Reducing Inequalities : Realising the Talents of All [1 ed.] 9781905818884, 9781905818204

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Reducing Inequalities Realising the talents of all Leon Feinstein, Barbara Hearn and Zoe Renton with Caroline Abrahams and Mary MacLeod

NCB promotes the voices, interests and well-being of all children and young people across every aspect of their lives. As an umbrella body for the children’s sector in England and Northern Ireland, we provide essential information on policy, research and best practice for our members and other partners. NCB aims to: • • • • • •

challenge disadvantage in childhood work with children and young people to ensure they are involved in all matters that affect their lives promote multidisciplinary cross-agency partnerships and good practice influence government policy through policy development and advocacy undertake high quality research and work from an evidence-based perspective disseminate information to all those working with children and young people, and to children and young people themselves.

NCB has adopted and works within the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child. Published by the National Children’s Bureau National Children’s Bureau 8 Wakley Street, London EC1V 7QE Tel: 020 7843 6000 Website: www.ncb.org.uk Registered charity number: 258825 NCB works in partnership with Children in Scotland (www.childreninscotland.org.uk) and Children in Wales (www.childreninwales.org.uk). © National Children’s Bureau 2007 ISBN 978-1-905818-88-4 British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library The views expressed in this book are those of the authors and not necessarily those of the National Children’s Bureau. NCB promotes the voices, interests and well-being of all children and young people across every aspect of their lives.

Acknowledgements Authors Leon Feinstein, Reader in the Economics of Education, Institute of Education, University of London. Barbara Hearn, Deputy Chief Executive, National Children’s Bureau. Zoe Renton, Policy and Parliamentary Assistant, National Children’s Bureau. Caroline Abrahams, Programme Director for Children and Young People, Local Government Association; Vice Chair of the Children’s Inter-Agency Group. Mary MacLeod, Chief Executive, Family and Parenting Institute. We would like to thank all those who have helped produce this paper and particularly Jane O’Leary, Lisa Payne, Paula McMahon, and Paul Ennals. We would particularly like to thank everyone involved with the UK Birth Cohort Studies and colleagues in the Centre for Research on the Wider Benefits of Learning. The paper has drawn primarily on published findings from the UK cohort studies. These are nationally representative, large sample studies of the lives of individuals in the UK from birth through childhood and into adulthood. We also present new findings from research undertaken for this paper.

Reducing Inequalities

Contents Acknowledgements

3

Preface and introduction

6

Executive summary and key policy points

8

1 Childhood circumstances and the risk of multiple deprivation The relationship between a child’s socio-economic group and adult   social exclusion Socio-economic status at birth and the wider circumstances and   experiences of a child and their family How do a family’s circumstances and experiences interact to impact   upon the child throughout their childhood and into adult life?     The process of child development     Child development within the family context     The process of child development: The child, family and school How are these processes experienced by the child? Summary

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21 21 21 23 23 25 25 27

Pathways from childhood disadvantage to adult social exclusion Family background and cognitive development from birth to 16     Cognitive development from birth to age 10     A word about genes     Cognitive development from age 7 to 11     Cognitive development from age 11 to 16 (Key Stages 2 and 4) What does this mean for children, families and schools The impact of wider, non-cognitive attributes on outcomes The key risk factors underlying SEG (as identified in Part One) and   their relationship with outcomes of exclusion     Key socio-economic and demographic childhood factors     Social housing Summary 3 How can information about a child’s circumstances and experiences   throughout life be used to plan services effectively? Using observed information about a child to assess the likelihood of   future social exclusion Continuity and discontinuity in a child’s level of risk of future   social exclusion Summary

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11 13 14 14 16 17 18 19

29 29 30 31 35 35 37 39

41 41 42 43 46 47 47 48 50 51 54 55 56

Conclusion

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Bibliography

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Contents

4 Key messages, policy recommendations and questions Key messages from the data Policy implications and questions     Supporting parents Parental involvement in learning     Early years services     Smoothing transitions     The education system     The importance of personal attributes     Planning our services     Learning communities     Lived environment Summary

Table of Boxes and Figures Box 1 Socio-economic group (SEG) Box 2 Multiple deprivation Figure 1 Probability of multiple deprivation at 30 years, by birth SEG, 1970 Cohort Study Figure 2 Odds ratios for family risk if occupation of father is SEG 5, 1970 Cohort Figure 3 Bronfenbrenner’s model of human development Figure 4 A conceptual model of the effects of factors within the family context Figure 5 Interactions between the family and the school Figure 6 Relative shifts in cognitive development, 22 months to 10 years, 1970 Cohort Figure 7 Relative cognitive shifts from age 7 to 11 years, by SEG, 1958 Cohort Figure 8 Probability of change in school achievement between Key Stages 2 and 4, by Free School Meal status Figure 9 Relationship of age 10 capabilities to age 30 outcomes Figure 10 Relationship of risk factors at birth with multiple deprivation, age 30, 1970 Cohort Figure 11 Probability of 10 or more outcomes of multiple deprivation, at age 30, by level of risk at age 10, 1970 Cohort Figure 12 Risk continuity: Multiple adult deprivation, age 30, 1970 Cohort

11 12 12 14 15 16 17 22 24 25 28 30 36 37

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Preface and introduction This paper is being published at an opportune time. A few months ago a new Prime Minister, Gordon Brown, came into office. Against a background in which many disadvantaged children in our country do less well than their innate abilities should allow, he said one of his highest priorities was to ensure that every child achieves their potential. Since then we have seen the creation of a new Department for Children, Schools and Families as a vehicle – so the government clearly hopes – for furthering that laudable ambition. What follows here is an exploration of the links between those three things – children, schools and families – in particular the impact of schools and families on children’s outcomes. The paper draws on new and existing research to shed light on how children’s experiences, at home and in schools, explain the extent to which they succeed as children and later as adults. This is done not as an arid academic exercise but with the aim of gaining a better understanding of the complex dynamics of inherited disadvantage and inequality, this in turn being a prerequisite for designing more effective policies and practice interventions for ‘narrowing the gap’. That we should devote serious attention to ‘narrowing the gap’ in outcomes between disadvantaged children and the rest matters profoundly for economic, social and moral reasons. The fact that family background is still such a strong determinant of a child’s outcomes is an affront to a civilised, progressive society. But being angry is not enough. We need to get beyond that emotion to understand the often subtle ways in which different factors operate to advantage some children and disadvantage others. The hope is that this paper will help us to do that and so provide a foundation for the important discussion about what our responses should be, a discussion that is initiated but by no means concluded within the text. The issues that this paper provokes are, by definition, political with a small ‘p’, in that there are big potential implications for how we best support children at home and in school; and about how we allocate resources, train professionals and organise learning to maximise the chances of reducing inequality. That there is a need for some change seems clear. A rebalancing of the focus within education may be required for example, since the single best predictor of a 10-yearold child going on to fare poorly as an adult in their early thirties turns out not to be their reading or mathematical ability, as might be supposed, but their lack of capacity for self-restraint in response to distress – ‘externalising behaviour’ as it is termed. This finding supports the current policy interest in measures to help children in developing ‘non-cognitive skills’, reflected, for example, in the recent very welcome government decision to roll-out the Social and Emotional Aspects of Learning (SEAL) programme to schools on a national basis.

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The paper may make for uncomfortable reading for two reasons; first, because of the implication that how we organise and run schools may in some ways unintentionally disadvantage already disadvantaged children, certainly in comparison to their more fortunate peers. It is crucial that we understand more about how and why this happens and what we can do to remedy this – both at the point of delivery in school and from a broader policy perspective in designing the whole education system and equipping teachers and other professionals to work well within it.

Preface and introduction

Our awareness of the importance for children of ‘non-cognitive skills’ is growing; the research discussed here suggests though that their acquisition may be even more crucial than we thought.

Second, some policy-makers may be disappointed that the research covered in the paper generates no obvious ‘magic bullet’ policy solutions or easy answers when it comes to deciding how best to deploy necessarily scarce resources. Instead, the paper reaffirms just how important highly skilled and committed professionals are, and the merits of a progressive universalist approach to the provision of services for children and families. This latter finding is actually, it could be argued, a cause for celebration. The recent interest in identifying risk and protective factors for children has sometimes carried with it the danger of an overly deterministic approach. Instead, the analysis here shows that children move in and out of risk as they grow up, and can and do confound our expectations of what they can achieve. It also points out that children in the middle socio-economic groups have most people in them who will go on to fare poorly in later life without additional help, so ‘every child really does matter’. It would therefore be a mistake to target support just at those children who score the worst on a risk assessment. The idea of writing this paper arose from informal discussions between a group of people who, from different professional and organisational perspectives, had concluded that there was more work to be done in exploring the relationships between children, families and schools as revealed by research; and in drawing out the policy conclusions to help reduce inequality. The analysis carried out by Leon Feinstein of various cohort studies was the crucial element in this respect. The group believed it was important that his findings be widely shared. As is perhaps inevitably the case, in the end the paper raises as many questions as it suggests answers but, imperfect as it is, we offer it with the aim of stimulating an immensely important debate – one whose time has now surely come. We know that improving children’s outcomes and tackling the inequality between them requires contributions from all the sectors that we jointly represent: local government, the voluntary and community sector, the research community and national organisations concerned with children, young people and families. This paper may help us begin to understand the part we can each play. Caroline Abrahams

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Executive summary and key policy points Despite considerable effort over recent years there remains a strong link between the circumstances into which a child is born and their adult outcomes. Children from lower socio-economic groups, born in the year 2000, have shown signs of falling behind their more advantaged peers by the age of three. Other factors run alongside or interact with social and economic class, or ‘family background’ as we refer to it here. We need greater understanding of these factors and their effects if we are to select the most effective policy levers and move forward in reducing inequalities. Socio-economic status is an effective, single measure that indicates the wide range of childhood circumstance that underlies inequality in opportunity and outcomes. Children born into unskilled households have the greatest chance of poor outcomes. But in the 1970s, when many of today’s parents were growing up, greater numbers of children were at risk of poor adult outcomes if they came from a family with a head of household in a partly or manually skilled occupation. Family circumstances and wider experiences, for which socio-economic status is a key indicator, affect children’s development. Family structure, parent occupation, housing type and so forth interact with a parent’s health and well-being as well as their parenting style to affect how children develop. Children themselves are by no means passive in this interactive process of ‘growing up’. The child impacts on their parents and environment just as the parents impact on the child and each other. An overall focus on relationships – on how people interact, rather than just on the needs and behaviours of individuals – represents a critical shift in the approach that is needed. Schools play an important part in how social disparities can be passed on. The way pupils and teachers interact is influenced by the characteristics of the family. Whether at home or in school, the more challenges a child faces the tougher it is for either the parents or the teachers to counteract the negative effects, and the greater the need for further professional intervention. Cognitive development is malleable, perhaps more so than services generally recognise. However, even if a child starts with a cognitive advantage they are likely to lose it if they are battling with eight or more of the evidence-based indicators of deprivation. Policy that works across family and school, with the child at the centre and with the context of housing and neighbourhood clearly in focus, is essential. A child’s personal attributes are significant too. Teachers can observe all attributes; hence the information that is needed to intervene and change a child’s outcomes already exists within the education system. Attributes include, but are not limited to, the well-recognised reading and maths score. The outcome of learning is currently limited to qualifications, when evidence shows that they are a partial and imperfect indicator of success. Of equal or perhaps

