children | ukwatch.net

Report: UK children's rights systematically violated

Tim Holmes — Wed, 11 Jun 2008 19:04:12 +0000

You can hardly have failed to notice that the children’s commissioners for England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland have combined forces in a joint report to the United Nations to condemn the treatment of children in the United Kingdom. But you may not have taken on board their central message, and you very likely missed an equally significant report last week on the effects of poverty on education and social mobility in the UK.

The point of this unprecedented initiative is to insist that children have human rights, separate from the family, and that their rights are being systematically abused. The commissioners have presented a dossier of human rights abuses of British children in violation of the UN Convention of the Rights of the Child (UNCRC) that, in the words of the Guardian report (Monday, 9 June) have “denied hope and opportunity to many of Britain’s 14 million children and adolescents”.

The report is to the UN committee set up to review compliance with the Convention; in its last review of the UK, in 2002, the Committee found “serious violations” of the Convention. An additional report from the Children’s Rights Alliance for England, a coalition of more than 100 civil society organisations, says that the government has passed 30 laws that breach the Convention since then.

The biggest complaints centre on the punitive juvenile justice system and public attitudes that demonise adolescents. But there is a deeper-lying cause for complaint and concern. At a Sutton Trust conference on social mobility in New York last week Ed Miliband, the Cabinet Office minister, and UK educationists, heard the results of a massive study of children born in the UK and US in 2000 and 2001. The study found that the damaging effect of being in a low-income home was more pronounced in the UK than in the US and that “there is a stronger income differential in the UK than in the US,” meaning that (as a US academic told the conference) “there are more behavioural problems among low-income children in the UK”, and that the transition from home to school was harder, especially for boys. (The gap between the UK and the US would be even wider were it not for Britain’s childcare provision.)

Meanwhile, the Department of Work and Pensions is said to be releasing figures on Tuesday (10 June) that show that the government is nowhere near meeting the target of halving child poverty by 2010; and that 200,000 more children fell into poverty in 2005-06, measured after housing costs.

For me these reports reinforce the need for us in Britain to press for a “rights-based democracy”. The UNCRC provides for a five-yearly review of the rights of children in the UK. The UN Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights similarly involves a five-yearly review of such rights here. Britain has signed up to both these UN instruments without taking seriously the commitments that they entail. Neither of course is written into UK law; and there is no domestic equivalent.

If Gordon Brown’s pledge to consult on a Bill of Rights and Responsibilities is to command any credibility, then he must rescind his ban on consideration of economic, social and cultural rights in any consultations that may yet occur. Not that much good would come of it. Brown made a great fuss about consulting on the extension of detention without charge, but he and his Home Secretary have set that process and all informed opinion aside in a blind and obstinate offensive that is now reduced to arm-twisting Labour MPs and apparently concluding dirty deals with the Ulster Unionists.

One of the Labour whips’ argument is said to be that Labour MPs who vote against 42 days could put David Miliband in No. 10. Well, I don’t know about that, but I have very reluctantly come to the conclusion that Gordon Brown is no more fit to be there than his immediate predecessor.

Few Safeguards for Asylum-Seeking Children

Ellie Keen — Wed, 30 Apr 2008 22:23:01 +0000

An investigation by 11 Million, the organisation led by the Children's Commissioner, found that children's basic needs for food, accommodation and legal advice were often not met. The report suggested that ignoring these basic needs impacted upon children's ability to understand and contribute to their screening interviews.

Most unaccompanied child asylum seekers are trafficked or smuggled into the UK and therefore do not claim asylum at the border. The report assessed how children were treated when they presented themselves at the Asylum Screening Unit in Croydon.

One of the greatest concerns regarded the issue of establishing age. Observers from 11 Million found that too much discretion was given to immigration officers in deciding age-disputed cases. Establishing an applicant's age is critical for deciding whether he/she should be provided with accommodation and accompanied by a 'responsible adult' during interviews. While policy mandates that children at asylum screening units are entitled to a 'responsible adult' to guide them through the screening process, no such protection exists for age-disputed applicants, even though their age is undecided.

The report also highlighted other problems detrimental to children's well-being. In the screening units there is a separate waiting room for children but no food is available and no signs for where food or toilets can be found. The 11 Million observers found that children were unlikely to ask for food in such an intimidating, formal environment and that their hunger would negatively impact upon their screening interviews. The observers found that the whole process was too long for children, particularly when they had the added anxiety about where they would be accommodated that night and where they could get food from.

