Disadvantaged at seven

Three out of four parents feel their seven-year-olds are getting an "excellent" education in national school. However, the Minister for Education shouldn't get over-excited, because that's the same level found in other countries.

Parents tend to be happy with whatever education their children are getting at the moment - they also have rose-tinted views of their children's performance.

Overall, teachers rate children's cognitive competence lower than both the children's ratings of themselves and the parents' rating of their children.

The children themselves were happiest of all with their performance - so parents and teachers are doing something right.

These two insights are offered by a new report, Seven Years Old: School Experience in Ireland by N≤ir∅n Hayes and Margaret Kernan of the Centre for Social and Educational Research, Dublin Institute of Technology.

Another insight is that parents' main role is guiding their children through emotional turmoil and helping them to feel competent in coping with loss.

If you doubt this, consider that four out of 10 Irish seven-year-olds have experienced a major family upheaval in the past four years, according to the report. This change may have been the birth of a new baby, the death of a grandparent, separation of parents or the death of a sibling or parent.

Children are not immune to loss and feel it keenly. Even a new brother or sister is a kind of loss, because it changes forever the older child's status in the family.

These seven-year-olds weren't living in circumstances of family breakdown but in "normal" situations: nine out of 10 of seven-year-olds live with two married parents, the report found. So turmoil, for seven-year-olds, is "normal". We need more research into its impact on childhood and how schools can help families, Hayes and Kernan believe.

The report looked at 374 children (193 boys and 181 girls) in 194 schools.

About half the children (175) were attending designated disadvantaged (DD schools and 199 were attending non designated disadvantaged (NDD) schools.

The report's strongest message is that when you become a parent, you cast your child's lot with yours. Disadvantaged parents have disadvantaged children. Boys are especially affected and those in DD schools are crying out for help.

The report found that while boys in NDD schools outperform all other children on most developmental status measures, boys in DD schools perform significantly below all other groups. So it is seven-year-old boys who are at the pressure point of social inequality and suffer from it most.

Boys in DD schools may also be suffering from being in a female-dominated primary school environment - although it has to be said that in female-dominated NDD schools boys still outperform girls in maths and science. "We have to ask questions about female-dominated classrooms," says Hayes.

The research found that teachers in both DD and NDD schools rated girls higher than boys on cognitive competence.

Yet, in tests, girls scored only marginally higher than boys in cognitive development, language development and reading comprehension.

In mathematics and science, boys scored higher than girls overall.

Gender combined with poverty to be the biggest disadvantage for seven-year-old boys, but that doesn't mean girls weren't suffering too.

While Celtic Tiger cubs have thrived, the gap between rich and poor children has widened. Children in DD schools score lower in cognitive development, language development, mathematics, reading comprehension and science. They also have lower incomes.

The study found that the average family income was significantly lower in families of children attending DD schools (£12,000) than those attending NDD schools (£21,500). In the past four years, families in DD schools saw their incomes increase by 9 per cent, while families in NDD schools saw their incomes increase by 32 per cent.

This finding directly supports the ESRI's latest statistics. The Children's Rights Alliance has called on the Government to ensure that that Budget for 2002 reverses the trend.

In the past 14 years, income levels amongst the poorest one-fifth of the population have reduced by 1 per cent, while income levels for the wealthiest one-fifth have increased by nearly 19 per cent.

Under the UN Convention of the Rights of the Child, which the State has ratified, governments are obligated to respect the right of every child to a standard of living adequate for their full human development. Yet one in eight Irish children is living in consistent poverty.

Parents of disadvantaged girls rate their performance more highly than they do the performance of their sons. Why is this? How do we need to improve relationships between parents and sons in order to take this sword of Damocles away from the heads of poor seven-year-old boys, whom nobody seems to be too happy with, except themselves?