Executive summary and key policy points

more importance is developing personal attributes and non-cognitive skills, such as self-regulation and communication skills. Social housing, low income or benefits and a background of low education are common risk factors of poor outcomes. They need dedicated but integrated attention if we are to ensure all children have their right to be able to live positive and satisfying adult lives realised. Significant life-shifting events can occur at any time. We know therefore that there is discontinuity in the way children progress. So institutional investment solely in the early years or only within the school context, important though these are, will not be sufficient to improve children’s outcomes, or to narrow the gap between them, for those most at risk. We can predict with some accuracy those localities and circumstances in which children live that are more likely to mean they will fall back in relation to what they are capable of achieving. An integrated strategy, which expresses population-level interventions alongside others moulded for specific cohorts including children at highest risk, is therefore required. ‘Supporting parents’ needs to mean more than parenting classes or sanctioning parents. An important minority of parents have to manage challenging problems such as domestic violence, mental ill-health and substance misuse. Cultural change and greater partnership working is where effort needs to be targeted. Adult services need to be redefined for parents, non-parent adults and elders. With an explicit focus on ‘parents’, the needs of children should be considered in any treatments or services that parents receive. Parents’ involvement in education needs to be nurtured in preschool, and then transferred into primary and secondary school as normal practice. The mode will change as children develop their own opinions about a broader range of issues. The voice of children will have to contribute to how this is achieved, but parental engagement in their children’s learning is tremendously important at every stage of their development. Extended or Saturday schooling, similar to that available to their advantaged peers, should be an option in poor communities. Ensuring a poor child does not lose out does not disadvantage the child of a wealthier family. The style and location of extended provision may be a matter of local negotiation, including the views of the children and families who it is designed to benefit. Engaging local people as part of the solution of reducing inequalities has multiple benefits. All professionals, particularly teachers and those in multidisciplinary teams, need to understand the communities in which they are operating and how to communicate effectively with them. The option to take time-out from the very pressured environment of the classroom will benefit teachers as well. Building local volunteering; secondments across professions; or simply sabbaticals to reflect upon role and function, can all bring new energy. A rethink of the goals of the school experience is needed, both in content and style. Wider use of multi-platform technologies; moving away from age-structured learning; focusing on non-cognitive skills and learning in and beyond the school building, are all needed. Local businesses, parents, young people, community and youth centres are all part of the territory we call ‘learning communities’. To capitalise on that wider territory requires policy that ‘thinks child’, whether its primary focus is on industry, housing, leisure or transport.

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The relationship between a child’s socio-economic group and adult social exclusion The lower a child’s socio-economic group (SEG) at birth, the greater the probability of them experiencing multiple deprivation in adulthood (Box 1). Box 1: Socio-economic group (SEG)

1  Childhood circumstances and the risk of multiple deprivation

1

Childhood circumstances and the risk of multiple deprivation

The SEG system classifies occupations as follows (with per cent reported for 1970 cohort families, based on fathers’ occupations): • • • • • •

SEG 1 – professional (5 per cent) SEG 2 – managerial/technical (12 per cent) SEG 3nm – skilled non-manual (12 per cent) SEG 3m – skilled manual (48 per cent) SEG 4 – partly skilled (16 per cent) SEG 5 – unskilled (7 per cent).

We use occupation as an indicator of a family’s access to the key resources that support development and achievement. A child’s socio-economic group at birth can thus be defined by his or her parents’ occupations.

Figure 1 illustrates the probability of an individual suffering from multiple deprivations at the age of 30 based on his or her socio-economic position at birth.1 By multiple deprivations we mean eight or more of the features of disadvantage listed in Box 2.

1  Statistical note: Figure 1 reports the probability of the outcome for members of the six SEGs. For example, the probability of 0.29 for SEG 5 (unskilled manual) indicates that 29 per cent of those in this group experienced the outcome of multiple deprivation.

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Figure 1: Probability of multiple deprivation at 30 years, by birth SEG, 1970 Cohort Study Probability of multiple deprivation at age 30

0.35 0.30 0.25 0.20 0.15 0.10 0.05 0.00

1

2

3 non-manual

3 manual

4

5 Socio-economic group at birth

Box 2: Multiple deprivation Multiple deprivation – Where an individual or group experiences a series of features of disadvantage. The 31 outcomes of multiple deprivation used by the UK cohort studies are: • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •

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Being a smoker Being obese Suffering from current depression Experiencing psychiatric disturbance Being single, separated or divorced Being/having been a teen parent Being a single parent Living in social housing Being/having been homeless Being a victim of crime Feeling dissatisfied Having no qualifications Not reached Level 2 qualifications Not reached Level 4 qualifications High-level criminality Racial intolerance

• • • • • • • • • • • • • • •

Not voting Low self-efficacy Low hourly wage On benefits Living in a workless household Living in a workless household with children Absent child Mental health problem Long-term depression Other mental health issue Addiction to drugs/alcohol Not in education, employment or training (NEET) before age 18 Long periods of time NEET before age 30 Living in overcrowded conditions Experiencing financial problems

The chances of experiencing multiple deprivation in adulthood is far greater for a child born to a labourer, porter or barman (SEG 5) (30 per cent) than for a child born to a lawyer or a doctor (SEG 1) (5 per cent). Not only is there a huge disparity between these highest and lowest groups, but we also see an evident and gradual increase in risk as we move down the socio-economic scale. The precise occupations and percentages will have changed since the

While the difference between the professional (SEG 1) and the unskilled (SEG 5) is very striking in terms of outcomes, it is important to bear in mind that these groups only constitute 10 per cent of the population overall. Constituting 90 per cent of the population are the middle groups; over half of which are families in employment as skilled manual workers (SEG 3m), for example electricians and plumbers. Although we must not ignore the extreme ends of the spectrum, and most importantly the prevalence of risk of multiple deprivations among the unskilled (SEG 5), it is vital to maintain a focus on what is happening between these extremes. If we only focused on the groups that are the most advantaged and the very least advantaged, we would miss most of those children who are at risk of poor outcomes. Every child really does matter.

Socio-economic status at birth and the wider circumstances and experiences of a child and their family So, why does socio-economic status matter? How can being in one socio-economic group at birth correlate so strongly with multiple deprivations in adulthood? Occupation is the basis of this classification but it is not at all the sole cause of the differences observed. We use this measure of socio-economic status to explore inequalities among children and families in the UK because it is a useful single measure that can stand for a wide range of other characteristics of disadvantage. So, to answer these questions, it is helpful to explore what other circumstances and experiences can be associated with socioeconomic status.

1  Childhood circumstances and the risk of multiple deprivation

childhood of this cohort but the broad range of inequality is more likely to have grown than shrunk, so we shouldn’t dismiss this as ‘only history’. So, for the 1970 Cohort, on average a bus driver’s child (SEG 4) was significantly more likely (20 per cent) to experience multiple deprivation in adulthood than a plumber’s child (SEG 3m) (15 per cent), who is in turn more at risk of multiple deprivation than a shop assistant’s child (SEG 3nm) (9 per cent), and so on.

Figure 2 shows the relative odds of a family of a child in the 1970-birth cohort experiencing a range of socio-economic ‘risks’ at birth, if they were born into a family where the father’s occupation was categorised by the social statistics of the day as the lowest occupational group, SEG 5 (unskilled manual). Figure 2 reports ‘odds ratios’, where a number greater than 1 indicates that the likelihood of the sample member’s family experiencing the risk is greater for those in SEG 5 than for other families. It can be seen that the relative odds are much greater than one for nearly all of the other socio-economic risk factors considered, the one exception being mother working, which is fairly independent of the occupational status of the father. These relationships are shown here for the 1970 Cohort because in later sections we report related further findings from this cohort study. However, other studies have shown similar levels of co-existence of risk across domains and in other periods. Therefore, these odds ratios are not surprising but they do show clearly that SEG is a proxy for a wide variety of circumstances and experiences that might be classed as ‘risky’. As we continue through this

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paper, we will use the term ‘family background’ to refer to a child’s socio-economic status and the range of circumstances and experiences for which it proxies. .

Figure 2: Odds ratios for family risk if occupation of father is SEG 5, 1970 Cohort Socio-economic ‘risk’ at birth

Lone mother Large family Young mother Mother works Overcrowding Social housing Low income Mother no qualifications Father no qualifications 0

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

Odds of experiencing risk for a child born into SEG5

How do a family’s circumstances and experiences interact to impact upon the child throughout their childhood and into adult life? The relationship between SEG and future outcomes is not about the impact of a single variable. It is the result of other factors for which SEG is an indicator – social and economic circumstances, family characteristics and family relationships. This section sets out a conceptual approach for thinking about the ways in which these factors impact upon a child’s development and therefore future outcomes. The process of child development The way in which a child develops is driven by a variety of interacting factors and circumstances that the child experiences – for example level of income; socio-economic status; family structure; type of school; and relationships with parents, friends and so on. These circumstances influence and interact with one another and impact directly and indirectly upon the child.

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The child is not simply a passive recipient of these effects. Right from the start he or she is in a transactional dynamic relationship with his or her circumstances. In other words, the child, and the way the child develops, also affects to some extent the wider circumstances and environments in which he or she is developing, and also affects his or her own developmental outcomes.

Bronfenbrenner’s model of human development (Figure 3) emphasises how children grow up in layered environments of economic, social and cultural factors that have substantial impacts on their development and outcomes. Children will be affected, directly and indirectly, by these factors – the immediate environment (for example family, school and community); the social and economic context (structures of inequality, levels of employment, poverty); and the cultural context (the broad values and beliefs held within society). Moreover, the immediate environment of the child will have greater or lesser impact depending on the wider contextual factors. The local neighbourhood and the socio-cultural context have such profound impacts that parents can find it difficult to mitigate them, for example a teen culture that emphasises, as ‘cool’, drinking, drug use and the carrying of weapons. The Smith longitudinal study of Edinburgh teenagers2 found that in poor neighbourhoods the ‘neighbourhood effect’ is more pronounced, so while good parenting will be protective to some extent it has less leverage than it would in positive, less troubled neighbourhoods. Figure 3: Bronfenbrenner’s model of human development

1  Childhood circumstances and the risk of multiple deprivation

It is helpful to think about these environments as comprising a number of specific interacting contexts, such as the family, the school, the wider community and the national and global context.

Immediate Environment

The Child

Social and Economic Context Cultural Context

Source: Bronfenbrenner, U (1979) The Ecology of Human Development. Harvard University Press.

2  Smith, DJ ‘Explaining ethnic variations in crime and antisocial behaviour’ presented at Jacobs Foundation Conference, Marbach Castle, Germany, 2002.

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Here we focus on child development within the context of the home and then the school. These are just two examples of contexts in which a child develops. Other examples include the contexts of wider social and economic structures, such as labour markets and housing markets; social inequality structures; and international factors, such as trade, the media and technology. Child development within the family context The local context of the family is central to the lives of most children and young people and so we start there. However, it is always important to remember, as highlighted above, that the family and family relationships exist within wider contexts. This is highlighted in Figure 4, which shows how wider social forces flow through the family to impact on the child. The family is the key immediate environment for the child, particularly in the early years. Parents work to nurture and protect children within the home, which is impacted on by wider social forces; and these wider factors also permeate their lives. Figure 4: A conceptual model of the effects of factors within the family context Distal family factors

Key features of the family

Proximal family processes

• • • • • •

• Parental cognitions • Mental health and well-being • Physical health • Family relations

• Parenting quality • Home learning • Role models and mentoring

Family structure Family size Age of mother Income & poverty Occupation Employment / working hours • Education • Housing

Outcome Child development

Source: Feinstein, L, Duckworth, K and Sabates, R (2004) ‘A model of the intergenerational transmission of educational success’, Wider Benefits of Learning Research Report, June, 10.