The 11 Million observers found that no written policy exists on how staff should conduct interviews with children, which results in inconsistencies and excessively long interviews. There were also problems found with the content of those interviews. Screening interviews are only intended to establish the applicants' identity and how they made their way to the UK; it should not involve questions on asylum claims. However, in one case, observed by an 11 Million employee, an applicant was asked eighteen questions about his asylum claim without the benefit of prior legal advice. This information can then be used in deciding an applicant's asylum claim.

The report which described the current process as 'frightening, confusing [and] intimidating' recommended that children's immediate needs for food, accommodation, cleanliness and legal representation should be prioritised before the lengthy process begins.

Download a copy of Claiming asylum at a screening unit as an unaccompanied child by the Children's Commissioner for England, (pdf file, 480kb)

Police want Children Routinely put on DNA Database

Ellie Keen — Sat, 29 Mar 2008 17:30:00 +0000

Britain’s police want to routinely put children as young as five on the National DNA Database (NDNAD), even when no crime has been committed.

Gary Pugh, the DNA spokesman for the Association of Chief Police Officers (ACPO) and director of forensic sciences at Scotland Yard, recently told the press, “The number of unsolved crimes says we are not sampling enough of the right people.”

According to Pugh, who was interviewed by the Observer, “If we have a primary means of identifying people before they offend, then in the long-term the benefits of targeting younger people are extremely large.”

Pugh’s words are a sinister echo of the film Minority Report, in which a specialist “pre-crime” police department routinely arrests people who have not committed any offence.

Describing it as a “step towards a police state,” National Primary Headteachers’ Association representative Chris Davis said it was tantamount to condemning children “at a very young age for something they have not yet done. They may have the potential to do something, but we all have the potential to do things. To label children at that stage and put them on a register is going too far.”

Action on Rights for Children and GeneWatch, a not-for-profit group that monitors developments in genetic technologies, have produced evidence to show that by March 2009, some 1.5 million children aged 10-17 will be recorded on the National DNA Database, a figure they say is far higher than admitted by government.

The organisations estimate that at least 1.1 million children have already had their DNA recorded between 1995 (when the NDNAD was established) and April 2007, with more than half a million being aged between 10 and 16.

Helen Wallace from GeneWatch said, “Unless there are exceptional circumstances, the police should not keep records of people, including 100,000 under 18s, who have been found not guilty or have had the charges dropped.”

Terri Dowty from Action on Rights for Children said, “These children will be on the database for the rest of their lives. We are turning thousands of innocent children into lifelong suspects. No other country in Europe criminalises children at such a young age.

“The Home Office has shown repeated reluctance to release figures for children on the DNA database, presumably realising how shocked the public would be,” Dowty said.

Mass genetic surveillance

Pugh’s call for the routine sampling of DNA from children as young as five is only the latest in a number of statements by senior police officers and judges advocating the extension of powers to take and keep DNA samples from wholly innocent individuals, setting up a system of mass genetic surveillance.

Following two recent high-profile murder convictions where the culprits had been implicated by DNA found at the scene, calls were again made to establish a national DNA register containing samples from everyone in the UK. Last year, one of Britain’s most senior judges, Lord Justice Sedley, also called for DNA records to be kept on all UK residents.

The government has not ruled out such a move, merely saying that it would raise “significant practical and ethical issues.”

Last year, the Home Office launched a consultation to examine the possible expansion of the DNA database to cover all those arrested, even for such minor offences as begging or speeding. According to the Observer, a Home Office document initiating the consultation had promoted the merits of massively expanding the database.

Home Office Minister Meg Hiller told the home affairs select committee in February that information on the identity register, which will underpin new biometric passports and the ID cards soon to be routinely issued, would be shared with authorities in the European Union and United States “in specific cases.”

And at a recent pan-European conference on serious organised crime, London’s Metropolitan Police Commissioner, Sir Ian Blair, said DNA records should be extended throughout the EU.

Roger Smith, director of human rights organisation Justice, said granting police the power to compel samples without having to show reasonable suspicion was “a substantial and unwarranted intrusion on the rights of personal privacy.” He called for a return to the position prior to 1995, when police were only allowed to keep the samples of those convicted.

Under legislation introduced in 2001 and 2004, the Labour government has considerably extended police powers to take and keep DNA samples from anyone arrested on suspicion of having committed a “recordable offence.” This includes any offence punishable by imprisonment, but also extends to relatively minor offences such as tampering with a motor vehicle, poaching and drunkenness.

Under the 2004 legislation, police can take a DNA sample from any person arrested aged 10 or more, in the case of a child, without the parent’s consent.

This legislation currently only applies to those arrested in England and Wales. In Scotland, which has a different judicial system, most samples are destroyed if the person is not charged or is later acquitted. However, senior Scottish police officers are lobbying hard for similar powers to their English and Welsh counterparts.

