Schools in England are already amongst the most scrutinised and accountable in the world, yet now a whole new burden of responsibilities is being heaped on them.

First, schools were told they have a responsibility to look out for any indications that their pupils are falling into the grip of extremists and fanatics.

This involves teachers consulting a 47-page checklist of measures to help identify and counter signs that pupils have fallen under the influence of fanatical views.

These signs range from checking whether pupil graffiti betrays the influence of extremism to monitoring pupils’ downloads from the internet. Each school is to have a nominated teacher to whom pupils can turn if they have concerns about the influence of extremist groups.

Teachers are also told they should be ready to counter extreme arguments and should encourage debates to challenge such views.

To be fair, the ‘extremism toolkit’ stresses it is ‘guidance’ to schools, not a new set of requirements. But read on and you find a whole list of ’school actions’ and references to things that schools ‘need’ to do.

As with so many of these initiatives - from healthy eating to promoting citizenship - each is fine on its own but it is the collective burden on schools that can be overwhelming.

Data

And the government continues to pile them on. Following hard on the heels of the ‘extremism toolkit’ came a much bigger set of tick-lists for teachers.

These are the proposed ‘indicators of a school’s contribution to pupil well-being’.

They will apply to all state schools from primary to secondary, including special schools and academies.

The idea is that every school must collect data (yes, even more data!) to measure what they are doing to improve pupils’ physical, moral and mental health.

Naturally, this data will be checked by the education inspectorate, Ofsted. This immediately makes it high-stakes data rather than just a self-evaluation checklist.

So what sort of things will schools now have to do?

Well, in addition to the extensive data on test and exam performance, and the statistics on attendance and exclusions, schools will now have to provide information on the percentage of pupils who are ‘persistent absentees’, that is those who have missed more than one lesson in five.

They will also have to count: the number of pupils doing at least two hours of PE and sport; the numbers taking school meals; and the numbers staying-on in education after age 16.

Alcohol and drugs

But that is only the half of it. Schools will now have to employ opinion surveys of pupils and parents to find out how they think the school is doing on a wide range of well-being measures.

These include: whether the school promotes healthy eating, exercise and a healthy lifestyle; whether it discourages smoking and the misuse of alcohol and drugs; whether it offers good sex education and relationship guidance; whether it fights discrimination, offers a good range of curriculum and extra-curricular activities and the extent to which it encourages community involvement.

There is more. Schools should use these surveys to find whether pupils feel safe and protected from bullying, enjoy school, feel they are listened to, and whether they feel they can influence decisions made in the school.

To be fair to the government, they have dropped some data measures that were in their earlier plans, such as counting how many pupils are obese. Presumably wiser counsel prevailed when the practical issues of checking the weight of every child were considered.

Again, to be fair, the government acknowledges that pupils’ well-being is not entirely a matter for schools and teachers. It is shared by local authorities and, above all, by parents.

They add that the indicators are not judgements. A school may have a terrible set of indicators on attendance or school meal take-up, but there may be mitigating circumstances.

Crude measure

Yet you could forgive schools and teachers for being cynical about such caveats. They have heard them before. Exam results, they were told, were only raw data, not a final judgement. They would not be used on their own to determine whether or not a school was doing a good job.

Yet what do we find in practice? Yes, you guessed it: it is the headline measures, such as the percentage of pupils getting at least five A*-Cs at GCSE, that count, irrespective of more sophisticated data on value added, pupil progress, or pupils’ home backgrounds.

The government’s own list of schools told to improve or risk being closed was based on exactly this crude measure. All the other fine talk and caveats were ignored.

Of course, it is right for schools to consider all aspects of a child’s development, including all five outcomes of the Every Child Matters policy (health, safety, educational achievement, contribution to society and economic well-being).

But to insist on measuring all the aspects of a school’s contribution seems too mechanistic.

Ask anyone what were the biggest influences of school on their lives and they will not tell you about how many school meals they ate, how many times they ran round the school field or how many sex education lessons they sat through.

No, they will tell you about an inspirational teacher or a notable school trip, drama, or sports event.

Schools would say that if we try to measure everything - and hold teachers to account through so much data collection - we risk losing the spontaneity and individuality that should be part of teaching.