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The capacity of the family to support child development and the ways in which children experience the world will depend on the family’s socio-economic circumstances – such as the size and structure of the family; age of the mother; and the parents’ level of education, employment and, crucially, their income. As well as directly affecting a child’s development, these socio-economic features of the family interact with, and filter through, other more internal characteristics (such as physical and mental well-being, and parent relationships) and features of parent-child relationships within the family (such as quality of parenting, opportunities to learn at home, or the nature of parental advice). As stressed above, the child is at the centre of this process, so he or she is in a transactional dynamic relationship with his or her parents, influencing parent–child relationships as well as being influenced by them.

The process of child development: The child, family and school While this process is taking place, the family context is interacting with wider contexts – such as the community or the national and global socio-economic and cultural context – and therefore with factors such as community cohesion or tension, class structures, levels of poverty, labour market trends and technology. An important example of this is the interaction between family and school. Figure 5 illustrates the way that characteristics of the child, family and school interact to influence child development. It shows two mechanisms by which socio-economic factors of the family (such as size, age of mother, SEG) impact on child outcomes through their interaction with characteristics of, and relationships within, the school. Thus schools are part of the way that social disparities are reproduced from one generation to the next. Figure 5: Interactions between the family and school

Socio-economic factors e.g. income

1

Distal school factors

2

Characteristics of the family

Parent–child relationships

2

2

Characteristics of the school

Outcomes

1  Childhood circumstances and the risk of multiple deprivation

It is in this way that factors or circumstances, associated with deprivation and disadvantage, affect the way in which a child develops; and how inequalities are reproduced across the generations.

1 1

School–pupil interactions

School outcomes

Source: Feinstein, Duckworth and Sabates (2004) ‘A model of the intergenerational transmission of educational success’.

Arrow 1 shows a straightforward link between the family factors and the characteristics of the school. For example, the income of the family will impact on the characteristics of the school that the child attends. A wealthier family can often buy into a particular school area or even buy into the school itself. These are not options typically available to those in lower socioeconomic groups. Arrow 2 describes a different mechanism: the teacher–pupil relationship will be different depending on how the teacher, and school, reacts to the child’s language and behaviours, formed within the family context. The quality of the teacher–pupil relationship will in itself impact upon the way in which the child develops at school and beyond.

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It is important to remember that, just as the child impacts on family relationships in the home context, so too do pupils impact on pupil–teacher relationships in the school context. A powerful group dynamic is at play in classrooms and schools that can see some children becoming marginalised. Teachers are not always well-equipped by their training to manage these dynamics. When they are, the effects can be transformative for children.

How are these processes experienced by the child? For the individual child, their interactions with their mother, father, carer, other family members and so forth will impact on their development. The manner of that impact will depend on the characteristics of the other person – mother, father, carer, etc. – and on the wider context of the interaction (that is, the socio-economic factors within and outside the family). A child can grow up in a family with a lot of ‘risky’ characteristics – such as low income, living in social housing, or having a mother with poor physical health – yet high quality parenting will still benefit the child. However, the more ‘risky’ socio-economic factors and family characteristics the child experiences, the harder it is for ‘good parenting’ alone to be effective in supporting positive outcomes. The ‘risk and resilience’ literature3 suggests that, while every child experiences some risks during their lifetime, children and families only have so much resilience. Eventually a buildup of risk factors will have a negative effect on the child. While there is also literature that indicates the importance of experiencing and managing risks as a part of growing up, it is the number of risks and the extent of balancing protective factors that matters. This is particularly important for a child with a disadvantaged family background, where there will be a greater likelihood of multiple risk factors (as discussed earlier). That is one reason why it is so important that child poverty should be at the centre of government policy. This will have highly beneficial spillover benefits across a range of outcomes and areas of policy concern for years to come. Moving into the school context, interacting factors within the home will influence the nature of the school/teacher–home/pupil interactions. For example, a teacher may unconsciously expect and value middle-class language similar to their own (Bernstein 1990). On hearing such language from a particular pupil, who learned it at home, the teacher may respond to that pupil in different, and perhaps more positive, ways. Similarly, a teacher may draw on his or her own experiences and understandings when responding to a pupil from a different class, cultural or ethnic background. These pupil–teacher interactions are heavily moderated by the characteristics of the family, either real or imagined by the teacher, pupil or family. Pupil reputations can also influence how a teacher (and other professionals) responds, both negatively and positively, to a pupil.

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3  For example, Rutter, M (1990) ‘Psychosocial resilience and protective mechanisms’ in Rolf, J and others (eds) Risk and Protective Factors in the Development of Psychopathology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

• The lower a child’s access to key resources at birth, the greater the probability of them experiencing multiple deprivations in adulthood. Socio-economic status acts as a reliable proxy for other circumstances and experiences that might be classed as ‘risky’ for children. • While children born into the worst-off families face the greatest risk of multiple deprivations as adults, the greatest numbers of children at risk are in a much broader cross-section of households. • The way in which a child develops is driven by interacting factors such as poverty, family structure, socio-economic status (or class), type of school, and relationships with parents, family and friends. The child is not passive. The factors impact on the child, the child impacts on the factors and they, in turn, on each other. • Relationships within the family – that is, parent to parent, child to parent and so forth – influence the child’s progress.

1  Childhood circumstances and the risk of multiple deprivation

Summary

• Moreover, the wider context of family and culture can undermine or enhance a child’s development and the protective effect of positive parenting. • Schools are part of the way in which social disparities are reproduced in one generation after another. Teachers are not always well equipped by their training to manage the dynamics between school and pupil. Pupil–teacher interactions are sometimes moderated by the characteristics of the family. • The more risky characteristics a child experiences, the tougher it becomes for positive parenting or skilled teaching to counteract the negative effects. Hence for those with the greatest chance of multiple risk factors, success in reducing child poverty will bring benefits across a range of outcomes and for many years to come.

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Here we explore, in more detail, key aspects of the pathways from birth to social exclusion at age 30. First, we look at cognitive development from birth to age 16 and the impact of family background on school achievement. Educational achievement and skills acquisition are critical to accessing the labour market and hence moving out of poverty and disadvantage. Next, the analysis moves beyond education to address the impact of wider personal attributes in childhood and adolescence on adult outcomes. Finally, we move beyond the single variable – socio-economic group – to explore the relationship between the key risk factors underlying SEG (as identified in Part One) and outcomes of exclusion.

Family background and cognitive development from birth to 16

2  Pathways from childhood disadvantage to adult social exclusion

2

Pathways from childhood disadvantage to adult social exclusion

It goes without saying that educational outcomes are extremely important for adult life chances. There is a considerable body of evidence stating that the better the children’s school outcomes and final educational qualifications, the less likely they are to experience adult social exclusion, poverty, ill health, depression and a range of other negative outcomes. Children’s progress in terms of their cognitive, or educational, development is not fixed or immutable; their development in these terms cannot be forecast based on an assessment of some ‘innate’ individual ability. There is considerable discontinuity in how children perform in preschool and school tests. Low-achieving children can become high achieving and vice versa. This happens a lot more than people tend to think. However, as we will see below, a child’s family background plays a significant part in how he or she develops over time, both before and during school. Cognitive development from birth to age 10 Throughout their childhood, children in the 1970 British Cohort Study were assessed through a range of tests of cognitive and personal and social development. For example, at 22 months, children were assessed for their abilities in terms of cube stacking, language development and drawing. At 42 months, a child’s ability in terms of counting, speaking, and drawing copies of shapes was added to the information gathered. At 5 years, vocabulary and human figure drawing were assessed and, by 10 years, children’s

21

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achievement was measured through the standard reading and maths test scores recorded in school. Figure 6 looks at children who were in the highest and lowest SEGs at birth and who were within the high-achieving top 25 per cent (‘high Cog’) and low-achieving bottom 25 per cent (‘low Cog’) groups in terms of performance in assessments at age 22 months. It shows changes in how well they did over subsequent periods of childhood, relative to other children their age. Figure 6: Relative shifts in cognitive development, 22 months to 10 years, 1970 Cohort Study Average position in distribution

100 90 80 70 60

High SEG, high Cog at 22 m High SEG, low Cog at 22 m

50 40 30

Low SEG, high Cog at 22 m (n=55)

20

Low SEG, low Cog at 22 m

10 0

22 26 30 34 38 42 46 50 54 58 62 66 70 74 78 82 86 90 94 98 102 106 110 114 118

Month

Source: Feinstein, L (2003) ‘Inequality in the early cognitive development of British children in the 1970 cohort’, Economica, 70, 277, 73–98.

From 22 months to 10 years, children born to an affluent family with a high socioeconomic position and who were doing well in tests at 22 months (high SEG, high Cog), and children from homes where the head of the household was an unskilled worker and who were not doing so well (low SEG, low Cog), continue more or less in their relative positions at the top and the bottom of the distribution.4 In other words, young children who have well-paid parents and do well at 22 months tend to continue to do well, and poor children who are not doing so well do not tend to improve in relative terms. Significant movement takes place, however, for the children from advantaged families who were not doing so well at 22 months (high SEG, low Cog), and the children whose parents

22

4  Part of the initial movements between 22 and 42 months represent the regression to the mean. However, although there is considerable measurement error at 22 months, it is still better to be doing well at 22 months than not.

A word about genes The notion that education or income are purely genetic traits has no scientific basis. Education and income are not biological and so obviously cannot be transmitted solely through biological genetic processes. Intelligence has a strong heritable element and also an environmental element, but social class is not equal to intelligence and the equation of the two is false. The inter-generational transmission of occupational and educational success necessarily also involves environmental and social interactions with biologically inherited traits. Modern genetic science recognises the importance of these gene– environment interactions and has evaluated them to be substantive. What the findings in Figure 6 suggest is not that genes don’t matter, nor that environment is everything, rather that there is a more subtle interplay of heredity and context. The key point is that it is probable that no child ever really achieves their potential – in reality we are all capable of so much more than we tend to realise – and that this gap is socially stratified. Cognitive development from age 7 to 11

2  Pathways from childhood disadvantage to adult social exclusion

were in unskilled occupations but who did well at that age (low SEG, high Cog). Through childhood the performance of high SEG, low Cog children began to improve; while those in the low SEG, high Cog group, who were doing well in their early years, began to fall back relative to other children their age. In other words, the children of unskilled or poor families who were doing well at a young age began to lose their cognitive advantage and were overtaken in terms of cognitive development by the children of wealthy households, who were not doing so well in the earlier tests.

The disparity in educational progress by family background does not only take place in the earlier years. The effect continues to be influential as children grow up. In the diagram below, we see the likelihood of a child moving out of the top and bottom 25 per cent (top or low quartile) in terms of reading and maths skills between the age of 7 and 11 years. If we compare the relative reading and maths skills of children at the ages of 7 and 11 there will be changes. Some children will do well at 7 but less well at 11; others will do poorly at 7 but improve by 11. Figure 7 shows how the chances of improving or dropping are affected by whether the child is from a poor or a wealthy background.

23

80 70 60 Probability (%)

Reducing Inequalities

Figure 7: Relative cognitive shifts from Key Stage 2 to 4, by SEG, 1958 Cohort

Probability of escaping bottom 25%

50 40

Probability of falling from top 25%

30 20 10 0 1

2

3

3nm

4

5

Socio-economic group (SEG) Source: Feinstein, L (2004) ‘Mobility in pupils’ cognitive attainment during school life’, Oxford Review of Economic Policy, 20, 2, Education.

