Her favourite books are those with tactile pages such as the series “That’s not my…” or those where she is able to lift flaps or her favourites at the moment are those where there are simple signs that run along side the story.

I think that it’s great that both of my children love looking at books. This love of books will benefit them throughout their lives as it provides, pleasure, relaxation, broadens their vocabulary and makes learning to read so much easier as they are eager to learn how. This is an essential skill and if they are able to do it through something they enjoy then I’m all for it. Plus I have found that it strengthens the relationship between parent and child.

This was the question was on leaflets posted through doors in the south London borough of Lambeth. Before this starts a mass panic Local councils are under a statutory obligation to provide every child with a primary school place. However some are starting to raise concerns about a potential shortfall in the number of primary school places arounds England.

In Lambeth, the demand for primary school places has increased by 40% over 2 years. This has been attributed to a rising birth rate and the recession as better off parents are opting not to go private. As a result it is estimated that schools will have run out of primary school places by 2015.

In Brixton parents believe the prospect of five-year olds having to stay at home is no exaggeration. With these figures parents are becoming increasingly worried. With the current system parents submit a form to their LEA (Local Education Authority) stating your first choice for the school you wish your child to attend, but if this shortage of places becomes a reality then it is going to be a case of children having to either go further afield to find a place. Alternatively will there be any spaces at all?

Some parents have claimed that it’s happening already, some are getting into their fifth or sixth choice and some not getting into any of the schools chosen on their application forms. Some parents are having to travel great distances to take their children to school; in some cases this is not really feasible.
The Office for National Statistics figures show it was 63.7 live births per 1,000 women of childbearing age in 2009, compared with 54.7 in 2001. Primary school numbers have been falling for the past decade, however they are set to rise by 14% according to The Department for Education.

Others claim that the estimated rise will vary significantly with influencing factors being:

• Movement between areas
• Economic Changes
• Migration
• The Make-up of the population.

It is expected that London, the east and south-east are expected to feel the squeeze the most. Metropolitan boroughs throughout the country are likely to face pressure too. It is thought that these areas need to find several thousand extra school places within the next four years. The new housing developments that are cropping up all over the country will place an extra burden on local facilities. Parents are saying that the Government needs to provide the finances to develop existing schools and build new schools.

The Department for Education claim that £800m has been allocated this year for local authorities to spend on precisely this problem. They argue that the issue has been ignored for too long, accusing Labour of “wasting vast sums” on bureaucracy in its Building Schools for the Future (BSF) programme of secondary school rebuilds. They also point out that despite a 60% cut to education capital spending over the next four years; the coalition is still spending more per year on school building work than the previous government did in its first two terms.

A government-commissioned review of school building recommended this April that a better system be put in place to prioritise schools’ building needs and to develop standardised designs that could be built more cheaply. But Lambeth says it needs more money now. It has received £52m over the past five years, but is asking for £50m over the next two.

• Getting them to try new things, regardless of whether I like them or not.
• Allowing them items of an ethnic origin
• Refusing to use smacking as a form of discipline

and the list goes on. It doesn’t seem to matter what I do I get accused of being a hippy parent; the latest 2 are using washable nappies and the fact that I tend to go to the local health shop and buy things like vanilla pods and various other things because Holly got hold of 1 ages ago and enjoyed chewing on it so have been buying them for her since.

To be honest as long as the child(ren) are happy and healthy what does it matter? The answer to this question should be nothing but because it seems odd or because it is different to the style of someone else it is criticised. News Flash everyone is different and you have to accept that regardless of whether or not you agree.

Parents have complained that feel they have to “fight the system”. The report by Mr Lamb will reflect calls for more parent-friendly support for families with children with special needs. It will say that parents want to know what help is available and to have clearer guidelines about what should happen in schools.There will also be proposals that the Local Government Ombudsman should be funded to consider parents’ complaints against local authorities.

Special needs tribunals are also set to be improved and and there will be promises for more support for children who face bullying. The National Autistic Society’s chief executive, Mark Lever, said: “A great many parents of children and young people with autism have to fight huge battles to get the education support that should be theirs by right, often at considerable emotional and financial expense. “We hear terrible stories from parents of local authorities flouting the law by ignoring diagnoses, not meeting statutory timescales, failing to write statements properly, and even saying they ‘don’t do’ statements any more.

“It is hardly surprising then that parents have little confidence in the special educational needs system, and they could be forgiven for thinking that this report will do little to change what for them is an often complicated, intimidating, and sometimes infuriating system.” Children’s Secretary Ed Balls said: “In the New Year we will set our plans to address the recommendations that Brian has made to address the changes to teaching and learning that are necessary to improve educational outcomes for children with SEN. “We are now working to ensure all parents have confidence in decision making by giving them and their children a stronger voice at the heart of the SEN system.”

The data revealed that more boys than girls were overweight in both reception and year six, 24% of boys aged four to five were overweight or obese, while 21.5% of girls were. In the 10 to 11-year-old age group, 34.5% of boys and 30.7% of girls weighed too much.

