integration of this data into educational planning and emphasize the need for systemic changes to address these issues.
Conclusions based on the data:
1. There is a notable gap in social-emotional development achievements between children from different socioeconomic backgrounds, with those in deprived areas faring worse.
2. Boys generally lag behind girls in achieving early learning goals, suggesting a need for developmentally appropriate interventions.
3. The transition from a play-based to an academic-focused curriculum may not align with the developmental readiness of many children, particularly boys.
4. A lack of systemic prioritization of social-emotional learning could contribute to long-term issues, including mental health challenges and disengagement from education.
Suggested Action Points:
1. Integrate Data into Planning: Develop a strategy to incorporate social-emotional development data into educational planning at both local and national levels, ensuring that insights are used to inform curriculum design and teaching practices.
2. Targeted Interventions: Design targeted interventions for boys and children from deprived areas to support their social-emotional development, potentially including additional resources and tailored learning approaches.
3. Enhance Early Years Support: Advocate for maintaining or increasing staff-to-child ratios in early years settings to ensure that children's individual social-emotional needs are met, particularly during a transition to an academic curriculum.
4. Promote Developmental Readiness: Encourage a flexible approach to the transition from reception to Year 1, and explore methods of increasing competencies through such things as play-based learning and work with parents where appropriate to better support developmental readiness and engagement.
POST SCRIPT 3 - DECEMBER 2024 - ANNOUNCEMENT OF LABOUR GOVERNMENT PRIORITY
I was alarmed to see that Keir Starmer has recently suggested that the labour government wishes to focus on improving school readiness so that it should 'move from 60% to 75% achieving school readiness at age 5 years'. These figures show an even greater concern than the data we have reviewed above.
However the key question is what of the 25% or 40% who are not and will not be 'school ready' by this definition by age 5 years,??
Our view is that support for social emotional skills development needs to be a top priority for the full primary curriculum years and actively supported in secondary not just in early years to ensure that girls and boys are equipped with the emotional competencies to navigate relationships at home and at work and in community.
POST SCRIPT 4 - DR CATHY BETOIN - CURRENT ACTION RESEARCH - KENDAL PRIMARY CARE NETWORK
Introduction: In the course of her clinical work with families over more than 2 decades, Dr Betoin identified multiple variables that seemed to consistently predict reported stress states in children notably those related to the health of the adult-child relationships.
Yet when it came time to measure these variables, or even assess during screening or intervene directly to improve relationship health as a whole, she found that, as in education practice, there was a substantial gap in the tools and interventions used in adult and child mental health practice to address social emotional skills development. Existing well validated tools such as the Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire focus on symptoms of stress in the child, but provide very little in the way of context to the practitioner or family.
Through a process of trial and error, Dr Betoin developed the umbrella of the Relationship Health Questionnaire as a tool to assess needs and track progress over time. This questionnaire is used to support decisions and intervention targeting skills needed in both adults and children who are presenting in primary care settings. The focus of the intervention is on increasing skills associated with improved relationship health functioning. The assessment tool includes several measures to assess different variables that seemed to influence relationship health.
We are working closely in our community and developing links with local schools to progress this thinking.
Our intitial results clearly suggest that parents and professionals who report lower scores for children on our measure of skills for relationship health also report higher scores of stress symptoms in children, whereas higher reported scores of skills for relationship health are associated with lower reported scores of stress symptoms. This correlation confirms our hypothesis of a relationship between these two distinctive variables.
Our results also suggest that when informed relationship health skills coaching is offered based on the I Matter Framework, the reported scores of skills for relationship health can improve between time 1 and time 2 along with significantly reduced escalation and stress states and significantly improved parent-carer and professional confidence.
We are continuing to explore how to take this thinking forward.
For those interested in learning more, please look out for Dr Cathy Betoin's books - soon to be published
Relationship Health: The missing link in adult and child wellbeing
Relationship Health: What's That?
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POST SCRIPT 5 - SARAH KELLETS RESEARCH
Sarah Kellett is an Early Intervention/SEND/Outreach Specialist for Sandgate Special School, Westmorland and Furness
Sarah has recently conducted her own research exploring staff experiences and perceptions of supporting young people with mental health challenges in mainstream and special education settings including staff members common experiences of not being not listened to by policy makers.
Sarah’s paper has recently been submitted for review in the British Journal of Education Studies is titled: ‘Permission to be different’ An Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis of Mental Health in the Primary Classroom: A Practitioner Perspective
The key findings within Sarah’s research are:
- Schools desire a structured, hierarchical developmental framework that could help them to better support CYP wellbeing mental health
- The education system should maintain the emphasis on child development past the Early Years Foundation Stage (EYFS)
- There is a key divergence of practices in mainstream and specialist school giving special schools more curriculum choice than mainstream schools
Would you like to learn more about relationship health and the I Matter Framework and the thinking that underpins this concern?
LEARN MORE ABOUT RELATIONSHIP HEALTH
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