If we look at the chances of improving reading and maths scores, we see that at the ends of the spectrum nearly a quarter (23 per cent) of children in the lowest SEG (5) moved out of the bottom quartile by the age of 11, compared to two-thirds (65 per cent) of children in the highest SEG (1). So children from wealthy backgrounds are nearly three times more likely to improve than those from poor backgrounds. And if we now look at the middle groups, the skilled non-manual and skilled manual, where most of the child population (45 per cent) is located, the pattern is similar. These children, too, are much less likely than children from wealthy families to improve their scores. These are the social groups with the greater number of people in them and so the greater number of children. So if we only target the children of unskilled families – though they are the ones suffering the most significant negative impact on their life chances – we will not reach most of the children who are affected by inequality. Arguably, there could be an impact on more children by tackling the middle group than the most disadvantaged one. However, we would propose that policy levers have to consider both and not simply one or the other. There is a significant gap between groups as we move down the socio-economic scale and this cannot be ignored. If we look at the other scenario – how likely it is for children to fall out of the top quartile in terms of school achievement – we can see a similar but reverse pattern. The progress of high-achieving children in maths and reading is more likely to slow if they have experienced a more disadvantaged family background.

24

Similar patterns can be identified as pupils move through secondary school, and in more recent data. Figure 8 shows that, in 1998, children receiving free school meals (FSM) (a proxy indicator for low income) were less likely than others to stay in the top half of the distribution in terms of school achievement between the ages of 11 and 16 (Key Stages 2 and 4), and more likely to stay at the bottom of the range. Figure 8: Probability of change in school achievement, between Key Stage 2 and 4, by FSM status 90 80 Percentage of pupils

70 FSM

60

Non-FSM

50 40 30 20 10

2  Pathways from childhood disadvantage to adult social exclusion

Cognitive development from age 11 to 16 (Key Stages 2 and 4)

0 Staying in top 50%

Staying in bottom 10%

Source: Cassen, R and Kingdon, G (2007) ‘Tackling low educational achievement’ report. Joseph Rowntree Foundation.

The pupils in this study entered Key Stage 2 in 1998, so we are seeing that similar patterns of inequality exist today as we have shown was the case for children born in 1958 and 1970.

What does this mean for children, families and schools? In these three studies, we repeatedly see evidence of children from more disadvantaged family backgrounds – in terms of socio-economic status and other factors associated with that variable – being less likely to progress and more likely to fall behind than their wealthier peers. Here, this pattern is observed to begin when a child is almost 2 years old, a very early point in life for a poor child to be missing out on the support and education which is helping more advantaged children to improve. Similar messages are being reported by the Millennium Cohort Study, which is following the progress of children born between 2000 and 2002. Preliminary findings reveal that by the age of three, children from disadvantaged backgrounds (in terms of levels of poverty and parental education) are educationally already up to a year behind more advantaged children (Joshi and Hansen

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Reducing Inequalities

2007). So there is a relationship between the family background of a child and the effectiveness with which they are supported and nourished from a very young age. These pieces of analysis have important implications for the home and school context. The findings throughout the early years suggest that affluent families have access to more of the resources that matter for positive child development, and that they are subject to fewer of the negative life events that can impede child development. These differences have an impact on the extent to which families can develop their children’s capabilities. For parents, particularly those experiencing negative life events, learning how to access services and being supported in doing so in order to help a child develop their learning skills is clearly critically important. The analysis also shows that these inequalities persist and deepen through school, as the chances of a pupil failing to realise his or her potential increase as we move down the socio-economic spectrum. This suggests that the current school system simply does not do enough to improve the performance of, and build on the capabilities of, children from lowincome families. Here, we can return to the model of child development set out in Part Two. The child’s development is affected by the circumstances in which he or she grows up: the socioeconomic circumstances of the family (such as family structure, family size, income and poverty and employment); family characteristics (such as parents’ level of education and the physical and mental health of family members); and the parent–child relationships (parenting quality, home learning, role models). These factors all interact to impact on the child’s development in the context of the family. The family circumstances and characteristics also interact with and filter through the characteristics of the school context, to impact on a child’s development. So, the way in which a teacher interacts with a child will be influenced by the child’s and the parents’ behaviours and perceptions – perceived or real – developed in the home context, and by the teacher’s own values and perceptions. The bottom line is that the interaction between child and teacher, and between the home and school contexts, will influence how well the child does at school. Cognitive development and educational development are, of course, not the only features in the development of a child but are very important for life chances. (In the next section, we will briefly explore the importance of wider forms of achievement and development.) We think this analysis has shown us that we still need to find ways to enhance the potential of all children at the start of their school career and throughout; and particularly to focus on redressing the gap in educational support that exists between the experiences of the advantaged and the less advantaged child. In general, the ability of children with disadvantaged family backgrounds is not being recognised and responded to in the same way, or to the same degree, as for advantaged children – and these children cannot be protected in the same way from factors that inhibit their development. The key question is: what can national and local government, practitioners, and parents do to change this? We turn to these questions in Part Four.

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The child or young person is not a passive recipient of external forces but also acts and reacts in the world. Education is partly about supporting children to maintain, grow and exert their capabilities most effectively. There is increasing recognition that the capabilities that count for life chances are not only a matter of narrowly defined cognitive skills such as maths and reading, important though these are, but also of wider capabilities and attributes (Carneiro and Heckman 2003). Analysis of the 1970 cohort data, set out in Figure 9, shows how a range of developmental capabilities in childhood are important for adult outcomes. The analysis looks forwards from age 10 to age 30 to forecast features of adult social exclusion from skills at age 10, taking account statistically of family background and prior development. It shows that wider features of development are an important part of the story. Here, we focus only on the implications of development at age 10 in terms of maths, reading and self-regulation. There are many other features of development that are also important but self-regulation is perhaps particularly crucial. It refers both to the level of emotional well-being and to the capacity of individuals to manage distress without impacting negatively on others or on themselves. The measure of self-regulation that is used below is known as ‘externalising behaviour’ and is based on a teacher report of how the children behave in class in terms of being naughty, bullying and not paying attention. We describe the importance of these three attributes at age 10 for a number of outcomes at age 30; for females – obtaining Level 2 qualifications, living in a workless household with children present, and teen motherhood; for males – being a smoker at age 30 and offending (being found guilty of a criminal offence more than once between the age of 16 and 30).

2  Pathways from childhood disadvantage to adult social exclusion

The impact of wider, non-cognitive attributes on outcomes

We see that maths scores at age 10 do not have a predictive relationship to the probability of the girls in the study being, by age 30, in a workless household with children. The reading score does predict the risk of this outcome but self-regulation assessed at age 10 – even more so. The analysis of this and all the outcomes takes account statistically of family background and prior development. In terms of offending, Figure 9 starkly shows the importance of self-regulation. It is important to remember that self-regulation is not only an indicator of behaviour but also of underlying emotional states. A child in distress or experiencing excessive negative emotions has a far harder job of self-regulation than does a happy and comfortable child. The very fact of a teacher perceiving certain behaviours in a child could have an impact on the way the teacher relates to that child and therefore to the child’s educational and personal development. Teachers will be ‘reading’ more signals from the child about their potential than simply evidence about their reading and maths abilities. Teachers and other professionals need support and training in how to read signals, otherwise they can only be expected to fall back on their personal views, experience and opinions – with all the consequences that can flow from that.

27

0.12 0.10 Strength of relationship

Reducing Inequalities

Figure 9: Relationship of age 10 capabilities to age 30 outcomes

0.08

Age 10 capabilities

0.06 0.04 0.02

Maths

0.00

Reading

–0.02

Self-regulation

–0.04 –0.06 –0.08 Level 2 qualifications (females)

Workless household (females)

Teen mother (females)

Offender (males)

Smoker (males)

Source: Feinstein, L and Bynner, J (2003, Dec) ‘The benefits of assets in childhood as protection against adult social exclusion: The relative effects of financial, human, social and psychological assets’, Note to HM Treasury.

It is not the intention here to use this paper to promote a particular set of behaviours, nor to say that these skills are the only ones that matter. The primary purpose of drawing these findings together is to show that observable, personal attributes of the child themselves impact on his or her outcomes. These are attributes that are as, if not more, important than more traditional educational outcomes (such as maths or reading scores) for assessing the risk of an individual experiencing certain outcomes of exclusion. Blanden, Gregg and Macmillan (2006) have identified an increase in the strength of association between a child’s non-cognitive skills – self-esteem, personal efficacy, concentration – and their parents’ income between the 1958 and 1970 cohorts. They suggest that this increased importance of non-cognitive skills is an important element of the decrease in social mobility between the 1958 and 1970 cohorts, in terms of earnings at age 30 (Blanden and others 2006). These findings suggest that personal attributes, such as self-regulation, are themselves basic skills, like maths and reading. In other words, competency in adulthood is not just about skills and knowledge, it is also about social, emotional and psychological competence. Hence a focus on building social, negotiating and other inter-personal skills is essential to developing the potential of children, especially those who might otherwise be disadvantaged by the current education system. The recent UNICEF report on child well-being in the wealthiest countries has highlighted the need for the UK to address these wider aspects of child development. It found that the

28

It is vital to remember that this information about children’s personal attributes, which has such a significant relationship with their future life chances, exists within the school system; the studies referred to above used information that was observed by teachers when pupils were 10 years old. The system today may do a lot more than schools in the 1970s and 80s – through pastoral support, social and emotional aspects of learning and the developing of extended schools – but is it doing enough and in the right ways? Are schools currently in the position to provide the sort of educational experience that takes into account the importance of providing support to pupils to develop in ways other than the achievement of qualifications? Can government let the qualifications system and curriculum adjust to allow these innovations?

2  Pathways from childhood disadvantage to adult social exclusion

UK experienced the highest levels of risk-taking behaviours by young people, including alcohol and substance misuse; underage sexual activity; teenage pregnancy; involvement in fighting; and experiences of bullying (UNICEF 2007). The report acknowledged that the reasons for such behaviours are varying and complex. What is unclear is how much this is to do with culturally learned behaviour about how to have a good time, for example adult drinking, as it is about other cultural norms such as ‘the less you have to hope for, the more risky behaviours may be adopted’. If we recognise bullying as a culturally acceptable behaviour among UK adults it would be very surprising if such behaviour were not high among children and young people. Tackling these cultural phenomena and their intergenerational transfer will be important. Where there are cross-class or cross-cultural community tensions in an area, these can enter the school and impact on the school’s ability to change patterns of bullying behaviour.

The key risk factors underlying SEG (as identified in Part One) and their relationship with outcomes of exclusion We have looked at the relationship between family background – SEG and the factors and circumstances for which it proxies – and the cognitive or educational development of a child. We have also explored the child’s own personal attributes. We now return to examine further the impact of family background. As we have seen above, while there is a significant relationship between SEG and outcomes through childhood and adulthood, there are a variety of factors – for which SEG can proxy – interacting to impact on children’s development. This section explores some of the key risk factors that underlie SEG and looks at their relationship with outcomes of exclusion. Key socio-economic and demographic childhood factors Figure 10 shows the relationship between a number of key family characteristics of the child at birth and the probability that the child will subsequently experience multiple deprivations in adulthood at age 30.

