Tristram Hunt urges parents to play more with their children
Tuesday, May 5, 2015
Children are starting school unable to speak properly because their parents are not playing with them enough, Labour’s shadow education secretary has claimed.
Tristram Hunt said he had been struck by the number of head teachers concerned about an increase in four-year-olds turning up at school with delayed speaking, listening and motor skills in the last decade.
The shadow education secretary went on to say these motor skills come from playing and talking to children, and advised parents get ‘down on all fours’ and engage with their children from an early age.
Making the comments to journalists after addressing delegates at the National Association of Head Teachers’ annual conference in Liverpool, Mr Hunt said, ‘Whenever I talk to head teachers one of the big issues is the development and underdevelopment of speaking and listening skills, those motor skills, and what that comes from is playing and talking to children, getting down on all fours from goo-goo, ga-ga onwards.’
He suggested the problem could be down a lack of understanding among ‘time poor’ working parents about the importance of engaging with young children, or the prevalence of technology in the last ten years.
‘I’m struck by how often head teachers say this had got markedly worse over the last decade, and whether that’s a story of technology, with TVs and smartphones, whether it’s poverty through both parents working and not having enough time, or whether it’s about a failure to understand the importance of this. I’m not sure, but it’s definitely a challenge in the education system’, Mr Hunt added.
The shadow education secretary went on to criticise the closure of hundreds of children’s centres under the coalition Government, saying they were places in which valuable parenting skills were shared and learned within communities.
According to the Labour party, 750 Sure Start children’s centres have shut since the coalition came into power.
Mr Hunt said, ‘We [Labour] think that teaching parenting and promoting attachment and having mums and dads learn from other parents, and children from each other in children’s centres is an important way in which the skills of parenting are crowd-sourced among communities.
‘There’s a lot of criticism sometimes directed towards teachers about attainment, but I think there are responsibilities in terms of playing and talking to children that parents have a duty to engage with.’