The UK now has the world’s largest DNA database, containing information on at least 4.5 million individuals, equivalent to some 7 percent of the population. According to the Parliamentary Office of Science and Technology, only 1.13 percent of the population in the EU have their DNA documented, with records being held on just 0.5 percent in the US.

In what constitutes a major breech of civil liberties—overturning the fundamental legal norm of the presumption of innocence—records can be kept indefinitely on NDNAD even if a person is never formally charged, or is later acquitted of the offence for which he or she was arrested.

The call for DNA samples to be routinely taken from those below the age of 18 continues a major escalation in the process of criminalising children ongoing since Labour came to power in 1997.

Labour’s 1998 Crime and Disorder Act reduced the age of criminal responsibility from 14 to 10. The act also introduced so-called ASBOs—Anti Social Behaviour Orders—a measure that has been largely aimed against young people. It means that once an ASBO has been granted, which can be for relatively minor misdemeanours or behaviour that is causing a nuisance, breaching the ASBO can result in a criminal record.

There is also strong evidence to show that such routine recording of DNA samples unfairly discriminates against individuals from ethnic minorities. According to Black Mental Health UK, black people are three time more likely to have their DNA recorded than white people.

The organisation says government figures show that 77 percent of young black men will soon have their details held on NDNAD, “despite evidence that black people are no more likely to have committed a crime than white people.”

Shami Chakrabarti, director of civil liberties group Liberty said establishing a DNA database for everyone in the UK “ignores the extremely intimate nature of DNA and the massive scope for error and abuse” — one report has revealed that serious flaws have been found in the data, with up to 14 percent of the entries being duplicates, stored under different names.

Such concerns are well founded in light of recent scandals in which government computer disks have been lost containing millions of sensitive personal records—in one case affecting 25 million people, covering 7.25 million families overall—including names, dates of birth, and bank and address details.

Legal Challenge

The European Court of Human Rights heard a case at the end of February in which two innocent people are seeking to have their records removed from the National DNA Database.

Legal representatives for the two—40-year-old Michael Marper and a youth named only as “S”—argue that retention of such records for innocent people is a breach of Articles 8 (respect for the privacy of the individual) and 14 (prohibiting discrimination) of the European Convention on Human Rights.

In both cases, the police have refused to destroy fingerprints and DNA records taken when the two individuals, one only a teenager, were originally arrested. The police subsequently dropped the case against Marper, while the youth “S” was acquitted.

It is thought that NDNAD could hold the records of up to 1 million innocent people, with GeneWatch estimating that up to 10 percent of these could be from children—records that would have to be destroyed should the legal challenge succeed.

In February, the Economist magazine reported a Home Office spokesperson saying that innocent people “have nothing to fear from providing a sample,” since retaining such evidence was “no different from recording other forms of information such as photographs and witness statements.”

However, DNA provides a wide range of other information about an individual, such as their parentage, or a susceptibility to particular diseases or disabilities. Some insurance companies have already raised the possibility of introducing “genetic screening” as a means of lowering premium charges since the information could be used to deny cover for individuals with certain genetic markers.

The body operating the NDNAD, the Forensic Science Service, a government-owned company, is a prime candidate for privatisation, which could open up the use of the database for purely commercial purposes.

It also allows an almost unlimited possibility of police frame-ups.

The thread-bare argument that if people have “nothing to hide, they have nothing to fear” is clearly not borne out by the record of Labour. The governments of Tony Blair and Gordon Brown have trampled on long-standing democratic and legal norms, constantly eroding the rights of the individual in favour of the right of the state to monitor and control its citizens.

It fucks you up, your country.

