What Scotland is getting right for children
This week, I highlight some of the things that are going in the right direction for children in Scotland - even though of course there is a lot still to do.
Children's rights
Last month, the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child (Incorporation) Act was finally given royal assent. (Holyrood had to pause this to let the UK government strike out parts it didn’t like - especially the bits about rights for children seeking refugee status.)
Children’s rights can be portrayed by the culture-wars crew as introducing a free-for-all where you can’t tell children such things as - they are not allowed to use phones in class. But that’s not how it works - these rights are fundamental. And there is no right to a smartphone in the UN Convention. In fact, article 34 says: “All children must be protected from all forms of sexual exploitation and abuse, including unlawful sexual activity, prostitution and pornographic materials”.
Are we doing enough to protect children from pornographers, who get access to them via smartphones? The new Mean Girls movie has a reference to choking - covered in the school’s sex education lessons. Are our kids when they grow up going to look back at that and shake their heads? Will this new law mean that the tech bros who own social media platforms can be summoned from Silicon Valley to Scotland’s courts if they don’t regulate to protect kids?
The law is important because it tells children they have legal rights (unless they are refugees) - but also because of what it says to adults. Article 28: “School discipline should respect children’s dignity and rights:” A classroom assistant who sees a senior teacher use demeaning language to a child now has an obligation to take them aside and say: “We need to understand that the law has changed.”
Like thousands of people all over the world, I am a signed-up member of the Scottish Children’s Parliament’s ‘Unfearties’ group. Recognising that adults’ voices are more likely to be heard than those of children, Unfearties pledge that they will speak up for children when necessary. The new law means everyone should be more comfortable in doing that.
Minimum Unit Pricing for alcohol
It was disappointing to see so many negative headlines in the Scottish press about raising the minimum price for a unit of acohol from 50 to 65p. It will put up the price of a bottle of vodka from £13 to £17. That seems sensible - surely a bottle of strong spirit should not cost the same as a family pack of toilet roll?
When the initial MUP came in six years ago, it did lead to a hike in the price of the cheap brands teenagers in the pre-pub years tend to favour. I remember asking young associates about it at the time, who confirmed that instead of a half bottle of Glen’s apiece for their nocturnal gatherings it was now one between two. But that effect has been more than wiped out by the cost of living crisis so this rise was overdue.
Raising the age at which school starts
I think it is really exciting to see consensus build about raising school starting age to seven in Scotland. Play and the chance to do practical things like sweeping, cooking, knitting, making things, are so good for children and it makes them happy (these Chinese stars of insta show the way).
But a small step towards raising the school age has just been taken, because children who are not five by August are now automatically entitled to another year of state-funded nursery. Until now, children who would turn five by March 1 the following year were supposed to start school in August. Parents were allowed to keep them out until their fifth birthday - but the child wouldn’t get an automatic free place unless the nursery said they were not ready for school.
Our daughter fell into that category and we were told she should be fine to start school at four. Although we agreed, we wanted her to have an extra year of play. Luckily we had the resources to send her to a Montessori nursery for her pre-school gap year and it was a great experience.
Maria Montesorri believed in fostering children’s love of practical tasks and self-directed activities. The nursery had a shelf of things like a real hammer and six nails to be hammered into a board, a jug of water to be poured into six glasses. During certain periods each day, the children would do these tasks on their own and the place felt like a library as they concentrated so hard. That extra year didn’t hold our daughter back - quite the reverse. When she started school the following year she was quite literally reading by Christmas.
Some argue that the first year of primary should be changed instead. But the introduction of Scottish National Standardised Assessments has meant pressure on teachers to prioritise numeracy and literacy for children to be reaching certain levels in P1. And parents often respond to the school setting by starting to ask how their kids are progressing in relation to these kinds of targets. Kindergarten is a thing in itself - not watered-down school.
At the moment, you have the situation where research-aware, often middle-class families with kids born in August and September hold them out until the following year when they are nearly six, while some kids whose parents go by the book are four and half.
The ‘Give Them Time’ campaign has now persuaded the Scottish Government to change this - it took 20 years. Now funding is in place for everyone, no child has to start school before they turn five. Hopefully, the effect will be to increase the school starting age in Scotland to between five and six years of age, rather than from four and half to six as it is at the moment.
That will also mean that when Scots leave school they will be 18 instead of 17 and able to go to the pub instead of a patch of wasteground for a celebratory drink.
It always makes me smile to remember being taken to task by one of our young associates at about that age. Her complaint was that she had ever so many lessons about online safety and yet nobody had thought to point out that drinking vodka in the graveyard is actually way more dangerous.
Child poverty rate gap is widening between Scotland and England
Another area in which Scotland is going in the right direction is on child poverty. In Scotland it is 24% - much too high. But child poverty in England has now reached 31%. A UNICEF report in December showed child poverty is growing in the UK as a whole faster than in any comparable country.
The Joseph Rowntree Trust reports that the Scottish Child Payment (now £27 per child in low-income families per week) is a “watershed’”. That's mainly what is helping Scotland to hold back the tide of UK government policy washing more and more children into poverty. But it is not the only difference. The Scottish Government also mitigates the two-child benefit cap which is pushing children in larger families into poverty - now almost 50% in England.
Scotland also provides universal free school meals under age 10 - there is more work to do on the nutritional content of those meals for sure but the wider provision is making a big difference - the take up is really good. In England only a small percentage of children who need this help get it and that means hunger can be a big issue, especially in the north of England, where the JRT reports child poverty is off the scale.
Better health care for babies
Chief Executive of the Institute of Health Visiting Alison Morton told the Today programme this week that Scotland offers babies more contact with trained health visitors. She said the fall in provision in England has led to soaring rates of A&E attendances. “Under ones are the highest users of A&E. The rate has increased by 42% in the last 10 years in England, whereas in Scotland, they don’t have this problem because they have intensive visiting by health visitors who support families in the heart of communities…..some families never see a health visitor while in Scotland, they’ll see them 11 times.
“It makes an enormous difference. So Scotland has much better uptake of immunisation, better identification of children with complex health conditions and disabilities, better breastfeeding rates and that’s going up. In England, all of our metrics are going in the wrong direction.”
Conclusion
On Question Time in Glasgow last week, in a discussion about Scotland’s higher tax rates for middle earners, one of the audience said he was happy to pay more to lift children out of poverty. Scotland’s children need people like that - we can only hope that many feel the same and that our higher earners don’t turn out to be work-dodgers who will skip hours to avoid a bracket change, or border-jumpers, who work in one country and pay tax in another, as so many pundits predict.
But changing things for children is not just about resources - it is also about values and education. If you want to learn more - check out the ‘Unfearties’
Very informative, thanks.