Public health minister, Gillian Merron, said evidence is stacking up to suggest that child obesity is “levelling off. It’s important to monitor children’s weight and wellbeing, and I’m glad that we achieved a 90% take up of the scheme. But we need to keep the momentum going.We’ll only turn the tide on obesity for good if everyone plays their part.”

It is already known that obesity can cause health problems such has heart disease and diabetes but the scary factor is that we could out live our children should this problem not be addressed and measures put in place to correct the problem.

A government poll of councils said many were having “serious difficulties”. Under the Early Years Single Funding Formula, the government wants private, voluntary and independent nurseries to be funded at the same level as state-run pre-schools, which currently get more cash. It’s really important that we take the time to get this right so that the really disadvantaged children aren’t the ones to lose out.

Many predicted this change would lead to very effective state-run nursery schools being unable to continue as they do at present. And ministers faced the prospect of local campaigns to prevent highly-valued nurseries from being run down or even closed. But now the introduction of this change has been postponed until April 2011 – after the General Election – and it is unclear whether it will ever be brought in.

Announcing the move in a written ministerial statement, Children’s Minister Dawn Primarolo said many local authorities had been working hard to prepare for the formula’s implementation in April 2010. “However, during the summer it became clear that a significant number of local authorities were experiencing difficulty in developing their EYSFF.

“More recently, parents and providers, from both the maintained and the PVI sectors, have expressed concerns about the potential adverse impact on provision if the EYSFF is introduced now,” she said. She added that the department had surveyed all local authorities in November to establish how much progress they had made.

It found “considerable variation in terms of their readiness,” she said, with less than a third predicting they would be ready to introduce the EYSFF from April 2010. “While it is difficult to generalise about the underlying reasons it seems clear that some local authorities have experienced serious difficulties in obtaining accurate data from their providers, while others have simply found the task extremely challenging,” she added.
Megan Pacey of Early Education, which represents state-run nurseries, welcomed the move, saying: “Many local authorities were really struggling to make the balance and the formula work.

“The minister said two-thirds of local authorities were not ready to run this properly. “We are in a place now that it’s acknowledged that maintained nurseries have a role to play and do a very different job to those in the private, voluntary and independent sector.” But, she added, that nurseries in the maintained sector would have to “reform and evolve” in order secure their futures.

“It’s really important that we take the time to get this right, so that the really disadvantaged children aren’t the ones to lose out.” Shadow Families Minister Maria Miller said: “Over the summer, around 300 nurseries left the childcare market. “Two thirds of all nurseries say they are not getting enough money from government to deliver free hours. “The Early Years Single Funding Formula should have helped private and voluntary nurseries get a better deal. But the government have failed to ensure its delivery. Hard working parents will suffer as even more places are lost.”

Most adults can remember days when they didn’t want to go to school. There would be claims of illness, and of the danger of passing on an unpleasant disease, before the eventual acceptance that the journey into school was inevitable. So it is not surprising that many might react with scepticism to the idea that there is such a thing as “school phobia”.

According to Nigel Blagg, author of School Phobia and Its Treatment, it is a condition that has been recognised since the 1960s. “They will experience extreme anxiety. They are off school, typically with their parents’ knowledge and approval. And they often have symptoms like tummy aches, head aches and nausea. Some of them suffer severely with depression. “Any attempts to get them to school, when they are at their worst can lead to quite extreme behaviour – temper tantrums, screaming, kicking. It is very distressing for the adults.”

The sceptics categorise these children as truants, but, says Mr Blagg, a former local authority educational psychologist who now runs a private practice, they are quite distinct in background and behaviour: “They are typically well behaved, socially conforming who are usually doing quite well. Normally they come from caring families. The truant group are the ones who [miss] school because they want to… often involved in delinquent behaviour.”

It is thought the worst ages for school phobia are five to six and 11-14, says Mr Blagg. There are no precise numbers for how many children suffer the condition, but he notes one estimate is that 1% of children will have it at one point during their school careers. A day at school is not every child’s idea of fun.

But the diagnosis is not without controversy, and even the term is subject to dispute, says Mr Blagg. “In the psychological world the preferred term these days is school refusal. [But] school refusal doesn’t convey the extreme distress, anxiety and panic, the physical symptoms that these children experience or the fact that it isn’t a volitional state.” There is a recognition among psychologists and other education professionals that school phobia/school refusal covers a range of different problems.

Some of the younger sufferers can be diagnosed as having “separation anxiety”, leaving them distressed at parting from their parents at the school gate. But some psychologists say this is more about refusal, not phobia – a true school phobic will experience a reaction even if their parents are present. “Other children could be classified as having a social phobia to do with performance aspects of school – reading out loud or changing for PE,” says Mr Blagg. Other children might be off sick for a prolonged period, fall behind with work and fall out of a routine. Some might simply have changed school and lost friends they relied on to feel secure at school. Still others may have had a single distressing experience. “More typically what you have is an accumulation of stresses to do with home and school that add up over time and cause the child to be anxious,” says Mr Blagg.