29

0.15

Strength of relationship

Reducing Inequalities

Figure 10: Relationship of risk factors at birth with multiple deprivation age 30, 1970 Cohort Study

0.10 0.05 0.00 –0.05

ot ne

m

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he r

ily m

th er fa La

ng Yo u

m

ot

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s ng Yo u

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So

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in

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qu als

Bo

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25

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qu als M

Pa

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–0.10

Risk factors at birth

In this analysis, a statistical method is used to take account simultaneously of all the separate factors shown. What is graphed is the unique contribution of each factor, not explained by the other factors or the gender of the child. We do not take account of race in these analyses; it cannot meaningfully be modelled as a risk factor like the others that impact on child development to roughly the same extent (if in different ways) for boys and girls. For the 1970 Cohort, the biggest socio-economic and demographic risk factors at birth for adult deprivation 30 years later are low income, being in social housing and having a father in the lowest SEG group (unskilled manual). The family structure measure (lone motherhood) is less important for this outcome than is commonly assumed and in fact is not even a risk factor for this outcome once the other factors have been accounted for. That is not to say it isn’t important, just that it must be understood in context. Social housing

30

A significant finding in this study is the effect of social housing. Similar effects are not found for earlier post-war cohorts in the UK. By the time the 1970 Cohort were born, living in social housing had become one of the most substantial risk factors. Other studies have identified a similar pattern. Among the 1958 Cohort, living in social housing as a child was associated with 4 out of 19 adverse outcomes in adulthood. Child poverty, parental interest in schooling, family type and contact with the police were more significant to a child’s later outcomes. For the 1970 Cohort, however, social housing is associated with 12 out of 33 unfavourable outcomes at age 30, and only low school test scores are more significant (Hills 2007). The Social Exclusion Task Force report, Reaching Out: Think Family (Cabinet Office 2007), indicates that there are in the region of 140,000 families living with multiple

What is going on within the social housing environment that leads this factor to impact so negatively on the chances of multiple deprivation? In his review of social housing, John Hills (2007) cites a number of possible factors, including the ‘screening in’ of those with greatest need leading to a lack of social mix; the location of social housing in deprived areas; and the ‘dependency effects’ of welfare provision. Studies have also identified a relationship between the levels of social housing within an area and the quality of local schools (Lupton 2005, 2006). Another factor could be the conditions and quality of the housing stock, which can have a significant impact on children’s learning – for example days off sick due to damp or cold conditions, and insufficient space for doing homework due to overcrowding – not to mention their overall health and well-being (Shelter 2006). This may be related to the ‘right to buy’ where those families with greater income potential were able to take up ownership and move out of social housing, leaving the most unskilled and low income families behind.

2  Pathways from childhood disadvantage to adult social exclusion

deprivation, the majority but not all of whom will be from the lower socio-economic groups. The report also found that families who live in social housing have a higher risk of experiencing multiple disadvantages, such as being in a workless household, having parental mental health problems, no parental qualifications and low income (Social Exclusion Task Force 2007).

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Reducing Inequalities

Summary Discontinuity in cognitive development • Children’s progress in terms of their cognitive or educational development is not knowable in advance and there is considerable discontinuity in how children perform in tests taken at different stages of childhood. • Children from more disadvantaged family backgrounds are less likely to maintain cognitive advantages than their wealthier peers, and are more likely to fall behind them in terms of cognitive and educational development. This pattern of inequality can be observed preschool and during primary and secondary school. • The fact that such children are less likely to progress and, if performing well at an early age, are more likely to lose ground than more advantaged children shows that barriers exist which prevent them from achieving as much as their innate ability would suggest they could. • Children in need of additional support and engagement are in greatest numbers in the skilled manual and partly skilled socio-economic groups and in greatest need in the unskilled group. • These inequalities persist through school, as the chances of a pupil failing to realise their potential increases as we move down the income scale. • Interacting factors within the family, school and wider contexts affect children’s cognitive development. There is no ‘magic bullet’ or single factor to explain inequalities.

The importance of wide-ranging skills and attributes • Personal attributes of the individual child impact on his or her development directly and indirectly through their interaction with the wider circumstances of the family and school. • These attributes include, but are not limited to, traditional educational outcomes such as maths or reading scores. • Personal attributes, such as self-regulation, are themselves basic skills, like maths and reading.

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• Achievement of qualifications is not the only outcome of the school experience that matters. The experiences of a young person as he or she passes through the school system; the impact the system has on him or her; the dynamic interaction between family life, school life and personal development, are of equal or possibly even greater importance.

Key risk factors underlying ‘family background’ • There are a number of factors associated with family resources that are important for subsequent outcomes. There is no single risk factor that explains all outcomes. • The precise set of factors that matter depends on the outcome considered but it is generally the case that being in social housing, on low income or benefits, and/ or from backgrounds with low levels of education are substantial risk factors. • For some outcomes being born to young parents or lone parents can be a risk factor. Access to broad social relationships with networks of support is critical, particularly for those with the fewest assets or experiencing difficult life events.

2  Pathways from childhood disadvantage to adult social exclusion

• Teachers can effectively observe information about children’s personal attributes, which has such a significant relationship with their future life chances, i.e. this information exists within the school system.

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This paper has explored how a child’s family background can have a defining bearing on the likelihood of him or her experiencing outcomes of multiple deprivations in adulthood. A variety of factors within the family, school and other contexts interact with the child’s personal attributes and the wider socio-economic and cultural contexts to impact on a child’s development. Having explored some key processes by which this takes place and the ways in which this perpetuates and reproduces inequalities, this part explores the significance of these findings for the planning of interventions and services for children and families. It asks: How can we use our knowledge of the relationship between key risk factors and future outcomes to identify individuals at risk of social exclusion and allocate resources effectively?

Using observed information about a child to assess the likelihood of future social exclusion Analysis of the cohort studies suggests that observed information about a child – from teachers, health visitors, parents and the child him/herself – can be used to make surprisingly accurate predictions about the likelihood of experiencing multiple deprivation in the future. In one study, information observed about children in the 1970 Cohort at age 10 was used to rank individuals in terms of levels of risk of multiple deprivation in adulthood. The information covered observations of the child’s development (health, and emotional, behavioural and cognitive development); the family context (socio-economic factors, parent–child relationships); the school; and the neighbourhood. The study then took data for those in two risk categories: the top 5 per cent in terms of risk of multiple deprivation, and the bottom 50 per cent. The probability of having 10 or more outcomes of multiple deprivation at age 30 for these risk categories was then compared with the average (Figure 11).

3  How can information about a child’s circumstances and experiences throughout life be used to plan services effectively?

3

How can information about a child’s circumstances and experiences throughout life be used to plan services effectively?

35

60 50 Probability (%)

Reducing Inequalities

Figure 11: Probability of 10 or more outcomes of multiple deprivation at age 30, by level of risk at age 10, 1970 Cohort

40 30 20 10 0 5% highest risk

Average

50% lowest risk Risk category at age 10

On average, 12 per cent of the 1970 cohort had 10 or more of the 31 outcomes of adult deprivation measured at age 30. Of the group identified at age 10 as being in the lowest 50 per cent in terms of risk, only 1 per cent experienced this level of multiple deprivation at age 30. Most significantly, of the 5 per cent identified as having the highest level of risk at age 10, 51 per cent were experiencing 10 or more outcomes of multiple deprivation at age 30. This shows our very high capacity to use information to target preventive resources based on likely need. These numbers do not mean that we should allocate all preventive resources to the 5 per cent at greatest risk; only that their share at age 10 should be equivalently higher at that age than for the 50 per cent whose numbers are greater but whose risk is lower. Few of those in the bottom half of risk actually experience multiple deprivation. The great majority of those who do go on to experience multiple deprivation were not in the low-risk half of the population at age 10. The processes of child development, described earlier in this paper, constitute the child’s pathway from risk to outcome. Nothing is set in stone but there are repercussions of risk. The interacting factors that constitute the child’s family background, and experiences in other contexts such as the school, interact to affect the way in which the child develops. While it is important not to reify risk or to stigmatise the individual concerned, the signals must not be ignored. How can we devise a system that does not label children in a selffulfilling manner? The appropriate observation of such circumstances and their early development is evidently valuable for assessing the likelihood of negative outcomes in the future, and therefore for planning preventive services around the child.

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Reification and stigmatisation must be avoided, not only because this could impact on the child’s development, perhaps as a self-fulfilling prophecy, but also because circumstances change. For example, a child progressing well can be destabilised by a poorly managed divorce of her parents, death of a parent or sibling, sudden illness or unexpected loss of family income. These significant life-shifting events can happen at any point in a child’s life. In some cases the family and friends will have the capacity to cope without the support of public services and in other cases they will not. Furthermore, as children develop, a much wider range of important information becomes available to assess their likelihood of being socially excluded in later life. So, when using information to assess risk we must take into account that there is substantial discontinuity as well as continuity in human development. Figure 12 shows children’s movement in and out of risk, between birth and 5 years, and between 5 and 16 years. ‘At risk’ is defined as having a high level of risk of adult multiple deprivation at age 30, based on information at birth, age 5 and age 16. At each age, the ‘at risk’ group is different, so Figure 12 shows us what proportion of those at risk at any given age were also at risk at previous ages, and therefore could have been identified and provided with preventive support. Figure 12: Risk continuity: multiple adult deprivation age 30, 1970 Cohort Not at risk at birth

Not at risk at age 5

48%

At risk at birth

52%

At risk at age 5

53% 47%

At risk at age 16

Of those who were at risk of future multiple deprivation at age 5, just over half (52 per cent) were also ‘at risk’ at birth. Similarly, almost half (47 per cent) of the group identified as being at risk of future multiple deprivation at age 16 were ‘at risk’ at age 5. Therefore, a significant proportion of individuals at risk of future social exclusion at age 5, or age 16, could have been identified in assessments at birth or 5 years respectively, and interventions subsequently delivered. At the same time of course, approximately half of those at risk of future multiple deprivation at ages 5 and 16 would not have been picked up in the preceding assessment. Locally based interventions targeting disadvantage at population level must therefore remain an important part of a strategy for improving children’s outcomes and narrowing the gap between them. Investment at an individual level alone will not be sufficient. We return to this in Part Four.

3  How can information about a child’s circumstances and experiences throughout life be used to plan services effectively?

Continuity and discontinuity in a child’s level of risk of future social exclusion

37

Reducing Inequalities

We see a similar pattern of continuity and discontinuity for other cohorts and other measures of adult social exclusion or deprivation. This combination of continuity and discontinuity is important and both need to be taken into account. The discontinuity, a child’s movement in and out of risk, means that effective preventive activity must be dynamic and able to cope with change. However, it also shows us that future outcomes are not predetermined. There will always be those who do not have the outcomes in later life that we might think likely, and children move in and out of risk as they develop. This does not mean we should avoid assessing risk altogether, but suggests that it would be a mistake to do so solely on the basis of information gathered at any one age. Although we have demonstrated that there is discontinuity, this does not mean we should shift the balance of support further from preventive to acute services, that is, to an approach that moves further towards the provision of services only when things have already gone drastically wrong. While there is discontinuity, it is most important to recognise that there is also continuity – those at risk at one age are significantly more likely to be at risk in later years. For the 1970 cohort for example, the odds of being at risk at age 5 were 6.66 times higher for those who were at risk at birth than for those who were not. And the odds of being at risk at age 16 were 5.06 times higher for those who were at risk at age 5 than for those who were not. The implications of this for policy and service delivery will be explored in Part Four.

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• Nothing is set in stone but there are repercussions from living with risks. • The factors in a child’s family background, and experiences in other contexts such as the school, interact to affect the way in which the child develops. How can we devise a system that does not label children in a self-fulfilling manner? • Significant life-shifting events can happen at any point in a child’s life. As children develop, more information becomes available to assess their risk of social exclusion in later life. So we must take into account that there is substantial discontinuity as well as continuity in human development. • A significant proportion of individuals at risk of future social exclusion can be identified in assessments at birth or 5 years. But approximately half of those at risk of future multiple deprivations would not have been individually picked out. Hence locality based interventions, targeting disadvantage at population level, are important. Investment at an individual level alone will not be sufficient.

3  How can information about a child’s circumstances and experiences throughout life be used to plan services effectively?

Summary

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This part sets out the key messages emanating from the data, and explores the implications of these messages for policy-makers, schools, and professionals in the children’s sector.