JamieSW — Fri, 14 Mar 2008 20:43:46 +0000

Every now and again, the government has a policy review about how it will deal with the national childhood problem. There are a range of themes taken up, but the basic problem is that they are violent, clubbish, bestial and need to be controlled. Britain is, as studies have shown, a particularly harsh place for children to live in. New Labour, representing a virulently authoritarian version of neoliberal social-democracy (if that's possible), proposes a combination of modest poverty-reduction strategies (which fail, both in the specific goal, and in the intended effect), curfews, control orders, ASBOs, hoodie bans, stop and search mechanisms, and more detention. Blair wanted to spy on potential 'problem families' (apparently identifiable through the warning signs of track suits, tatoos, Lambert & Butler cigarettes and an insufficiently appreciative attitude toward the government). The heavily punitive accent of government policy is supported by a culture of child-hating, which is ironic given the late capitalist infantilization of adults (in which capital tries to convert us into impulsive, needy, irrational consumers, cultivating nonsensical enthusiasms so that we part with our money more quickly). A direct corollary of the sentimentality about ickle children is the incredible amount of aggression toward the young in popular culture, especially as they reach their adolescent years, and especially if they're working class. Behind the scenes, if you like, this aggression more frequently takes the form of child abuse by parents than one might think. For example, a study in the UK found that 11% of boys and 21% of girls experienced some form of child abuse. I would have thought that most of this is emotional abuse or neglect, which is horrendous enough, but the study found that when it is narrowed to 'contact' abuse (sexual or physical), 16% of women and 7% of men said that they had experienced this kind of abuse. Obviously, this is not simply an unpleasantness that one can 'walk off' and 'get over'. It exacts a long term psychological toll - shrinking the hippocampus, which deals with emotional responses, and producing abnormal levels of cortisol, which deals with fight or flight responses - and the younger it happens the more severe the effects. Beyond the family, it is also expressed in the other institutions in which a child might be raised: foster care, obviously, and penal custody. On average, two children died in penal custody every year since 1990, and a controversy has recently erupted over the officially sanctioned abuse of children known euphemistically as 'restraint'.

The 'Children's Commissioner' has become an easy target for rightist polemic after he criticised the use of painful 'restraints' in custodial institution, which are designed to control behaviour with the application of pain. He spoke of the rights of children, and he lamented some of the authoritarian measures used by the government. Melanie Phillips blustered in the Daily Mail: Children's rights? What about the rights of those who live in fear of young thugs? This was only a particularly forceful version of the raised media heckles of 'dimwit', 'who-does-he-think-he-is', 'waste-of-taxpayers-money', 'we'll-smack-our-kids-if-we-want-to', and so on. (These people do get terribly exercised about their inherent right to beat their children. When a smacking ban was first proposed, they went absolutely bonkers. The comedian Jack Dee, by contrast, suggested that it was a good idea to stop beating kids, but "maybe we should stop fucking them first"). For this particular persuasion, children have only one right: the right to remain silent. Here is one 'young thug' who won't be around to bother the nice people. A fourteen year old boy, who suffered enormous trauma due to deaths in his family, experienced emotional turmoil, and was locked up for 'behaviour difficulties' after allegedly wounding a man. He survived a month in his prison until he was violently 'restrained' by officers, who broke his nose, leaving him terrified, as well as sickened and depressed: he hung himself. But that's just one example. There was also Joseph Scholes, a mentally unwell young man given to self-harm, who was imprisoned for a minor street crime, despite multiple expert witnesses telling the judge that the boy would kill himself if he was put in that kind of environment. Of course, even those witnesses couldn't have known that he would be forced to wear a loose garment resembling a horse blanket, and demeaned and driven to his death within a week. Then there is Gareth Paul Myatt, who died four days into a one year sentence at a 'training centre' run by Group 4 following an 'incident'. Shortly after that death, the government announced £16m for more child prisons.

Now these examples are not incidental. Gordon Brown's twee catchphrase is that "children are 40% of the population, but 100% of the future". We can either collectively vomit over this phrase or try to extract some literal truth from it (or both). The truth is that fucked up children make for fucked up adults. Brutalising children is not going to produce a nation of well-adapted citizens. The clinical psychologist Oliver James points out that one of the most alarming statistics of recent years is the discovery that 90% of the prison population was in some way mentally unwell. As he further elaborates, the causes of this are not rooted in the poor genetic stock of the working class, who are vastly over-represented in all penal institutions. Far more often, it is the result of a particular kind of nurture experienced especially but not exclusively in the first three to six years of childhood. You raise a kid in a comfortable bourgeois home with lots of attention, you get a comfortable bourgeois person. You raise a kid in a strict, authoritarian home with parents trying to break his will through the application of regular violence (tough love) all for his own good, you get a young fascist. You raise a kid in a chaotic household with episodic, rather than structured, violence and abuse, you get manipulative people with poor consciences prone to acting out physical or sexual violence. You raise a kid in a tough working class household with a survivalist mentality and regular insecurity, you get Monty Python's bragging Yorkshiremen. Sorry, I've lost my thread, where was I ...? Oh yes. To extend the logic, suppose you raise children in a cruel, aggressive country with: violent, manipulative, sanctimonious hypocrites in charge; a virulent ethos of social competitiveness saturating the culture; underfunded schools with over-worked teachers and kids bored or stressed through banal lessons and routine examination; few and degraded amenities and hostile over-policing in the remaining public spaces such as shopping centres; violent 'control' of children encouraged on the one hand, with violence exalted in the culture as a means of empowerment on the other; with manifest injustice coupled with powerlessness to do anything about it; and so on. Violence, neglect, hypocrisy, wilful manipulation, insecurity, competition as the sole source of self-esteem, abuse, injustice, indifference - it's a recipe for disaster. Yet the program appears to be more of the same: cut benefits, close facilities, install CCTV, impose stricter discipline in schools, toughen policing, lock more kids up in violent penal institutions, threaten their parents with benefit-cuts if they bunk off school, intensify social competition through more testing - and now, on top of it all, Lord Goldsmith wants kids to swear allegiance to the Queen so that they'll feel more British! If Goldsmith epitomises 'Britishness', then our elusive national 'values' can now be summarised as naked corruption, criminality, careerism, arms dealing, warmongering and a facade of blustering pomposity.