School phobia – irrational fear of school or the school situation
School refusal – Refusal on the part of a child to attend school
Refusal to go to school may be caused by a school phobia but most school refusals due to separation anxiety
In a true school phobia a child will show the phobic reaction even if his or her parents are present
Source: Penguin Dictionary of Psychology

“The avoidance leads to greater problems. They fall behind with school work. They worry what friends will say. The longer they are out the worse the problems get. If they are told they don’t have to go they feel fine and the symptoms disappear.”

Not only is there disagreement over the name for the condition, but also how to treat it, and whether it exists at all. Sociologist Prof Frank Furedi, author of Wasted: Why Education Isn’t Educating, is not convinced. “You take an understandable anxiety about going to school and turn it into a disease… Children will internalise it and play the role that’s been assigned to them. It cultivates the idea that these [exaggerated medically diagnosable] anxieties are normal. You do begin to encourage children to think in these terms.”

Even if you do accept that school phobia exists, there can still be disagreement over the best approach to tackling it. Mr Blagg insists that while educational psychologists, teachers and parents must be sensitive to the child’s needs, they must recognise that confrontation and getting the child back to school is necessary.
“They need that very firm handling and confronting them and getting them back to school. You might have to take them to school and escort them [in].” For those who have been away schools should assign tutors, help them catch up and offer them quiet space to be in while they are adjusting.

There are some advocates of home schooling who believe that rather than being a psychological aberration requiring a cure, the symptoms of school phobia may simply indicate that the child is best educated away from the school, at home. Ann Newstead, a spokesperson for the home tuition charity Education Otherwise, says school phobia is a “very real condition”. “I see a lot of families where they are in that situation – you only have to meet the children and families to see that it’s not a made up condition. It’s genuine. Not sending your child to school is something parents can be prosecuted for. You don’t risk prosecution lightly. You wouldn’t dream of forcing an adult to engage in an environment that wasn’t beneficial to them. So why do we think it’s ok to treat children in this way?”

But aren’t children more malleable? Doesn’t keeping them back from school indulge their fear rather than tackle the problem? “I agree with the tackling but not the forcing of it. That’s like treating someone who is scared of spiders by putting a spider in their hand. You tackle these things gradually, help someone to overcome a phobia and home education is a way of doing that.” More generally, many schools seek to make some of the changes for children less stressful, for example working on acclimatisation for children moving up to secondary school but Prof Furedi does not believe that such a sensitive treatment is necessarily always helpful. “Kids going from primary school to secondary school often get transitional counselling. If you tell them enough times this is an extremely difficult, painful step, you make the kids more anxious.”

The sceptics of this theory are making their voices heard here are just a few:

• Bill Thorpe: “Thirty years of teaching in inner city schools has shown me that as soon as a “syndrome” is named, you can be sure that you’ll have a rash of ‘diagnosed’ sufferers within a few weeks. (Tourettes for example). Even if “School phobia” is real; and the pupil who have been prosecuted is a sufferer.. Why should the school apologise? Presumably the evidence of non-attendance was real and provable. The “syndrome” is a circumstance that can be considered by the court. The school is right to pursue truants, their only evidence is attendance records.”
• Yes, phobias exist in school settings, but I don’t think that there is actually a school phobia. The reason why the profile of all these school phobiasts are “well behaved, socially conforming….” is for the simple fact that they are suck ups that probably get whatever they want, and their mommies and daddies cradle their kids until their out of college. I think everybody at some point or for a period of time didn’t want to go to school. This was probably because we had to deal with something we didn’t want to, like: giving a speech, a bully, or maybe getting up too early. These fears or anxieties are normal for everybody. Being afraid of a public institution is just another way to label something else we want to have as an excuse to coddle our kids.
• This is ridiculous. There is always a name for anything that makes us as adults uncomfortable. I am a teacher and i have dealt with children who don’t want to come to school, one is now okay as he realised nobody was going to put up with his nonsense. The other left the school as he was very good at manipulating his mother who just did whatever her children wanted. We need to stop labelling children and helping them to come up with excuses. I am sure when they grow up with no qualifications and become yet again another burden on society we will think of another psychological condition to excuse. The problem with the west, too many excuses for bad and manipulative behaviour!!

To be honest me and my partner accept that there is anxiety for some children with regards to school but we’re are uncertain about whether there is such a thing as school phobias. With things like this it raises concerns about the impact on both the education system and the NHS. The education system will become too afraid to act if they suspect truancy and the NHS will be inundated with claims of children who allegedly have school phobia; Not only that but you risk creating a self fulfilling prophercy, if you tell someone something often enough they start to believe it. You are also providing truants with another excuse to skip school

As you are all aware of the recent case where 2 policewomen who were told that helping each other with babysitting was illegal if they were not registered.

To clarify reciprocal childcare arrangements between parents where there is no payment involved are not a matter for regulation. Mr Balls says that he has now asked Ofsted not to interpret these rules as applying to arrangements which have no “financial reward” and are for “mutual aid”. “When parents make their own reciprocal childcare arrangements with friends they retain full control and responsibility for the care their children receive

To be honest this whole drama seems a bit mad. Who parents leave their children with is up to them and when friends help each other out they should not be penalised for this. The way I see it the way this government is going people are going to end up to scared to help each other and so society will become divided. Which can’t be a good thing,