Perhaps the most important challenge for any society is how to prepare its children for adult life. It means helping them to gain the skills they need to build resilience and to flourish as well as preparing them for work. In past generations a wide manufacturing base to the economy meant careers were available to young people with few academic qualifications in unskilled or semi skilled jobs. But even these required social and emotional skills, both in the workplace and at home.
Nowadays many of these jobs no longer exist and outcomes for children and young people are increasingly dependent on their educational achievements, measured in terms of the qualifications they get at the end of their school and college careers. Moreover, emotional skills are becoming ever more important in the workplace. The Institute of Public Policy Research report Freedom’s Orphans found that ‘in just over a decade, personal and social skills became 33 times more important in determining relative life chances.’
Success in attaining qualifications is linked to a pupil’s level of attendance at school. So schools, unsurprisingly, are vigilant in monitoring attendance and taking action to ensure that children attend school regularly.
But the mechanisms by which school attendance is measured have resulted in the growth of a target culture at the expense of identifying the underlying issues behind poor attendance. The focus is on improving the figures rather than tackling the core problems and focusing on the best outcomes for young people and society in general.
Of course, achievement is important particularly in today’s competitive job market. However there is a danger that in doing so we are in danger of losing sight of the importance of personal and social resilience, emotional intelligence, and of ignoring creativity. And by ignoring the needs of children with troubled backgrounds, we are in danger of adding to the ranks of a growing underclass.