National Association for Small Schools

Parents and Teachers TOGETHER! – December 2011

The government believes in early intervention to help lift people out of poverty and guard against social breakdown. "The seeds of so many social problems as well as success stories," said the Prime Minister, "are sown in the early years." Autumn 2011 sees a world-renowned early intervention programme being rolled out across 400 schools in Britain. (Channel 4 News refers.) But it's not a government project. It's being run by a charity and sponsored by Morrisons supermarket and Lloyds Bank in conjunction with Save the Children.

NASS has for two decades identified the great success of small schools (despite a string of alleged working difficulties which in good professional hands become real advantages) as engaging parents in effective partnership. When teachers and parents are on the same wavelength, sharing ambition, effort and values, children feel safe and secure, believe that effort is worthwhile and achievement possible. The benefits of small schools for disadvantaged are well documented in many national and international studies. NASS wants small schools in our towns and cities, believing that small, human-scale learning environments will long-term be far cheaper than one-off poorly-premised top-down strategies.

The FAST programme - Families and Schools Together - originated in America. It wants what NASS knows small schools do naturally and easily. The US 1970s "Headstart" programme tackled inner city pupils' disaffection and failure and the resulting very costly social evils. Ten years down the line it was possible to say that for every dollar spent on the pro9gramme the Exchequer received seven to fifteen back. Those heavy social costs were reduced as pupils took more positive views of education while resulting higher attainments, increased staying on rates all led to higher qualifications, better jibs and increased future tax revenues. In 2010 Birmingham LEA announced it was giving £40m to 50 schools with classroom discipline problems. The money was to develop ways to reach out to parents and try to get them on board.

The new FAST programme operates in 14 countries. Save the Children has been piloting it in several areas in the UK. One project is in Birmingham. Inaction it looks deceptively simple, children and their parents singing songs and sharing a meal together. However, during the three hour sessions there's work done through various play activities which improve relationships between parents and children. A game of "Feeling Charades" helps the children work out how to deal with their emotions. The parents are encouraged to boost their child's confidence - and all of it done with a view to making the families better able to deal with life, and ultimately improve their children's attitudes and performance at school.

The results are impressive enough to see the programme accredited by the United Nations. Research shows 73 per cent of parents who complete the FAST programme are better able to support their child in school. Teachers say children's basic skills work does improve and that previously poor behaviour in class is reduced by as much as 40 per cent.
But if it's so impressive and so fits the government's criteria for early intervention programmes, why is it being left to a charity, Morrisons and Lloyds Bank to pay for it? Sally Copley is Save the Children's Head of Poverty. She said:

"For Save the Children we're really grateful that we could find funding that enabled us to pilot this now. What we really want to see is every parent from a deprived area being entitled to this programme. To a certain extent it almost doesn't matter who funds it. What really matters is that parents are able to access this programme, because it is simply so effective in helping parents engage with their children's education."

Graham Allen, a Labour MP, wants all children to have access to FAST. He's written two hugely influential papers on early intervention for the government. But he isn't calling for the coalition to fund FAST. Asked about FAST's UK funding by a bank and a supermarket he says "Welcome to the real world. I think we've got to be a lot more creative now, to imagine that a government - whether it's a Conservative government, a coalition government or a Labour government even will find slabs of billions of pounds to fund programmes is like this is a pipe dream. We need to be much more inventive - we need to bring in the private sector, we need to bring in philanthropy, and perhaps most important of all we need to spend government and local government money that's out there - more effectively."

One thing that does worry him though is sustainability. He knows from his own work on early intervention that it's vital the programmes don't just spring up for a while and die. It's a real concern for Save the Children too. Their funding from Lloyds and Morrisons runs out in two years time.