Ensuring Every Child Matters

A Critical Approach

Gianna Knowles

• Publisher: SAGE Publications Ltd
• Year: 2009
• ISBN:
  9781446242568
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Elementary Education

In today?s climate of multi-professional working, this book examines how children from the ages of 3 to 11 are educated, in the educational and social context of the Every Child Matters (ECM) agenda.

There are chapters dedicated to the five outcomes of Every Child Matters (which are: being healthy; staying safe; enjoying and achieving; making a positive contribution; achieving economic wellbeing), as well as comprehensive guidance on how to ensure the ECM standards are met. However, this book also looks at the broader scope of how children learn in early years settings and primary schools, and is written at a level that enables the reader to develop their own knowledge and understanding.

Issues discussed include:

- social justice;

- diversity and inclusion;

- the child in society;

- working with families.

Case studies are provided in each chapter, along with activities, suggestions for further reading and useful websites.

Suitable for Childhood Studies and Education Studies courses, and for teaching assistants studying for a Foundation Degree or Higher Level Teaching Assistant (HLTA) status, the content is equally relevant for teacher-training courses and practising teachers.

Gianna Knowles is a Senior Lecturer at the University of Chichester.

1

Every Child Matters and the Social Justice Agenda

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This chapter explores:

• what is meant by social justice;
• that social justice is the principle by which everyone in society should have the opportunity to maximize their life-chances, achieve well-being and flourish;
• how the concept of social justice is a principle of what has become known as the welfare state;
• how social justice cannot be realized unless we understand, through exploring the theory of oppression, that our assumptions, values and beliefs impact on the life-experiences of others;
• how social justice is the principle at the heart of the Every Child Matters agenda; and
• how teaching children about social justice is part of the Early Years Foundation Stage framework and the National Curriculum.

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The principles of how everyone can achieve equitable access to the goods available in society, for example, housing, food, health and education, is a concern that has long occupied humanity. Social justice is a principle that is currently used in Britain to underpin public policy and practice with a view to ensuring all have an equal chance to attain the necessary goods and conditions they need to thrive and achieve well-being. Embedded in the concept of social justice is the idea of fairness (DfES, 2005: 21), that is, in a fair society all should have an equal chance of achieving well-being. However, society is not a homogenous entity. It comprises a huge number of smaller groups between which is an unequal distribution of power and access to goods, and as part of the unequal power distribution some groups will wittingly – or unwittingly – discriminate against others. In this way, some are prevented from being able to achieve well-being.

The Every Child Matters agenda, through its five outcomes for well-being seeks, underpinned by social justice, to ensure children and families are supported in achieving health, safety, enjoyment of and achievement in learning, and that they can play their part in the community and achieve economic well-being. While these outcomes can be recognized for children and families in the short term, in some cases with considerable support from others, the goal of the ECM agenda is to provide children and families with the long-term skills, knowledge and understanding to be able to achieve these outcomes for themselves. And, if as individuals we have a concern in helping children and families achieve these goals, we need to be clear about the principles that underpin the ECM agenda to ensure we are best equipped to be working to see it realized. For these reasons, this chapter begins with unpacking what is meant by social justice, as understanding this is fundamental to being clear about how to approach the rest of the ECM agenda.

What is social justice?

Most of us are familiar with the notion of justice and use a very sound working knowledge of it in our day-to-day lives. However, given time to think through exactly what we might mean by justice, it quickly becomes evident that it is not one thing, but that there are a number of aspects to the concept of justice.

In Western Europe it is usually the Ancient Greek philosopher Plato (424–347 BCE), who is credited with first exploring justice and establishing our current uses of the term (Hinman, 2003: 243). From Plato we have derived the notion that justice is a good thing for society, that we should seek to be able to call ourselves a ‘just’ society and that a just society is something of value and is worth striving for (Hinman, 2003: 245). The absolute definition of the concept of justice is still under discussion – nearly 2400 years later – but generally when we talk of justice two principle things we expect from it are what we might call retributive justice and distributive justice.