Source: BBC News
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/education/7663964.stm

A cross-party group of British MPs is expected on Wednesday to try to introduce a legal ban preventing parents from smacking their children, a campaign group said.

The MPs, headed by Kevin Barron, Chairman of the Commons Health Select Committee, have backed an amendment to the Children and Young Persons Bill calling for youngsters to have the same rights as adults on assault.

The amendment aims to abolish the legal defense of “reasonable punishment,” said the Children Are Unbeatable! Alliance, which represents more than 400 organizations.

More than 100 backbench Labour MPs have signed a private statement demanding the government allow them a free vote on whether there should be a ban, it added.

The issue was last debated in 2004 when calls for a complete ban were rejected despite a rebellion by Labour MPs. Instead a compromise measure was agreed which forbids any punishment which causes visible bruising, grazes, cuts or scratches.

The government remains opposed to an outright ban but campaigners, including the Children’s Commissioner for England Al Aynsley-Green, say the current situation is ineffective and sends out confusing messages.

“We must act now to end the legal approval of hitting children,” Barron said.

“The current law allowing so-called ‘reasonable punishment’ is unjust, unsafe and unclear. Frankly we are baffled by the hesitation so far about giving a vote on what is so clearly a conscience issue.”

Last year, ministers said the law, which applies to England and Wales, would remain unchanged after a review found that most parents did not want a complete ban on corporal punishment.

“This is one of those principled reforms on which politicians must make a stand whatever the pollsters might say,” said William Utting, the Alliance’s spokesman.

“The law must send the clear message that hitting children is as unacceptable as hitting anyone else.”

Source: Canada.com
http://tinyurl.com/4475e3

Human evolution is grinding to a halt because of a shortage of older fathers in the West, according to a leading genetics expert.

Fathers over the age of 35 are more likely to pass on mutations, according to Professor Steve Jones, of University College London.

Speaking today at a UCL lecture entitled “Human evolution is over” Professor Jones will argue that there were three components to evolution – natural selection, mutation and random change. “Quite unexpectedly, we have dropped the human mutation rate because of a change in reproductive patterns,” Professor Jones told The Times.

“Human social change often changes our genetic future,” he said, citing marriage patterns and contraception as examples. Although chemicals and radioactive pollution could alter genetics, one of the most important mutation triggers is advanced age in men.

This is because cell divisions in males increase with age. “Every time there is a cell division, there is a chance of a mistake, a mutation, an error,” he said. “For a 29-year old father [the mean age of reproduction in the West] there are around 300 divisions between the sperm that made him and the one he passes on – each one with an opportunity to make mistakes.

“For a 50-year-old father, the figure is well over a thousand. A drop in the number of older fathers will thus have a major effect on the rate of mutation.”

Professor Jones added: “In the old days, you would find one powerful man having hundreds of children.” He cites the fecund Moulay Ismail of Morocco, who died in the 18th century, and is reputed to have fathered 888 children. To achieve this feat, Ismail is thought to have copulated with an average of about 1.2 women a day over 60 years.

Another factor is the weakening of natural selection. “In ancient times half our children would have died by the age of 20. Now, in the Western world, 98 per cent of them are surviving to 21.”

Decreasing randomness is another contributing factor. “Humans are 10,000 times more common than we should be, according to the rules of the animal kingdom, and we have agriculture to thank for that. Without farming, the world population would probably have reached half a million by now – about the size of the population of Glasgow.

“Small populations which are isolated can evolve at random as genes are accidentally lost. World-wide, all populations are becoming connected and the opportunity for random change is dwindling. History is made in bed, but nowadays the beds are getting closer together. We are mixing into a glo-bal mass, and the future is brown.”

Source: Times Online
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/science/article4894696.ece

As soon as children are old enough to interact socially, some become entrenched in chronic and increasing patterns of victimization by their peers, according to a report in the October issue of Archives of General Psychiatry, one of the JAMA/Archives journals. Children who are aggressive in infancy and are from families with harsh parenting styles and insufficient income appear more likely to be consistently victimized.