Key messages from the data The interacting circumstances and contexts within which a child grows up impact upon his or her development. These include socio-economic factors within the family, the characteristics of the family, parent–child relationships, the child him/herself, and the pupil–teacher relationships and factors within the wider socio-economic context. This implies the need for a non-linear, multifaceted and systemic approach to both improving children’s outcomes and narrowing the gap between them.

4  Key messages, policy recommendations and questions

4

Key messages, policy recommendations and questions

• As is now broadly accepted, a child’s family background correlates strongly with his or her risk of outcomes of multiple deprivation in adulthood. The lower a child’s SEG at birth, the higher his or her chances of future social exclusion. • Children in the middle socio-economic groups have the highest numbers of children facing multiple deprivation spread across them, so it would be a mistake to ‘overtarget’ only the lowest SEG group. • Children from more disadvantaged family backgrounds are more likely to deteriorate and less likely to progress, in terms of their cognitive or educational development, than more advantaged or wealthier children. • As income rises, parents are better able to invest in their children’s learning and not rely wholly on either schools or the state education system as the place where their children learn and develop. Poor families are substantially dependent on these institutions, however. • Children’s own personal attributes, for example, externalising behaviour, impact on their educational and wider development. The factors associated with externalising and internalising behaviour in children need to be better understood, but family problems and negative relationships contribute significantly. Adult and children’s services have a role to play in assisting families with relationship difficulties.

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• Information about a child’s personal attributes and circumstances – from teachers, health workers, social care staff, parents and the child itself – can be used to assess the risk of negative outcomes. This information can therefore be aggregated to help plan interventions and services. • Educational qualifications are not the only important outcome of the school experience. • Poor outcomes in later life may be prevented later on by helping young people build self-restraint, identity and non-cognitive skills such as listening and negotiating. • Given the predictability at age 10 of poor adult outcomes and the need to avoid stigma and marginalisation, there is a strong case for progressive universalism and a new balance between targeted and universal services. • Social housing has a significant relationship with increased chances of future social exclusion, as do family poverty, low education and a range of other factors. There is no single pivotal risk factor for children. • Children move in and out of risk and do sometimes confound our expectations, so no professional can base provision on one assessment made at a particular age. • While the task is a significant one, if we are to improve outcomes for the most disadvantaged, especially those on the extremes of society, we must be realistic. It is probable that none of us reaches our full potential but it is important that we do our utmost to ensure that there are no unnecessary barriers standing between a child and what he or she may achieve.

Policy implications and questions The evidence set out above highlights the overwhelming impact of socio-economic family background on cognitive development and on a child’s chances of having their individual capabilities developed and supported. Put simply, children from disadvantaged backgrounds are more likely to fall back and less likely to progress than those from professional/managerial non-manual households. We need to consider how to reduce the impact of the apparent ceiling on their progress. Evidence shows that it is held in place by a range of interacting influences including poverty, housing, neighbourhood, family circumstances, characteristics and history, and quality of schooling. Identifying the salient levers to use to reduce the impact of such barriers is difficult since we are dealing with interacting systems of influences, but we have some evidence from interventions that have been tested. So what do we need to do to provide children with access to the support they need to ameliorate the negative impact of risks in their lives and narrow the gap in their outcomes?

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Any plan must recognise the following.

• That adult and children’s public services are bound together through parents. Adult and children’s services must work much more closely together to support the children who are at risk of poor outcomes because of problems faced by their parents. • That academic qualifications and practical skills woven through with social skills, positive attitudes and emotional literacy are vital and desired outcomes of learning. Supporting parents If we focus on the particular family dynamics and patterns of behaviour that affect children’s development, there is a growing body of evidence on what works in raising children who are ready to learn. Desforges and Abouchaar describe the nexus of beneficial factors as ‘naturally’ occurring parental interest, love and care. When parents have aspirations for their children, believe in their ability to succeed and show it, children tend to do well (Feinstein and others 2004, Ritchie and others 2005). For a minority of parents this can be a challenge, especially when they are facing their own personal problems. The capacity to realise positive aspirations is strongly correlated with class, income and parental education (Desforges and Abouchaar 2003, Feinstein and others 2004, Ritchie and others 2005, Commission on Families and the Well-being of Children 2005).

4  Key messages, policy recommendations and questions

• That there is a critical need for the educational system to work in harmony with continuous parental and familial investment in children. Families and education provision must work in partnership.

Children care about their parents, so what parents believe or expect matters to children profoundly. In line with our position that the world in which a child develops is a dynamic and interactive one, children’s actual achievements have an impact on parents’ aspirations. Children can be crushed by and can also resist high and low parental expectations as they develop their independence and their own aspirations. Effective parenting ‘At home good parenting’ (Desforges and Abouchaar 2003) is not primarily a matter of individual practices or techniques. It is a style of parenting that is warm, loving and authoritative.5 It involves the whole dynamic, two-way relationship between child and parents in a context of constructive family relationships, community culture and neighbourhood. ‘At-home good parenting’ does not exist in a social vacuum. As we have seen through the model of child development presented above, it exists within an environment that makes it easier or more difficult to support children’s development. Poverty, for example, affects children not only because parents do not have access to resources, but also because the stress and distress those parents suffer from, in adverse circumstances, makes them less able to provide care than if they were not stressed.

5  Baumrind, D (1967); Commission on Families and Well-being of Children (2005); O’Connor, T and Scott, S (forthcoming); Feinstein, L and others (2004).

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Other major factors that tend to have the biggest negative effects on children are: • parental mental health problems • substance misuse • domestic violence • serious family conflict • criminality • child abuse and neglect. There is a higher rate of seriously adverse experiences in the general population than professionals tend to pick up on. (Commission on Families and the Well-being of Children, 2005) This impacts on a parents’ capacity to prioritise parenting itself, as well as the parenting quality, and is not picked up routinely within the adult services to which parents are referred. During this period in which structural change in local authorities has decoupled adult services from children’s services, and hence separated those working with parents with complex problems on the one hand, and with children and young people on the other, it is critical that we recognise the shared responsibility and accountability across this structural divide. An all-too-easy answer to this would be further structural change, but we believe this would be a distraction. No structural change will ever create a perfect fit and there were good reasons for integrating children’s social care with education. Stability and a reduction in the barriers to working across these structural boundaries will make the relationships between professionals more effective. The focus should be on cultural change within the current structures. Adults who are parents need to be recognised as such by adult services that may be addressing their substance misuse, mental illness, alcohol misuse or problems with violence and conflict. Their symptoms and needs must not simply be treated in isolation from their responsibilities for, and their impact on, their children. We need to sharpen our interpretation of ‘adult’ and define policy in health and social care around ‘parents’, [non-parent] ‘adults’ and ‘elders’. Reaching Out: Think Family (Cabinet Office, 2007) stretches the perception of ‘adult services’ to include social housing officers and administrative staff who may have a role in identifying families facing multiple risks in their areas. They may be able to act as a neutral signposter to community activities and public services that can introduce parents to new ways of addressing the challenges they face in bringing up their children.

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There is considerable evidence about interventions that may benefit families in significant distress and who are without effective support from relatives and friends. Studies of interventions on maternal depression (Nylen 2006) (which affects children’s cognitive development) have shown that mother-focused interventions do not improve children’s outcomes, whereas interventions that are mother and baby-focused do. Studies of

• those that enhance mother–child, mother–father and father–child relationships, through encouraging sensitivity and responsiveness and ‘mind-mindedness’ in mother and father, and working with couple relationship difficulties • those aimed at the home learning environment through encouragement of play, conversation and aspiration • those offering supplementary, high quality child care and specialist interventions for children in families with serious difficulties. The underlying message is one of focusing interventions on the relationships between people and not simply on one part of a ‘relationship’, for example the mother, the teacher or the child. The quality of evidence on family and parenting interventions on children’s learning is promising.7 Some programmes, such as Webster Stratton, have been extensively evaluated and found to confer benefits in terms of children’s behaviour.8 There is confidence in the effectiveness of programmes aimed at improving conduct disorders, programmes with parents aimed at improving children’s literacy and numeracy, home visiting programmes, home school workers, and multi-modal interventions that work with parents and with children.

4  Key messages, policy recommendations and questions

interventions directed at the couple relationship show an impact on parenting quality. Intensive home visiting by health professionals shows strong results, as do multi-systemic approaches for families with serious difficulties.6 Three kinds of early years’ family interventions show promise for children’s development:

The government is currently exploring initiatives to support parents, both in terms of their involvement in learning and wider parenting skills (Parents, Early Years and Learning; parenting classes). These initiatives must be rigorously evaluated to assess their impact on the child’s development, so that such interventions can be tailored to meet the individual needs of children and families. Provision, though improved over past years, is still patchy, uncoordinated and of variable quality. Bringing together commissioners at local level will be of benefit and this is referred to below in relation to service planning. Parenting teenagers We know that parents of teenagers are least likely to be able to access family and parenting support. They are also the group who are offered least parental leave from employers. Adolescent support teams developed by the voluntary sector and viewing teenagers as active agents in their own lives can help start to frame what may be needed. Teenagers will have their own separate needs from their parents; and policy and practice will need to take account of this and not simply transfer models for children (under 12s) to meet the needs of those aged 13+. Similarly, to confuse the needs of young adults aged 19–25 with those of under-18s can make policy solutions ineffective. 6  Barrett, H (2003); Olds, DL and others (1988). 7  Barrett, H (2003); Moran, P and others (2004); Desforges and Abouchaar (2003). 8  Webster-Stratton, C and others (1989); Scott, S and others (2001).

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Supporting Parents of Teenagers (Asmussen and others 2007) concludes that understanding adolescent neurological development, tailoring provision as a child ages and providing early support when problems arise – alongside the ongoing need for targeting and intensive support – all have the hallmarks of success. Parents of teenagers, just like teenagers themselves, prefer to understand why a particular approach will be beneficial and often seem to enjoy and benefit from talking through problems with their peers. Parents seem more likely to gain from gentle interventions that ‘improve their confidence rather than policies that highlight their inadequacies’ (Asmussen and others 2007). Delivery programmes aimed at parents sit best within a network of provision offering a wide range of formal and informal opportunities and different styles of support. This includes courses, drop-ins and follow-ups, and innovative approaches to parenting courses that match lifestyles – ranging from self- learning online to workplace sessions to the more traditional adult education model. This and much improved home visiting can be key to reaching families who feel, or who are, excluded. It is important to recognise and support the agency and empowerment of teenagers themselves. Their growing independence needs to be reflected by available provision. Additional investment in empowering young people to direct the sorts of facilities and services available in their area, announced in the ten-year strategy for positive activities, is welcome (HM Treasury/Department for Children, Schools and Families, 2007). It is also important that reforms to increase the influence of communities over local services (Department for Communities and Local Government, 2006) are implemented in a way that benefits young people. Measures to improve the engagement of young people in local decision-making, youth juries, the involvement of youth representatives in local councils and other enhancements of local democracy, particularly in relation to schools, are all relevant here.

Parental involvement in learning The Effective Provision of Pre-School Education (EPPE) studies tell us that a major influencing factor in the early years on later school achievement is parental involvement in learning. The degree of parental involvement in children’s learning increases with a family’s social class and maternal qualifications and decreases with poverty. However, the actual effect of a parent supporting their child’s learning is consistently significant regardless of the parents’ social class, education or wealth (Desforges 2003). So if we are to help families from unskilled and semi-skilled households to develop the skills and resources to be their child’s ‘first teacher’, then we will do a great deal to bring parity to poorer children. This may mean workers supporting parents in accessing the provision or offering home learning for parents on ‘how to support your child’s learning’. Where relevant and appropriate, the point of access for the parent can be – through a service intended to provide them with mental health or a drug abuse intervention – via adult services.

