Early Education's Pat Wills, who is headteacher of Claremont Primary School in Blackpool, Lancashire, said, 'Look at the number of children living in poverty. In these families the most important considerations are feeding, housing and clothing the family, with education coming very low down in the list of priorities.'
In an interview with the Sunday Telegraph on 31 August, Ofsted's chief inspector David Bell said, 'It is difficult to get hard statistical evidence on what is happening across the country, but if you talk to a lot of primary teachers, as I do, they will say that youngsters appear less well-prepared for school than they have ever been before.
'For many young people, school is the most stable part of what can be quite disrupted and dishevelled lives. This shouldn't worry us, because if children don't start at broadly the same point, we should not be surprised if the gap widens as they go through the education system.'
Mr Bell added that there was evidence that 'children's verbal skills are lacking'. He called for parents to be encouraged to 'talk to their children and give them a whole range of stimulating things to do and not just assume that the television, or whatever, will do all that for them'.
However, an Ofsted spokeswoman denied that Mr Bell was making a veiled criticism of the Government's national childcare strategy, under which the five-year-olds now starting school had been brought up. She said, 'In the interview Mr Bell was referring to a 20-year research study by Dr Leon Feinstein of the London School of Economics that has shown there is a gap among children at the age of five, and he was saying that we all should be working at ways of reducing the gap.
'He said that it was encouraging that the Government was spending money on initiatives such as Sure Start to help address this gap in young children, and that it was important that parents, schools, the Government and the wider society, address the issue too.'
Mrs Wills agreed. She said, 'There is a big gap between children who are raring to go, and are motivated and switched on, and those who struggle at school because of a lack of self-confidence and self-esteem. There have always been children who have been less prepared than others, usually due to circumstances beyond anyone's control, which is why the Government has introduced Sure Start.'