As many as one in 10 youth are the direct target of physical attacks, hostile words and social aggression from peers during school years, according to background information in the article. “Studies also show that peer victimization becomes increasingly stable over time, with the same children enduring such negative experiences throughout childhood and adolescence,” the authors write. “The consequences associated with high and chronic victimization are manifold and include depression, loneliness, low self-esteem, physical health problems, social withdrawal, alcohol and/or drug use, school absence and avoidance, decrease in school performance, self-harm and suicidal ideation [thoughts and behaviors].”

Edward D. Barker, Ph.D., of the University of Alabama, Tuscaloosa, and colleagues studied 1,970 children (51 percent boys) born in Québec, Montreal, Canada, between October 1997 and July 1998. Participating children were assessed at ages 4.5 months, 16.6 months, and 2.4, 3.4, 4.1, 5.1, 6.2 and 7.2 years. At each point, mothers provided information on factors such as victimization, family adversity, parenting styles, physical aggression, hyperactivity and internalizing symptoms. At age 7.2 years, teachers and children reported on victimization by classmates.

“Three trajectory groups were identified with respect to victimization by peers between 3.4 and 6.2 years of age,” the authors write. “As expected, most of the children (71 percent) fell on a low/increasing trajectory, whereas 25 percent and 4 percent of the children followed moderate/increasing and high/chronic trajectories, respectively. The overall age-related increase in preschool peer victimization is consistent with the view that, as preschool children progressively spend more time interacting with peers, they are more likely to experience negative peer experiences.”

Children who were on the high/chronic and moderate/increasing trajectory according to their mothers’ reports at young ages also had the highest levels of victimization at age 7.2, as reported by themselves and their teachers. Children who were aggressive at a young age (17 months) were more likely to become victims in preschool than children who were less aggressive, but neither early internalizing symptoms (for example, sadness, fear and anxiety) or hyperactivity were associated with later victimization. Children exposed to harsh parenting were more likely to be chronic victims, and insufficient family income also predicted high/chronic and moderate/increasing victimization trajectories.

In addition to identifying factors associated with victimization, “the present results also suggest that multiple forms of victimization may be the norm for victimized children, i.e., children with a high/chronic trajectory had harsh, reactive parents and were victimized by peers in preschool and after school entry. Other forms of victimization are likely to occur for these children, both within the school (e.g., verbal bullying by teachers) and within the community, particularly within low socioeconomic contexts,” the authors write. “These results suggest that early preventive interventions should target both child- and parent-level risks and focus on alternatives to harsh and aggressive interactions.” (…)

Source: EurekAlert
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2008-10/jaaj-seh100208.php

The University of Miami med school is one of the key research sites in a pioneering national study that will examine children’s health from birth to 21.

The University of Miami Medical School will be one of the primary research centers for a 25-year nationwide, pioneering study of children’s health, following potential mothers from before they’re pregnant to when their children reach 21.

The $3.4 billion National Children’s Study, funded by the National Institutes of Health, will track 4,000 children in four Florida counties — including Miami-Dade — and 100,000 nationwide. It will focus on 20 key children’s health issues, including autism, birth defects, heart disease, attention-deficit disorders and obesity.

”We believe it will be the largest study of pregnant women ever conducted — certainly in the United States,” said Dr. Peter Scheidt, director of the national study for the NIH. The NIH will create a national databank of health information on children.

”We won’t have to wait 21 years to benefit,” said Dr. Duane Alexander, director of the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development. “We will release information at each step in the growth process, from pre-conception to 21.”

`THE WHOLE COUNTRY’

Dr. Steven Lipshultz, chairman of pediatrics at UM medical school and Florida principal investigator for the study, says the research will be more significant than the Framingham Heart Study, which has followed a Massachusetts town since 1948 and is seen as the basis for much of what is known about heart disease.

”That was just one Massachusetts town,” he said. “This will cover the whole country.”

Lipshultz estimates the study eventually will create up to 400 medical health jobs in Florida and $400 million of medical spending in Miami-Dade County. UM initially will receive $54.6 million from the NIH to lead the Florida portion of the project. UM will pay participants a range of fees, as yet undetermined.

Miami-Dade, Hillsborough, Orange and Baker are the counties in Florida that will participate in the study — there are 105 counties nationwide.

Lipshultz said he hopes the program can help lift Florida from its ranking of 50th out of 50 states and the District of Columbia in 13 child-health categories according to a May study by the Commonwealth Fund, a private group that studies healthcare issues.

