The effect of USA: No Child Left Behind

This report from the USA describes findings from the second year of the most comprehensive, intensive, and carefully constructed study to date of trends in student achievement in all 50 states since 2002, the year the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) was enacted.

Key points:
- It is not possible to directly relate improvements in student achievement to the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) policy.
- Since 2002, reading and math achievement has gone up in most states according to the percentages of students scoring at the proficient level. Gains tended to be larger at the elementary and middle school grades than at the high school level. Achievement has also risen in most states according to effect sizes.
- In states where sufficient data exists, gaps have narrowed more often than they have widened since 2002, particularly for African American students and low-income students. Gap trends were also largely positive for Latino students, but this finding is less conclusive because in many states the Latino subgroup has changed significantly in size in recent years.On the whole, percentages proficient and effect sizes revealed similar trends of narrowing or widening, although percentages proficient gave a more positive picture of achievement gap trends than effect sizes.

CAMHS (Child & Adolescent Mental Health Services) Review

The Child and Adolescent Mental Health Service review commissioned by the DCSF and Department of Health have published their interim report:

Key points:
- There is evidence that the range of developments since 1995 in all services has achieved some notable improvements in all education, social care and health services, particularly the requirement on Local Authorities and Primary Care Trusts to produce a co-ordinated Child and Adolescent Mental Health Strategy.
- Comprehensive improvement in access to services for all children and consistency of provision across the full range of services has not yet been achieved.
- It has not been possible to monitor improvements in outcomes for children and young people as reliable routine outcome measurement and data collection is a complex task that is only just beginning to be undertaken by many services.

Child abuse and adult suicide

Child abuse victims are among the most at-risk groups of committing suicide in later life, according to research.

A study in Canada involving 3,000 adults found that those who had been abused as a child were far more likely to have attempted suicide. Just under a third of sexual and physical abuse victims had attempted suicide, compared to just six per cent of those who had not experienced abuse.

Of those that took part in the survey, around one in ten had experienced either physical or sexual abuse. Repeated abuse over a number of years and abuse by a family member was the most strongly associated with suicide attempts. The research, which has been published in the British Journal of Psychiatry, was carried out by academics at the McGill Group for Suicide Studies in Montreal.

Reaching the hardest in Children's Centres

A report by Capacity was carried out to look at the effectiveness of children’s centres in reaching the most highly disadvantaged families, the ways in which they meet the needs of those families and the outcomes achieved.

Ket findings:
- The study revolved around four “exemplar” children’s centre case studies, examining their work within the context of current government policies, best practice and a wide range of research perspectives.
- The centres within the study were found to be highly effective in delivering multi-agency services to and for children and families. Each has been successful in reaching a number of families who would be considered “difficult to include”, giving thought to and overcoming the practical and other barriers which might prevent those families using the various services on offer.
- It is possible that more resources than are currently allocated for the children’s centre programme are needed to ensure that it can meet its objectives. In acknowledgement of this, the DCSF has recently announced a cash injection of more than £4billion to children’s
centres which will include additional funds for outreach workers.
- The reach strategies adopted by successful centres have been implemented in a particularly thorough way. Some of the community consultations, for example, have been extensive and highly structured, utilising focus groups, outreach and public information campaigns, as opposed to more limited consultations and surveys.
- If children’s centres are to achieve their objectives, they need to capture detailed information about their users, both at the point of first contact and at subsequent intervals.
- In all four centres, the expertise and depth of experience of those leading the work was very considerable and this was a critical factor in their extensive achievements.

Childcare costs prevent parents from working

More than a quarter of low-income parents are unable to work because of childcare costs, according to a YouGov survey.

The survey, carried out on behalf of Save the Children, found 28 per cent of parents on incomes lower than £15,000, could not afford to work.
Douglas Hamilton, head of policy and research at Save the Children, said parents often have to quit work to look after their children. He said: “The costs of childcare are so high that by going to work parents lose more money than they make. The majority of parents in poverty want to work, but with no-one to look after their children, they can’t.”

The children’s charity is calling on the government to introduce £100 grants for children from poor families to help fund holiday childcare. YouGov’s findings coincide with a Daycare Trust report that found the cost of holiday childcare in Great Britain rose by almost ten per cent in the past year, to a weekly average of almost £88.

Engaging parents in their children's learning

This report by the GTC asked a diversity of parents of their experiences with schools via 6 structured workshops in three English cities.

For the purposes of this report, involvement is defined as activities that parents undertake in relation to their child’s school, such as attending parent-teacher consultations, performances and fetes and talking to their child about school and any homework they may have been given. Engagement is defined as the activities that parents undertake to learn about learning and develop their own knowledge in order to help their child.

Key points:
- Primary school teachers were accessible, but access to primary school teachers was becoming more difficult.
- In high school, access to teachers was restricted to formal events (such as parent evenings).
- Parents found it difficult to contact head teachers and were often restricted by gatekeepers.
- Fathers (who tended to be working), working parents generally and lone parents tended to have much less informal contact with primary and secondary schools; they were also less likely to be school volunteers or members of the PTA.
- Parents thought that schools expected them to be involved in their child’s learning and thought that schools assumed they would know how to do so, although this was not necessarily the case.
- Parents thought that it was important to be involved in their children’s learning.
- They were mixed in their opinions about how much they wanted to be involved apart from generally helping with homework and attending the formal parent-teacher consultations provided by the school.
- Parents also thought that by engaging with their child’s learning they gained a better understanding of their child’s abilities and interests; understood their child’s weaknesses; gained an insight into any other issues that may be occurring in their child’s life; and would be better able to tailor social activities to their child’s interests. It also reinforced the value of learning, for both the child and parent alike.
- Some parents did not feel that they wanted to be engaged with their child’s learning. This was for a range of reasons: it is the school’s responsibility to engage in a child’s learning; time pressures; and a lack of knowledge and skills about how to engage with a child’s learning.
- Parents often expressed a desire to know more about the curriculum that their child was following, or the teaching methods that were being used. This was particularly so for maths and science, for which teaching methods were thought to have changed considerably since they were at school.