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Studies from the EPPE project have demonstrated the way that high quality child care and preschool education can benefit children who are disadvantaged because of an impoverished home learning environment (Sylva and others 2003). Furthermore, new findings from the project (Sammons and others 2007) show that high quality preschool multiplies the impact of the home learning environment. Good preschool provision is an essential lever for improving children’s opportunities and establishing access to parents who could benefit from interventions to help them improve the home learning environment. As preschool makes such a big difference, we should be both ensuring that children (including the most disadvantaged) get to it and that the quality of staffing is improved across the board. Early years services need to ensure that they are working with parents and providing young children with the support needed to develop their cognitive abilities. This is not to argue that early years services must only be about developing a child’s cognitive skills and getting them ready for school. Children’s progress towards achieving their potential requires the space for children to play freely and, with some adult intervention, to support and build on the child’s desire for learning (Santer and others 2007). Early years providers, playworkers and other professionals need to understand the impact of their work not only in terms of the growth of the child’s social and emotional skills, but also in terms of cognitive development. This critical inter-dependency must be designed into early years provision. This does not mean dismantling the structures that we have in place but is a message about improving it; for example by developing a refreshed Health Visitor service as a mechanism of support and play development, and getting information and knowledge on child development out to all parents who need it. We must build on what we have – Sure Start Children’s centres and quality preschool – and make them work better for more people, especially the most disadvantaged.

4  Key messages, policy recommendations and questions

Early years services

The evidence has shown that these effects of a child’s family background continue beyond the start of school, so any focus in the early years on getting parents involved in their children’s learning must then be carried forward into the school environment. Smoothing transitions Some studies have suggested that the transition to school can undermine children’s confidence (Galton and others 1999). Parenting support strategies that cross institutional and educational stage boundaries may help to smooth this transition, as well as that between primary and secondary school. As the government moves forward in its childcare agenda, it is vital that the relationship between early years provision and schools is developed. This is less about focusing on ensuring children are ‘ready for school’ and more about ensuring schools are ready for the children and their parents. The changes between early years and primary school are followed by equally disruptive changes for a pupil when moving to secondary school. The style of teaching, the persistent motion around the school, new peers and a lack of contact with those in older age groups can all bring additional challenges to children settling into a new environment.

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Along with institutional transitions come changes in the brain itself. As if it were not sufficient to deal with the practical changes associated with moving school and growing independence we now know that the brain continues to develop and reorganise itself throughout the teenage years as well.9 This can be described as the teenage brain being ‘out of synch with itself’ (Asmussen and others 2007). The effect can be to reduce the adolescent brain’s efficiency in processing information and controlling impulses – something that may come as no surprise to many parents of adolescents! These findings underscore the need for positive interventions that can impact on the brain changes in a positive way. Scientists now believe, for example, that verbal and physical abuse in childhood can reinforce the development of less productive brain pathways that can damage emotional regulation in early adulthood. This adds a new complexity to what is observed and the interpretations we make of teenage behaviours, and runs parallel with critical physical changes, new environments and growing sexuality. Hence transitions are themselves complex and multi-layered. Not only do we need to thread thinking about child health across neurology through to epidemiology, and from primary and acute care to public health, but it must also connect across the social care and education boundaries if transitions are to be effectively managed. The education system What about the school experience? What learning and development is taking place within the school that means that a wealthier child who is not doing so well in the early years begins to do better than a poorer child who might have seemed to have greater educational potential? Extended schooling: Improving cognition and skills While extended schools offer a more diverse opportunity for children as well as providing a route to accessing the additional specialist services that may be needed, the evidence here suggests that for the most disadvantaged we may need more. Supplementary schools have generally been set up by communities concerned about the achievement of their children. Many of these schools were started by African-Caribbean communities to provide their children with teaching in core curriculum subjects, as well as a culturally appropriate curriculum covering subjects such as history.10 Consideration could be given to developing a ‘Saturday’ or Extended Schooling option in some areas. Like their public school peers’ experience, increasing the learning time gives greater opportunity to children living in poverty and other disadvantaged circumstances. Simultaneously, it may relieve the pressure on parents who can already be overwhelmed with the need to raise income and work excessive hours, just to make ends meet. For children who are disaffected by the traditional school model, the development of such weekend provision may need to be distinctive. Creating the right image and content should be negotiated with those who we wish to see using it, rather than be simply imposed on them in their locality.

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  9  Dahl and Hariri (2005); Giedd, (2004). 10  www.multiverse.ac.uk/ViewArticle2.aspx?anchorId=222&selectedId=222&contentId=295.

In order for schools to be ready for the child, they, and policy-makers, must understand and take into account the complexity of the child’s world and wider context. Awareness of the malleability of a child’s educational development – the extent to which there is scope to mould, change and develop a child’s educational achievement – must be central to educational policy. Even teachers’, parents’ and pupils’ awareness of this malleability can itself have a positive impact on children’s development over time by helping children who feel destined to fail to have confidence that they can achieve well too (e.g. Dweck 1999). Training and continuing professional development In building the children’s workforce, some broadening of the understanding of social and racial attitudes and norms; cross-class interpersonal skills; and knowledge of emotional literacy and social interactions may be required. We know, for example, that children from lower SEGs include a disproportionate number of those from some ethnic minorities. Recent research by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation has found that the poverty rate for Britain’s minority ethnic groups stands at 40 per cent, double the 20 per cent found amongst white British people (Palmer and Kenway 2007).

4  Key messages, policy recommendations and questions

Supporting schools as cross-class, cross-cultural environments Could it be that current practice within the school system creates barriers for children and young people from particular backgrounds? For example, are teachers being left to make assumptions about children according to their family profile and behaviours, rather than through evidence of actual potential? Does this hinder teachers in identifying a child’s true potential and effectively supporting his or her learning? Are teachers insufficiently prepared to engage and work in partnership with parents, and with those parents who are very different from themselves? Are teachers assisted in developing self-reflective skills that may help them change practice during or following a challenging experience?

The research also highlights the differences between minority ethnic groups: with, on average, 65 per cent of Bangladeshi families living in poverty compared to 55 per cent of Pakistani families, 45 per cent of Black Africans, 30 per cent of Indians and Black Caribbean families, and 20 per cent of white British people. Over half of Bangladeshi, Pakistani and Black African children in the UK are growing up in poverty with a staggering 70 per cent of Bangladeshi children growing up poor. We cannot expect teachers or social workers to play their full part in reducing inequalities without the supported development of their own knowledge and reflective skills that will enable them to understand their, and the child’s, relative social position and the impact of that on their interaction. Teachers face huge challenges in managing the complex and diverse learning and developmental needs of the children in their care. High levels of skill, motivation and support are required for teachers and other front-line service professionals to realise the impacts required of them if we are to reduce inequalities through education and social policy. Key professionals and practitioners need the personal and professional development opportunities, back-up and facilities to respond effectively to these developmental needs.

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The Every Child Matters programme opens schools up to active links with other children’s professionals and services, bringing in new skills which complement and support learning. Building proactive and positive relationships between professionals can enhance their individual and collective impact. The multidisciplinary teams described in the Every Child Matters agenda are a relevant platform for enabling those relationships and achieving change. The staffing of these teams may need to reflect more closely the composition of the communities they serve as well as the ability to engage key community members alongside children and young people themselves. This may mean moving away from a model in which almost all training occurs in a block at the start of a career, with the occasional day added here and there. A more strategic approach to continuous professional development that empowers professionals to engage in real, supervised reflection on their own practice as they move through their careers and linked to opportunities to share good practice and evaluate innovations, may be beneficial. We may also need to look at building up the access routes into children’s professions. This is a critical task for those developing the children’s workforce. Planning needs to work towards a diverse workforce with a broader range of experiences. The importance of personal attributes This paper highlights the importance of personal attributes, particularly self-regulatory skills, among children, with their absence leading to playing truant, a poor level of engagement in learning or the limited ability to make effective relationships and socialise. The impact of these attributes on the learning experience and subsequent pathways through adulthood must be treated as something that needs positive action to put a child back on the path to success. Rethinking the goals of the school experience Another key message coming out of the data on personal attributes was the importance of investment in emotional and social development. This will require more input than the subject/curriculum teacher could be expected to provide. This raises a challenge as to whether the current model of education is still based too closely on the 19th century Victorian industrialisation model, where cohorts of children sat in age-based classes of 30 without much mixing between children of different ages, contexts or backgrounds. The system is rooted in a particular space: the classroom and the school. Pupils pass through the system to acquire a set of specific knowledge and skills. This model does not necessarily support equality of development or capitalise on the resources of the wider community, or even within the pupil group itself.

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Is this predominantly academic model of learning sufficient to develop the personal and inter-personal skills so sorely needed by employers as well as society at large? Is the manner of the learning in need of a rethink as much as the balance of content? Are we capitalising sufficiently on the emerging world of virtual learning by the way in which we use the internet and Web2 technology? For young people, the 14–19 agenda may start to change our model of education for the better, de-institutionalising it and linking it much more effectively than before to training and first employment. There are also some interesting

Rights Respecting Schools, initiated by a UNICEF award scheme and now supported by the Department for Children, Schools and Families, are welcomed by and mutually beneficial to pupils and teachers. The scheme is built on the Rights, Respect and Responsibilities work undertaken in Hampshire schools, where initial research suggests that introducing the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child as a body of knowledge and a framework for the school ethos, teaching and learning has led to teachers feeling empowered and children having greater self-regulation in learning and social behaviours, as well as improved critical thinking and better test results.11 Children understand that since they have rights then others have rights too, including their teachers and parents. Consequently it is recognised that everyone has the responsibility to respect the rights of others. The UNCRC as a learning framework demonstrates that codes of conduct come from a world-wide set of principles, informed by moral precepts familiar in world religions but without being linked to any single religion. It therefore has the potential to act as a binding force across generations, class and faiths. Views of those involved are that it is highly appropriate for 21st century learning environments.

4  Key messages, policy recommendations and questions

examples of experimentation, at both primary and secondary level, designed to ‘open up’ education and make it easier for less academic and even disengaged children to access it. We need to learn from these pioneering approaches and be open to more system-wide improvement.

The employment market has changed significantly over the last 30 years. We have seen a decrease in the need for low-skilled workers, for example in manufacturing, construction and agriculture. Creating a more skilled workforce is essential. To be at our most effective in the labour market a range of practical and academic qualifications needs to be acquired so that no SEG can be described as ‘unskilled’. But skills of listening, negotiation, problemsolving and social interaction will also be important for future outcomes, including for a person’s ability to participate in the job market. Planning our services Services beyond school This paper describes a model by which factors in the home interact with the school setting and teacher–pupil/parent relationships to impact on a child’s development. As we have suggested above, teachers and schools may unintentionally be responding to a pupil whose behaviour has grown out of circumstances within the family, in ways that may be creating barriers to that pupil’s development. These relationships and interactions must be fully understood, not only in the context of schools but also in the context of wider children’s services. The nature of the professional dialogue about families across all sectors must look at each child’s talents and potential. All children’s professionals therefore need training in human development, communication with children and the mutuality born of a rights-based framework that emphasises respect for self as well as for others. They will need the maturity necessary for work that requires a high level of analytical skills and the ability to 11  Initial findings from Hampshire County Council where Rights Respecting Schools are in place and are being evaluated.