Starting in 2010, if pilot efforts go well, UM researchers will recruit 4,000 families in the four counties.

”We will literally knock on 17,000 doors to get 1,000 children in Miami-Dade,” says Dr. Tracie Miller, associate chair of pediatrics at the UM med school and co-principal investigator of the study.

WATER SAMPLING

Other universities involved are Johns Hopkins University, Baylor College of Medicine, Michigan State University, Northwestern University, Tulane, the University of California at Los Angeles and Vanderbilt.

The studies will follow women from before they conceive, sampling the water they drink, the air they breathe, the schools, shops and workplaces in which they spend time.

Doctors, nurses and medical researchers will look into genetics and environmental factors; psychologists will trace brain development factors that might cause dyslexia, learning disorders, attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder.

Some of the key areas to be studied:

• Birth defects: Birth defects affect one in every 33 babies born in the United States each year, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. They include heart defects, brain defects and spinal problems such as spina bifida. Birth defects account for more than 20 percent of infant deaths.

• Obesity: Studies by the Florida Governor’s Task Force on Obesity say 10 percent of Florida high school students and 11.5 percent of middle school students are overweight. They say 57.4 percent of Florida adults were overweight or obese, a 63 percent increase since 1986. Early blame was placed on lack of physical activity and poor eating habits.

• Heart disease: Reports by the Florida Department of Health say 39.7 percent of Florida residents said they had high cholesterol in 2005, up from 31 percent in 2001. The report said 26.9 percent engaged in no regular physical activity. And two-thirds of middle school students watched TV or sat at a computer screen for more than three hours a day.

• Autism: The CDC estimates that one in 150 8-year-old U.S. children has an autism spectrum disorder, making up about 560,000 individuals from birth to 21. The number is up from previous decades, possibly because a broader definition of ASD. Some parents believe, despite disagreement from many doctors, that autism might be associated with childhood vaccinations.

The CDC says it does not believe there is a connection.

Says Lipshultz: “There’s no substitute for data.”

Source: MiamiHerald.com
http://www.miamiherald.com/news/miami-dade/story/712697.html

Next time you head off to bed to get a good night’s sleep, your brain’s memory bank is likely to thank you for it.

American research presented at the Australasian Sleep Conference in Adelaide yesterday showed that far from resting while people sleep, the brain uses this time to store and remember important information and discard useless details.

Associate Professor Robert Stickgold, from Harvard Medical School, said sleep played a more important role in memory processing than previously had been thought.

Professor Stickgold’s research showed that sleep not only strengthened recently formed memories, it could also blend them into networks of older memories.

He said the brain also used sleep to sift through memories such as scenes people saw that day, to remember the important “emotional” memories and dismiss unimportant ones.

And when people were given a task to finger-tap out a difficult-to-remember code and then sent home to “sleep on it”, the next morning they were 15-20 per cent faster at performing the task and had 30-40 per cent fewer errors.

“So while you’re sleeping, your brain is actually improving on the memory that you formed while you were awake, and if people don’t get enough sleep, say more than six hours, then you won’t see that improvement,” Professor Stickgold said.

Source: The West Australian
http://www.thewest.com.au/default.aspx?MenuID=2&ContentID=100927

Breastfeeding for longer, cutting out TV and enlisting grandparents to babysit are among the keys to bringing up happy, healthy children, a new Federal Government-funded report shows.

The four-year study measured children’s physical, learning and cognitive development plus social and emotional functioning.

Federal Families, Housing and Community Services Minister Jenny Macklin released the report - Growing Up In Australia: The Longitudinal Study of Australian Children - in Sydney today.

The report shows infants aged three to 19 months had higher learning scores if they were cared for by a range of family and friends - including grandparents - rather than just their parents.

Ms Macklin said grandparents were the unsung heroes of the Australian family unit, providing a strong support base for families by lending a hand with day-to-day family life and influencing their grandchildren’s development.

“This new study demonstrates just what a critical role grandparents play in the development of children,” Ms Macklin told reporters at a daycare centre in inner-city Redfern.

Spending time with grandchildren, reading to them, cooking together and taking them shopping were simple interactions which made the difference, she said.

The only option better than getting grandma and grandpa to babysit was for the children to attend early education programs, the report says.

