Lesley Riddoch: Safety first putting our children's wellbeing last

Published on Sunday 14 June 2009 21:59

NURSERY care is in turmoil. Vanessa George was charged with sexual assault and distributing indecent images of children in her care last week. Shocked parents have called for an inquiry which may well recommend more safeguards, less access and more security for children.

That would be a mistake. As understandable a mistake as the post-Dunblane clampdown, which turned schools into fortresses and turned a mercifully rare act of aggression into a general threat against all. The reason George has made headlines is because she is rare. Childcare workers are rarely accused of exploiting children. Yet the system may decide all nursery workers are guilty until proven innocent – just to be on the safe side.

What exactly is this peculiarly British notion of safety that leaves children with lower levels of health, confidence and happiness than kids "let loose" elsewhere in Europe? In much of the continent, nursery care is accepted, standard, excellent, affordable and subsidised. In traditional societies such as Cyprus, large extended families still have stay-at-home mothers and stay-in-the-home grandmothers who combine to give children engaged, high-quality play.

It's no coincidence then that Norway and Cyprus share the top spot in Unicef's index of child wellbeing. Britain is last. Betwixt and between, our kids get the worst of both worlds. Nurseries are expensive, limited and frowned on by traditionalists. In the words of Gordon Brown's internet safety tsar, our children are raised in captivity to satisfy adult guilt about being elsewhere. The guilt trip has to end.

We could begin by ending the virtual incarceration of children in nurseries. Scottish children record the lowest feelings of wellbeing in Europe partly because so many are cooped up indoors without encountering any of the small risks that make for stimulating play.

It's hard to realise how much we constrain children until you witness a radically different system. In March, I visited four kindergartens in Norway for a Radio Scotland programme. Every child there has the statutory right to a kindergarten place from age one to six and parents pay a maximum of 200 per month.

Children wear insulated waterproof all-in-one suits, and play and learn outdoors, whatever the weather. Some kindergartens adjoin farms where the kids feed animals, grow tomatoes, make hay and watch cows being cut up by the farmer. The Norwegian belief is children divorced from the whole of nature – the cycles of life and death – become couch potatoes, estranged from the outdoors and less independent, confident, co-operative and happy as young adults.

By contrast, we coop children up indoors and try to insulate them from all risk – making them more susceptible to danger by exposing them to nothing. We then spend millions trying to "retrofit" skills onto teenage casualties of that poor childhood learning experience.

According to Alan Sinclair of the Work Foundation, we have become a remedial society. The man who has spent a lifetime working with un-skilled young adults now freely admits he may have "wasted" much of his time tackling the NEET problem at the wrong end.

He explains: "Social services are like ambulances – heading for the scene of the crash not the cause of the accident. Poor outcomes for Scottish children are utterly predictable given the low quality of their experience between 0 and 3 when vital "soft" skills of communication, problem solving, co-operation and sharing are either learned or lost."

The Scottish children's minister, Adam Ingram, says Norway's outdoor learning system is the gold standard for Scotland, but there's no new money to improve or subsidise early years provision here.

But in recession and a future of massively reduced public expenditure, the opportunity to make radical changes is actually greater. The 2000 Nobel laureate in economics, James Heckman, showed investing in early years produces a rate of social return way above almost any other part of public expenditure.

His figures show the rate of return from investment is highest aged three (when available data begins) and drops rapidly thereafter, levelling out after 19. And yet most Scottish educational cash is spent where least benefit can be obtained and when the damage is done.

Mr Sinclair believes Scottish professionals have made serious mistakes in their approach to education, spending time and money too late in a child's learning career. The top skills demanded by employers are not advanced literacy and numeracy – in a list of 14 they come last – but speaking, listening and problem-solving skills. What age are speaking and listening skills learned? Zero to three.

Perhaps this also explains Scotland's enduring problems with poverty. A new EU study involving 3,000 children suggests the biggest determinant of literacy at the age of five is not household income, it's the learning environment, the educational level of the mum and the quality of play. In short, if a child has a "good (average weight] birth," attachment to a parent and a good learning environment, they will do well. The absence of these key features in many poor households – and lack of childcare to fill the gap – means poor children are less likely to develop the speaking, listening and problem solving skills employers want, thus making them more likely to remain in poverty.

Why do politicians from every party focus on the skills business doesn't actually prioritise? Why do the facts that support a massive shift of resources to early years fall on deaf ears? And could our appalling recording on multiple deprivation have its roots in the lack of excellent outdoors early play?

The Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents has an interesting slogan – children need small accidents. In the name of child safety and social progress, we need to let that happen.

&#149 Killing with Kindness is on Radio Scotland 9-10am today.