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understand and intervene in the social systems and interpersonal relationships that need to change. This is about developing a systemic approach, involving interacting factors that impact on child development. Public services, members of the local community, family and friendship networks all have a part to play in supporting children’s development. The material presented in this paper shows that we can identify children whose development suggests that they are at risk of future social exclusion. And we can do it accurately enough for resources to be allocated effectively. But there is discontinuity in human development, so planning cannot be based around a single assessment at a single point in time, nor focused on often high cost–low impact interventions in, for example, secure provision. It requires active engagement, by public services, with parents and with children and young people as both service recipients and partners in design and delivery. If services target interventions at those at risk at age 5 or 7, the interventions would reach about half of those who we would expect to be targeted at 16. However, this also means that half of those at risk at 16 would have been missed at age 5. Hence if we target in this way we have only a 50:50 chance of investing in the ‘right’ child. So, in considering resource allocation, there is a balance to be struck. Through universal provision we will inevitably be working with those who are identified as being at risk but who turn out not to be. Would this be wasted investment? We must consider the overall saving of the much higher long-term costs associated with not intervening at all for fear of a ‘false positive’. We are also concerned about the potential damage done if ‘targeted’ children are labelled and implicitly stigmatised, thus creating a self-fulfilling prophecy of poor outcomes. We know, for example, that if children in care are helped to reach the same level of educational outcome as their peers, the discounted lifetime costs of between £388m and £543.2m can be saved (Jackson and others 2000). In the case of Sure Start, while it provided an open door to all children in a local area initially, the chosen localities were those that came high on the deprivation indices. By offering services at local level through a universal doorway, behind which a parent or child facing life challenges can receive increasingly specialist support, the problem of labelling and stigmatisation can be minimised or even avoided altogether. We might expect ‘full services’ to be offered in the most disadvantaged areas. Children’s centres and schools may provide a universal doorway for parents who may have their own distinct needs as adults. These can be met through adult and GP services. But even where judged an ‘adult’, the services must not ignore their status as parents and should act in the interests of the family as a whole. Ultimately we need integrated planning and integrated commissioning where GPs, schools, local authorities and primary care trusts in each locality work closely together to ensure that their separate commissioning activity does not lead to duplication, or waste or leave gaps.

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The Every Child Matters framework expresses through law the need for those with different professional backgrounds and with different employers to work together more closely in the interests of the child. But important though this is, it will not be sufficient to drive a reduction in inequalities. The design of services has to be a systemic one where there is visible interrelationship and live interaction between the family, the child, services and the neighbourhood. The child is at the centre of the ECM ‘onion’ but effort so far has not always taken due account of what this means in practice. Services can define themselves from a professional or financial perspective rather than their starting position being ‘what approaches will deliver the best outcomes for children and families?’ This is not simply a matter of single-service design or a single policy strand but of the interplay between them. Joint working across, and active communication between, government departments – as well as at the government and non-governmental local level – is central to ensuring we are delivering appropriate interventions and understanding how these interventions are transforming the local environment. A study looking at the impact of two central government policies found that local areas where the two interventions were at work simultaneously experienced the greatest impact (Sabates and Feinstein, forthcoming).

4  Key messages, policy recommendations and questions

Joined-up working All of the above requires coherence and communication between services, government departments and other institutions. Policy as well as practice needs to transcend the often artificial divisions of organisational design. The creation of the Department of Children, Schools and Families is a stride forward in this regard.

Two separate government departments led the two policies: the Department for Education and Skills’ Education Maintenance Allowance (EMA) and the Home Office’s Reducing Burglary Initiative (RBI). The biggest reductions in youth crime took place in the areas where both the EMA and RBI were at work. Just having EMA had no statistical benefit on youth crime, and just having RBI had even less impact on crime. This suggests that it was the interaction on the ground of these two seemingly disparate interventions – one providing support for participation in education or training to disadvantaged young people, the other funding the police to run different sorts of interventions – that delivered improved outcomes. To what degree were those involved in the interventions aware of the other? And do the different policies come into contact through individuals or bodies? Was this a chance meeting or an active engagement between the two initiatives? There will be numerous such interactions of disparate policy initiatives. Project-funding streams coming from across government, along with the interplay between interventions, must be a managed and monitored process: local authorities and their partners in Children’s Trusts have the responsibility for overseeing this process. The same joined-up working is required at the point of service delivery. The paper has shown how a variety of factors within the family and beyond interact to impact upon a child’s development. There are some risk factors that seem to be particularly important, such as parents’ income, education, mental health, housing, aspirations and parenting styles. However, the model of interacting factors casts doubts on the effectiveness of interventions that address these factors individually.

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As we have indicated, even for the individual family, a single intervention – such as parenting classes – cannot work in and of itself. Action must be taken to address the wider factors (such as mental and physical health within the family, parents’ working hours, and resources); and the interactions between these and the parent–child relationship, the school environment and the wider environment – inequality within the neighbourhood, housing, interacting local and central government policies and interventions. In order to identify needs and plan interventions in a holistic way, professionals need to be able to develop the skills of systems analysis, of group and community-based work and use them, working far beyond any pre-existing ‘professional silo’. We also need a workforce supplied by and built up from local people who understand and can engage with local norms. Learning communities Education can enhance social justice, but it cannot be assumed that it will. Considering child development in the context of schools has shown that we need to better support and develop the workforce to play their part in reducing inequalities. The impact of education depends on how we structure and fund our schools and what we expect of them, and where they sit within their local communities. ‘Learning communities’ may be able to address this need. Set around geographical areas, learning takes place not only within the building called a school, but within the family or network of families; and throughout the locality, in the workplace, involving local communities, with FE and HE colleges, in children’s and youth centres, and in and outside the classroom. Peer-to-peer teaching, the use of new multimedia technologies, shared learning with parents and children together, parents as co-teachers, businesses as places of learning – all could bring learning into richer territory where it is not the school nor the teacher who carries the burden alone. In a learning community it is imperative that the social intercourse between children from different backgrounds and with different life chances is supported by the design of service provision. Building a child’s aspiration and opening parents’ eyes to the options for them and their child in the future must be helped by conversation and shared experiences with others who are different from themselves. Learning would be aimed at children, their parents and professionals. Research has found that adult learning has positive impacts on health behaviours and citizenship (Feinstein and Hammond 2004), including factors such as giving up smoking, decreases in depression, and raised levels of tolerance. Continued learning, valued and supported within the community, would be beneficial for the children’s workforce as well as for families. The opportunity to take time out during their career could offer teachers, social workers and health visitors, among others, time to reflect and perhaps work for a period in a different context before returning to their primary role. This could be an efficient and effective redesign of the relationship between study and career, linking notions of skill generation for adults to social cohesion, family functioning, and the development of children, as well as strengthening the workforce.

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Finally, we would like to emphasise how important it is that greater recognition be given to the impact of housing on a child’s development, and that housing be drawn more tightly into the partnership arrangements established through the Every Child Matters: Change for Children Programme. This is beginning to happen in some local authorities, although it may continue to be a challenge when housing providers remain outside the list of statutory partners within the children’s trust framework. Currently planning parameters do not give due weight to the needs of children and young people for access to open space, near to their homes. References in the recent Housing Green Paper to the impact of poor or overcrowded housing on children, ensuring new homes and spaces meet the needs of the whole community, and engaging children and young people in decisions taken about green spaces policies are therefore welcome (Department for Communities and Local Government, 2007). Proposals to empower communities to engage in local housing and planning decisions must develop in a direction which includes children and young people. Evidence indicates that children with attention deficit benefit from contact with the natural environment.12 They produce higher scores on self-discipline and concentration. The decline in freedom to enjoy the outdoor environment affects all children but it is disproportionately greater for those children living with multiple disadvantages. Housing needs to be designed with sufficient space – with thought given to the use of that space and decisions as to its use informed by children and young people, as well as by other community members. Outdoor activity, socialising, developing constructive bonds within a ‘learning’ community will all support the development of the emotional and social skills necessary to support learning and life.

12  Sustainable Development Commission (due publication 2007) Every Future Child Matters; Taylor and others, 2001.

4  Key messages, policy recommendations and questions

Lived environment

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Reducing Inequalities

Summary Supporting parents • Parenting does not exist in a vacuum and can be seriously undermined by parents’ own problems. • Adult services do not routinely pick up when a client or patient is a parent. Hence interventions may fail to address that critical aspect of the person and the impact of the parent problems on their child. • Further structural change is not the way forward. Effective working partnerships and cultural change is needed. We need to sharpen up the interpretation of ‘adult’ and define policy in health and social care around ‘parents’, ‘non-parent adults’ and ‘elders’. • The parenting of teenagers requires further and different skills to those for parenting babies, toddlers and children. Teenagers and parents need to participate in decisions about what they need so they influence what is offered to them. • Services should consider and work with the relationships between people and not simply focus on the needs of individuals. • There are many existing positive programmes working with parents, children and teenagers. A new or additional ‘initiative’ or ‘project’ is not the key solution. • A parent supporting a child’s learning is consistently significant in improving the child’s outcomes, regardless of the parent’s social class, education or wealth. Developing parents’ skills as the ‘first teacher’ will do a great deal to reduce inequalities.

Early years/smoothing transitions • Preschool provision should be geared to assessing and enabling a parent’s ability to support their child’s learning in the broadest sense. Parent’s involvement in preschool should be carried across into schools. • A child’s physical, emotional, neurological changes as well as the move from primary to secondary schools can complicate relationships, capacity to learn and challenge the way support is delivered.

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• Extended schooling as well as extended schools may be beneficial in more disadvantaged areas. The style and resourcing of provision should be negotiated with those at whom it is directed. • Schools need to be helped to be ready for children and their parents. • The extent to which there is scope to mould, change and develop a child’s educational achievement must be central to educational policy. • Teachers and other professionals need their own opportunities to continue learning and to develop reflective and analytical skills. • A child’s personal attributes impact on how they settle and achieve in school. • Multidisciplinary teams and other aspects of the Every Child Matters changes are consistent with what is needed and must be built upon. The staffing of these teams may need to reflect more closely the language of the communities they serve; and key community members may also need to be engaged.

4  Key messages, policy recommendations and questions

The education systems

• A rethink of the goals of the school experience is needed in terms of both content and style. • A more skilled workforce is a prerequisite for our future economic prosperity. We need the non-cognitive or ‘soft’ skills of negotiation, listening, problem-solving and interpersonal skills to be developed through the education system. • To be at our most effective in the labour market, a range of practical and academic qualifications need to be acquired so that no SEG can be described as ‘unskilled’.

Planning services • Planning for a child cannot be based around a single assessment, at a single point in time. • Public services need to engage with parents and with children and young people as both service recipients and partners in design and delivery. • Services offered through a universal doorway, but with increasingly targeted provision within, may help avoid the stigmatisation that can be associated with targeted and problem-labelled provision.

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Reducing Inequalities

• Professionals working with children, young people and families need the skills of systems analysis, group and community work, regardless of their professional background.

Learning communities • The learning environment must extend beyond the limits of the school, drawing on the resources of local businesses, parents themselves, youth centres, children’s centres and across school, FE and HE in an area. • The option to take ‘time-out’ from one profession to spend time in another, volunteering in the local community or reflecting upon or studying one’s own profession’s impact will ultimately be beneficial to children.

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Conclusion

Conclusion A strategy to reduce inequalities will need to include elements that focus on whole populations, particularly those geographical areas high on the deprivation index; cohorts of children which may cut across geographical boundaries; and individual children whose needs are so persistent and their challenges so multi-layered that a group-level intervention will not be enough. All must be accessible by multiple doorways, including a universal one. The strategy must take due account of the discontinuities experienced by children, so while there should be a focus on prevention, reality may mean that a need arises in the teens: hence we must work to prevent a deterioration at any point in a child’s development and not only in the early years. Service relationships need to focus on cultures rather than structures, and on how to remove barriers to effective integrated working, with the child at the centre of all endeavour. Finally, interventions need to be differentiated to take due account of what the evidence tells us is needed. Hence some groups of children, such as those in public care, asylum seeking children and those from ethnic groups that perform less well than others, may need dedicated attention.

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