The study began in 2004 and more than 10,000 families agreed to take part.

Also indicated in the study was that mothers were still not breastfeeding exclusively for long enough.

The National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC) recommends mothers breastfeed exclusively for at least six months, but while most of the mothers who had taken part in the study had breastfed, they had not done so for long enough, the results showed.

The majority of children had diets that did not meet nutritional guidelines and many preferred less physical activities.

The lack of breastfeeding also positively correlated to incidences of wheezing in infants and a strong prediction for asthma in children aged four to five.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, children who read more - alone or with a parent - and watched less TV tended towards better developmental scores across the board.

“We know from this study how important it is to a child’s development to … spend as much time as possible everyday reading and spending time playing with children,” Ms Macklin said.

The study also showed that six per cent of children studied lived in households that had been forced to skip meals or not pay bills in order to cope with growing financial stress over the past 12 months.

However, while financial stress had an adverse affect on the child’s development, overall income levels did not - meaning children growing up in affluent households were not necessarily better off than those growing up in poorer homes or neighbourhoods.

The Growing Up in Australia report is the first comprehensive national study of Australian children over time, Ms Macklin said.

Source: The Epoch Times
http://tinyurl.com/4m2nu8

England has a new plan for helping children with ADHD: Treat the parents first.

With that, the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence is giving a big “Whoa, Nelly!” to the recent trend toward increased use of Ritalin in the United Kingdom, saying instead that the first response should be to give parents training on how to handle kids who are inattentive, hyperactive, or impulsive.

What would ADHD treatment look like here if the United States adopted the same national standard? With as many as 10 percent of children here medicated, that’s no small question.

The news about England’s new ADHD treatment standard comes at the same time that a new report says American children are three times more likely to be prescribed stimulant drugs like Ritalin than are children in Europe. American kids probably aren’t more hyper than their European counterparts; indeed, international surveys have shown that there’s ADHD in every corner of the world. There are a lot of reasons for the differences in prescribing among countries, including direct-to-consumer drug advertising, different government restrictions and insurance reimbursements, and most important, cultural beliefs. If an American doctor diagnosed a child with ADHD and recommended counseling, most parents would presume it was for the kid.

“Sometimes, parents make that presumption, but when you’re talking about counseling—behavior management, proper rewards, consistency in parenting—it’s really a parent-focused therapy,” says Andrew Adesman, the chief of developmental and behavioral pediatrics at Schneider Children’s Hospital in New Hyde Park, N.Y., who is active with CHADD, an advocacy organization for people with ADHD. In other words, change the parent’s behavior, and the child’s behavior will change, too. The parent training recommended is not specific to ADHD but rather teaches behavior management skills that could be used with all children: having realistic expectations for a child’s behavior, clearly explaining goals and rules, identifying behavior that’s inappropriate, and following through with sanctions for rule violations and rewards for good behavior.

Earlier this year, I spent a lot of time trying to figure out the secrets to raising great kids and learned that we know what works; it’s just that in the heat of the moment, we parents often do the wrong thing. A lot of what works is counterintuitive. Scientists have conclusively proven that nagging doesn’t work, for instance, but we all do it.

Saying that parents of a child with ADHD need training doesn’t mean that the parents are the problem, Adesman says. “But maybe they need to change their approach to the child, or be more realistic. The parents can oftentimes improve the child’s behavior.”

That’s of a piece with the controversial advice from Lawrence Diller, a pediatrician in Walnut Creek, Calif., whose books about children and ADHD include The Last Normal Child. Parents who create and enforce clear rules can often inspire a dramatic turnaround in child behavior, Diller says. The controversy comes because Diller argues that, with some children, discipline can also include spanking.

The British experts don’t say never use Ritalin. Rather, they say it should be reserved for children with severe ADHD. Studies in the United States have shown that medication improves behavior faster than therapy in the short term. But for many families, parent training or family therapy can be the answer to the often-troubling question on Ritalin—yes or no?

Most health insurance doesn’t provide nearly the same coverage for education and counseling as it does for pill-prescribing, and in some communities, it can be hard to impossible to find good services. Now that the powers in the U.K. have decreed that parent education comes first, that means that insurance will pay for it. Wouldn’t it be a wonderful thing if American families had that same opportunity?