• Retributive justice is the term applied to the notion of imposing a penalty, sometimes a punishment for the breaking of an agreed rule or a law.
• Distributive justice is about how a ‘just’ society might share or distribute limited, but necessary, things that everyone needs to thrive (De Botton, 2001: 94; Graham, 2007: 15; Hinman, 2003: 249).

There are other aspects to justice that could be explored: restorative justice, for example, which rather than being concerned with punishment as in retributive justice, has more to do with re-establishing harmony, perhaps in a society that has experienced some form of civil unrest, possibly including acts of oppression by one group against another (Hinman, 2003: 257). There are also concepts of ‘natural’ justice and the notion of a just reward; in both these aspects of justice there is the implication that there is some natural order outside human political constructs and rules that would seem to govern what is just in certain instances, over and above what human rules might state. In terms of the concept of social justice, it is the principle of distributive justice that we are most engaged with.

Distributive justice is concerned with how a society ‘in which everything currently and conventionally regarded as a benefit or an advantage is freely available to all’ (Boucher, 1998: 255). In Britain it has become the case that the government is the main agent for ensuring that benefits and advantages are accessible to all and that they are fairly distributed (Boucher, 1998). However, in distributing goods, the agency undertaking the distribution is faced with resolving two important issues:

1. How do we know how much of each of these benefits and advantages any one person should have?
2. Were we to start from a position where there is already an unequal distribution of these benefits and advantages – where some people seems to have none and others have them in abundance – what processes do we use to even things out?

The answer to the first question is usually tackled in terms of establishing a notion of a minimum of, for example, housing, food, health and education that an individual needs to survive (Boucher, 1998: 256), and that it is the minimum that everyone is entitled to so that they are kept from living in poverty. (Poverty is discussed in more detail in Chapter 8.) However, finding a distribution method – or possibly even a redistribution method to ensure all have an equal chance to enjoy the benefits and advantages a society has to offer – is a considerable challenge and the rest of this chapter explores how social justice seeks to provide a way forward in meeting this challenge.

Well-being and flourishing

Boucher (1998), in exploring the notion of what a minimum of benefits and advantages might be, also reminds us that as a society we are not just concerned with physical well-being, the need for food, shelter and health care, but also with what might constitute ‘the minimum conditions for the promotion of self-realization’ (Boucher, 1998: 83).

The notion that human self-realization or well-being ought to be as important for human flourishing as having access to the basics for survival is one that, in Europe, was explored by Aristotle (384 BC–322 BCE) and stills continues to exercise us. More recently it is the work of psychologist Abraham Maslow who is central to the discussion that human experience ought to be about more than simply having the means to survive. Writing in the 1950s, Maslow developed what has become known as ‘Maslow’s hierarchy of needs’. This notion is usually expressed diagrammatically in the form of a pyramid. At the base of the pyramid, the pyramid’s widest part, Maslow places the basic needs human beings have, those that must be met in order for them simply to survive, for example, food, drink, shelter, warmth, and so on. As we move up the pyramid and the pyramid narrows, then the needs identified by Maslow move through the need to be safe, to belong, be loved and have friends, through to esteem needs. At the very top of the pyramid is what Maslow calls ‘self-actualization’, or personal growth and fulfilment. The notion of the pyramid is particularly powerful, since it also represents how, as we move ‘up’ the pyramid from basic needs to self-actualization, the access to the goods or conditions we need to help us achieve self-actualization becomes narrower, or more restricted (Plummer, 2005: 18). Some have questioned that in order to live human beings need to be self-actualized at all. However, while the need for food and drink is self-evident in terms of survival, Maslow argues that self-actualization is also crucial to the flourishing of the individual and to society in general. Self-actualization is about how the individual sees themselves, and what ‘the person sees’ will enable or prevent not only their own flourishing but how they will function in relation to others (Freiberg, 1999: 4).

