CHILD COMMUNICATION
The UK population spends so much time at work, watching TV and doing household chores that many don’t have time in the day to talk to their children, according to a national survey by I CAN – the children’s communication charity. Research by the Basic Skills Agency shows that more than half of children in some areas of the UK are starting primary school without the basic speech, language and communication skills they need to learn and make friends.
Reporter Lovejit Dhaliwal speaks to the Mahey family.
Virginia Beardshaw, Chief Executive of I-CAN joins Libby to discuss the implications.
SAFEGUARDING VULNERABLE GROUPS ACT
New legislation means that all adults who work with children – even as volunteers, from 16-year-olds teaching younger kids to read, parents volunteering at school, to the friends of foster parents - will have to undergo CRB checks before being legally permitted to volunteer. The new legislation means that one third of the adult working population will now have to be vetted. There’s widespread worry that the massive extension of criminal records checks will mean that volunteer numbers will drop, relations between the generations be soured, and suspicion of adult motives become a default position. Mark Restall, Head of Information, Volunteering England, and a James Panton, Lecturer in Politics, St John's College, Oxford, speak about the effects the new legislation will have.
MOSAIC UK
Despite efforts by the government to make league tables fairer there are still trenchant critics out there who say that they should come with a health warning ….Libby speaks to Professor Tim Butler, head of the dept. of geography at King’s College London and Richard Webber, visiting professor of geography at University College London who together have produced a study that devised new school league tables taking the social background of each pupil into account.
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