Addressing the question 'are social skills taught or caught?', Kathy Sylva, professor of education at the University of Oxford said, 'Because of Government pressures we have, over the last ten years, concentrated on teaching academic skills. In the process we have neglected the social skills side. We have assumed that while we should teach the academic side, children will catch the other side. The point is that they don't. They need to be taught these skills.'
Professor Sylva is a leading researcher on the five-year Department for Education and Employment-funded study, the Effective Provision of Pre-School Education (EPPE) project. She said the study of 3,000 three-to seven-year-olds had so far found that centres offering care and education that were rated as 'excellent' in their academic provision were only 'good to moderate' in the way they taught social skills.
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