Why are our children failing in basic reading & writing skills?
by Judith Cuddihy
In the United Kingdom there are more and more children leaving school without the essential reading and writing skills. This is a very worrying trend and something that needs to be looked into as a matter of urgency.
It is very difficult to just blame certain individuals or organisations but it must be down to one or a few different combinations of the following.
1: The Government: 2: The Schools 3: The Parents 4: Lifestyle Choices:
Personally, I believe that it is a combination of all four and will give a brief explanation why I believe this.
The government has a responsibility to provide each and every school with the necessary funding, so are they providing schools with adequate funding? Is it now becoming easier for a teacher to get qualified so that the government can say that they are providing the numbers to fill all teaching posts?
With the funding provided to the schools being spent in the right places and on the right things? Are the teaching staff qualified enough for the post? Are teachers becoming more and more disallusioned with poor working conditions and poor salary? Are teachers hands tied when it comes to classroom discipline?
I don’t think that we can blame the parents in most cases, obviously there are parents around that do not give a damn whether or not their child leaves school with an education or not but the majority of them do. Years ago when we had the “traditional familyâ€, dad went out to work and mum stayed home to look after house and kids and people generally had more time for their children, ate meals together, bedtime stories and so on. Today is a totally different matter with quite a lot of families having to have both mum & dad going out to work just to survive and thus not being able to give their children the time that we used to be able to do a few years ago.
Lifestyle Choices, how can this affect a child’s education? Well, we now live in a totally different “world†where children now have access to all sorts of wonderful things, play stations, computer games, ipods, mobile phones etc. Whatever happened to the old traditional books & bedtime stories? In my opinion Lifestyle Issues play a major part in our children’s education, there are just not enough children today that take time out to read a great book.
Can this trend be reversed? Only time will tell but ultimately it must be down to every parent in the country to want better for their child and make the effort to spend more time with their child and encourage more reading especially in their early years.
About the Author:
Judith Cuddihy has an Honours degree in adult nursing and has a keen interest in children’s progression and supplies her own range of children’s Personalised Books Judith’s Childrens Books are produced in house and can be sent worlwide.