Therefore, in seeking to distribute societal advantages and benefits we are not only concerned with a minimum level of existence, but also with what individuals need, overall, to thrive. Human flourishing is not only about the basics needed to survive, it is also influenced by an individual’s access to an education which enables enjoyment and achievement, including enjoying a sense of personal safety, being able to contribute to the community and having the means to achieve personal and long-term economic well-being; indeed, all the outcomes of the Every Child Matters agenda.

The welfare state

In Britain there has long been a concern for how best to provide the conditions for everyone to flourish. In effect the roots of social justice, although called by another name, can be found in laws that date from the seventeenth century. Laws that state how the poor are to be provided for, or ‘Poor Laws’, first appeared in 1598 (Social Policy in the UK, 2008). Further Poor Laws, for example that of 1601, placed the duty on church parishes to levy a ‘compulsory poor rate’, ensure the appointment of ‘“overseers” of relief’ and ensure that there was provision for ‘setting the poor on work’ (Social Policy in the UK, 2008), all of which are principles we recognize as still being part of the current welfare system.

The mechanisms by which we currently seek to achieve universal flourishing, and that, in part it is the government’s responsibility to ensure this happens, began to emerge in the 1940s (Lund, 2002: 1). In 1942 the idea of what has become the welfare state was first outlined in the Beveridge Report (Lund, 2002: 107) and from 1948 onward began to take the shape we recognize now such that we now expect the welfare state to provide the following:

• social security (money for those who are currently unemployed or unable to work);
• free health care at the point of need;
• affordable housing for all;
• free education; and
• other free welfare services for children (Lund, 2002: 107; Social Policy in the UK, 2008).

These ideas began to be explored at the end of the nineteenth century, mainly through the influence of a group that became known as the ‘British Idealists’ (Boucher, 1998: 83; Lund, 2002: 1). Over time, their exploration of how goods should be shared and, in particular, provided for those who seem not to have ready access to enough goods to flourish, has formed the principles of subsequent governments’ welfare policies (Lund, 2002). What is new about using the ECM agenda to tackle theses issues, compared with other government welfare polices, is that while it is recognized that it may be necessary, in some instances, to give goods to children and families, the longterm objective is that, through education and other multi-agency support, children and families can develop their own capacities to provide these goods for themselves. That is, with the appropriate initial support, children will grow up with the skills, knowledge and understanding of how to:

• maintain their own health – through adopting a healthy lifestyle;
• keep themselves safe – in the broadest sense;
• achieve economic well-being and contribute to the community.

Importantly for all who work or intend to work with children and their families, in Early Years settings or schools, central to the success of the ECM agenda is that children enjoy learning and achieve in their learning across all phases of education, from the very early years onwards, since this is where the foundations for long-term well-being and the achievement of all the outcomes are set.

Traditionally, in British politics these notions of welfare policy and social justice have seemed to sit more comfortably in the socialist, or ‘left-wing’, tenets of welfare policy principles, where ‘socialism is perhaps the ancestor’ (Boucher, 1998: 255) of these ideas. Indeed the ECM agenda is a Labour government policy. However, social justice is now seen as an integral principle of both main political parties’ welfare policies and this was signalled in 2005 by the Conservative Party when they too pledged their commitment to pursuing welfare through the principles of social justice. In a press release they acknowledged that their approach to dealing with the ‘causes and consequences of poverty in Britain’ would be through measures that ‘empower the least well-off to climb the ladder from poverty to wealth’ and that this would be through an approach that applied the principles of ‘social justice’ (BBC, 2005b).

Life-chances

What continues to exercise those concerned with social justice is that, despite these seemingly considerable advances in providing equal access to the goods discussed, we still live in a society that has families living in poverty, and for some families this seems to happen generation after generation. In understanding why this continues to happen, we need to...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Acknowledgements
• About the author
• Key for icons
• Introduction
• 1 Every Child Matters and the social justice agenda
• 2 The child in society
• 3 Families
• 4 Being healthy
• 5 Staying safe
• 6 Enjoying and achieving
• 7 Making a positive contribution
• 8 Achieving economic well-being
• Conclusion
• Glossary
• Bibliography
• Index