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Lindsey Macmillan and Jake Anders.

The start of 2024 has seen a renewed focus on persistent absenteeism from school, with the Secretary of State for Education announcing a major national drive to improve school attendance, and the Shadow Secretary of State for Education laying out Labour’s plans to ‘rebuild the broken relationship between schools, families and the Government’. Yet this is not a new problem: the issue of persistent absenteeism has been looming since schools returned to ‘normal’ after the COVID-19 pandemic.

Everyone agrees that the rise in pupil absence since the pandemic is of significant concern. But the causes and what we should do about this are much less clear. (more…)

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Rachel Benchekroun and Claire Cameron.

Given the growing pressures on families in the context of ongoing austerity policies and the current cost-of-living crisis, as well as the immense financial pressure on early years providers, greater investment is needed from central government to enable early years settings to provide safe, supportive and sociable spaces for families with young children. (more…)

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Alice Bradbury.

One of my daughters did Key Stage 1 SATs ‘quizzes’ last week, and she found it tiring and emotional. Some of her friends were in tears over how they did, and this is without the pressures of having your results used to appraise the whole school. Judging by the outcry over the Reading paper, the Key Stage 2 SATs week was especially tough for pupils, parents and teachers alike this year. But this concern over SATs goes much deeper than one difficult paper; many parents and teachers have simply had enough of what they see as a damaging system. (more…)

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Rachel Benchekroun.

Hostile immigration policies in the UK constrain mothers’ personal relationships and restrict their access to different kinds of support. This means that mothers affected by these policies have to be especially creative and resourceful in their everyday mothering. This can create a significant emotional burden.

Immigration policies in the UK have long been regarded as hostile and racist in their effects. However, in 2012 – in its quest to reduce net migration – the Coalition government set out its plans to create an explicitly ‘Hostile Environment’. Primarily targeting people with no or only temporary residency rights, measures have included dramatic increases in Home Office fees for visa applications and renewals, and a minimum income requirement for UK residents who wish to bring their spouse or partner to join them. These measures penalize migrants from the Global South.

The ‘no recourse to public funds’ (NRPF) condition has been expanded, preventing people with precarious immigration status from accessing many public services and mainstream welfare support. More than 1.3 million people in the UK are estimated to be subject to NRPF. Racially minoritized mothers and children are particularly affected. More than 220,000 children are believed to have NRPF because of their visa status.

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Peter Moss.

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Ahead of his UCL Lunch Hour Lecture on 11^th May, Emeritus Professor Peter Moss sets out why ‘just more childcare’ is not the answer to England’s early years needs.

Last week’s Spring Budget saw the latest of many attempts by successive governments to fix England’s broken early childhood system. More funding was directed at childcare. But expensive childcare is just one symptom of a flawed system, itself the product of decades of government neglect followed by a failure to think critically and holistically once early years gained policy attention from 1997.

The result today is a hodgepodge of fragmented services, coupled with weak and poorly co-ordinated leave provision. (more…)

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Margaret O’Brien

In a recent BBC Radio 4 debate, the Right Honourable Jacob Rees-Mogg MP claimed that the UK has the best maternity rights in the world. The programme was aired on the 31^st January, to debate the third anniversary of Brexit. In it, he also assured the audience that rescinding EU employment regulations would have no detrimental impact on British working parents – and that in comparison to our European neighbours we in the UK already benefit from exceptional maternity rights, with laws originating from the UK itself.

In fact, Jacob Rees-Mogg’s claim of world-leading maternity rights for Britain is an odd statement and contrary to international evidence. (more…)

Catherine, Duchess of Cambridge, Professor Pasco Fearon, and Professor Alissa Goodman, during a 2021 visit to UCL. Credit: Parsons Media for UCL.

Alissa Goodman

It was exciting to be invited earlier this week to the launch of Shaping Us, the new Royal Foundation Centre for Early Childhood campaign to raise awareness of how important the early years are for shaping the adults we become.

At the launch, the Princess of Wales showed her obvious passion for and commitment to improving the lives of all children, from their earliest stages of life. Her serious personal interest in the deep scientific underpinnings for why the early years matter is also very striking. (more…)

Jo Van Herwegen, Elisabeth Herbert and Laura Outhwaite.

A good grasp of maths has been linked to greater success in employment and better health. But a large proportion of us – up to 22% – have mathematical learning difficulties. What’s more, around 6% of children in primary schools may have dyscalculia, a mathematical learning disability.

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Developmental dyscalculia is a persistent difficulty in understanding numbers which can affect anyone, regardless of age or ability.

If 6% of children have dyscalculia, that would mean one or two children in each primary school class of 30 – about as many children as have been estimated to have dyslexia. But dyscalculia is less well known, by both the general public and teachers. It is also less well researched in comparison to other learning difficulties.

Children with dyscalculia may struggle to learn foundational mathematical skills and concepts, such as simple counting, (more…)

Jess Zhou and Keri Wong.

The COVID vaccine roll-out has been one of the most successful vaccination campaigns in UK history, yet not everyone is on board. Studies of adults report some 15% of the population are resistant to getting vaccinated and up to 35% indicate they are hesitant towards COVID vaccines. These figures are not dissimilar to hesitancy rates for other vaccines and can have real implications for ongoing public health messaging and global pandemic intervention strategies.

Parents with children under 18 – who make vaccination decisions for themselves and for their children – form one group in need of better support because vaccine decision-making is particularly challenging. Understanding how parents made decisions about the COVID vaccination and what support they needed is important as this is a much-neglected group in COVID public health messaging.

Our UCL Vax-PaC Study led by Dr Keri Wong (PI) and Asako Miura (co-I) aimed (more…)

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Alison Koslowski, Peter Moss and Margaret O’Brien.

In 2015, the UK government introduced Shared Parental Leave (SPL), a measure to encourage more equal parenting. It enabled mothers to transfer up to 50 of their 52 weeks of Maternity leave, and some of the associated benefit, to fathers.

A government evaluation began in 2018, but has yet to deliver. It is clear, though, that SPL has not worked. A minister, in 2017, told the House of Commons’ Women & Equalities Committee that she ‘would regard anything over 20% [take up] as very encouraging’. A new analysis by Maternity Action comes up with the discouraging news that in 2021/22, ‘take-up among an assumed 285,000 eligible fathers was just 2.8%…just 8,100 fathers’. Just 0.66% of total public expenditure on Maternity and Paternity leave went on SPL.

Experience from countries with more successful leave policies provides pointers to what has gone wrong. That experience is available in the recently published 18^th annual international review on leave policies, produced by a network of experts led by Professor Alison Koslowski, director
of UCL’s Thomas Coram Research Unit. The review brings together details of parenting leaves and other support for employed parents in 49 (more…)