Source: U.S. News & World Report
http://tinyurl.com/456dr2

A child health expert says 20 per cent of Australian parents are unfit to raise children because they lack the means or life skills.

Professor Fiona Stanley says many others don’t devote enough time to their children because of job commitments.

The Sunday Telegraph reports Professor Stanley, an adviser to Prime Minister Kevin Rudd and former Australian of the Year, has also criticised the government’s paid parental leave policies.

She’s warned that a national campaign is needed to protect the futures of Australian children.

“There are a worrying number of threats to children’s health in today’s society,” Prof Stanley, founder of the Institute for Child Health Research, said.

“If we don’t respond to these challenges, we will be looking at our generation as being the last generation that lives longer than its parents.”

Mental illness, obesity, asthma and substance abuse are the biggest health risks for Australian children, Prof Stanley said.

But cultural changes of the past 30 years are having just as big an impact.

“There have been incredible changes in the workplace, which might have been good for people’s income, but are not good for parenting,” she said.

She said paid parental leave is crucial.

A draft report for the Productivity Commission’s inquiry into paid parental leave will be released tomorrow.

Prof Stanley said up to one in five parents are financially and socially ill-equipped for child-rearing.
“There’s this increasing group of parents who are just not making ends meet,” she said.

“They don’t have the capacity to be a parent.”

Source: The Australian
http://tinyurl.com/4qa4p4

After a weekend of crawling on the floor with our granddaughter, my wife and I support nature’s decision to give the joys of parenthood to the young and leave the less strenuous or episodic side of childrearing to those of a certain age. Learning that her mom and dad were conflicted about attending a weekend wedding, we leaped at the opportunity to spend quality time with their 11-month-old ball of energy.

We had an amazing weekend; truly enjoyable but physically demanding. After raising three kids of our own and professionally caring for thousands more, we felt well equipped and up to the task. Bearing responsibility for an infant, however, is an enormous undertaking, frequently taken for granted.

Toddlers are perpetual motion machines, requiring nearly constant supervision, stimulation, care, and feeding. They are prone to tears when hungry, thirsty, wet, or bored. They may conveniently fall asleep, allowing their caregivers to do the same, or may demand to be fed, changed, or entertained at inopportune times. As children mature and families evolve, we are inclined to forget the energy, organization, and commitment necessary for successful parenting.

Children grow and develop rapidly over the first year of life. In the few weeks since we last saw our granddaughter, she has become independently mobile and is eating table food. She can pull herself to standing, allowing access to objects on table tops and low shelves. She explores with abandon, rapidly moving from room to room in search of new experiences. Of course increased mobility is fraught with danger, especially in a grandparent’s not-totally-baby-proof home. Small objects present the danger of choking or poisoning, and light plugs and wires are hazardous to kids who like to mouth or chew objects as part of the learning experience. Kitchens can be particularly dangerous if cleaning agents and chemicals are stored within reach of a curious explorer.

Even the most ordinary of events pose hazards. While soft foods that dissolve in the mouth are safe, solid foods can pose real risks for children less than 2 years of age. Objects that remain hard, or may be slippery such as hot dogs, nuts, and raw carrots are particularly dangerous, as are pitted fruits and hard candy. Grandparents should be mindful of the dangers posed to infants by the many over-the-counter and prescription medications found in their homes. As a pediatrician, I have personally cared for children who had serious or fatal experiences with each of these examples.

While intended to be comforting and enjoyable, baby’s bath time can be dangerous, as well. Check to see that the water heater or boiler is not set too hot, since children can be scalded by temperatures over 120 degrees. Never leave children alone in the tub, since, aside from a potential drowning or aspiration, their skin is thinner than that of an adult and playing with a faucet can cause severe burns. Medical histories all too frequently report that parents or caretakers, distracted by the phone, have returned to bath-time catastrophes.

To us, parenting is the world’s most important, complex and difficult job; one for which there is little or no training or realistic preparation. Our short caretaking experience reminded us of just how much energy our daughter-in-law and son invest in parenting our grandchild. Our hats are off to them and to all the other parents and caregivers attentively caring for their families’ most precious treasures. (…)

Source: Gloucester Daily Times
http://www.gloucestertimes.com/pulife/local_story_269164437.html