Of course, I would be the first to admit that children are awful people. Having a sensible conversation with anyone under nine years old is almost impossible, and they are as a rule unbelievably tactless. The smaller they are, the less they know about anything. As Randy Newman once sang about rednecks, they don't know their ass from a hole in the ground. On the other hand, most population groups have flaws, especially those in the armed forces, and I wouldn't wish the amount of crap kids go through on them either.

Iraq: teachers told to rewrite history

JamieSW — Fri, 14 Mar 2008 13:36:33 +0000

Britain's biggest teachers' union has accused the Ministry of Defence of breaking the law over a lesson plan drawn up to teach pupils about the Iraq war. The National Union of Teachers claims it breaches the 1996 Education Act, which aims to ensure all political issues are treated in a balanced way.

Teachers will threaten to boycott military involvement in schools at the union's annual conference next weekend, claiming the lesson plan is a "propaganda" exercise and makes no mention of any civilian casualties as a result of the war.

They believe the instructions, designed for use during classroom discussions in general studies or personal, social and health education (PSE) lessons, are arguably an attempt to rewrite the history of the Iraq invasion just as the world prepares to mark its fifth anniversary.

Steve Sinnott, the general secretary of the NUT, said: "This isn't an attack on the military – nothing of the sort. I know they've done valuable work in establishing peace in some countries. It is an attack on practices that we cannot condone in schools. It is a question of whether you present fair and balanced views or put forward prejudice and propaganda to youngsters."

At the heart of the union's concern is a lesson plan commissioned by an organisation called Kids Connections for the Ministry of Defence aimed at stimulating classroom debate about the Iraq war.

In a "Students' Worksheet" which accompanies the lesson plan, it stresses the "reconstruction" of Iraq, noting that 5,000 schools and 20 hospitals have been rebuilt. But there is no mention of civilian casualties.

In the "Teacher Notes" section, it talks about how the "invasion was necessary to allow the opportunity to remove Saddam Hussein" but it fails to mention the lack of United Nations backing for the war. The notes also use the American spelling of "program".

Addressing whether the MoD should be providing materials for schools, Mr Sinnott said that he did not object, as long as the material was accurate, presented responsibly and contained a balanced view of opinions.

The union has protested to the Schools Secretary, Ed Balls, who has referred the complaint to the MoD. In a letter to Mr Balls, Mr Sinnott said: "I have to say that were the MoD pack to be distributed and followed without the legally required 'balanced presentation of opposing views' there would, in my view, be very serious risk of a finding of non-compliance with section 406 (of the 1996 Education Act) at least.

"I do not doubt that there would be many members of this union who would not accept as 'fact' the assertions made particularly in the Teacher Notes, nor, I think, could some of the assertions made in the Student Worksheet be regarded as non-controversial."

Mr Sinnott reminded Mr Balls that a High Court judge had ruled that the film An Inconvenient Truth, by the Oscar-winning former American vice-president Al Gore, could not be used in schools without teachers counteracting some of the assertions made in it.

Mr Balls sought to distance himself from supporting the material.

He said: "I am sure you are aware my department does not promote or endorse specific resources or methods of teaching for use in schools but I appreciate you drawing this to my attention." Mr Balls added that he had instructed his officials "to take this matter up" with the MoD.

A spokesman for the MoD said the ministry had consulted with interested parties over the proposed lesson plan in order to ensure it had the support of the education community. "We did ask the Stop The War coalition to take part although it refused."

The spokesman added that the programme was "a set of web-based resources" whose use was "completely voluntary".

"We have consulted widely with teachers and students during the development of these products and feedback from schools has been extremely encouraging," he added.

"Teachers and students found them to be valuable and fun resources for applied learning.

"They are designed to support teachers in delivering a whole range of subjects across the national curriculum and its equivalents in Scotland and Wales.

"We are happy to engage with the NUT and we will be writing to them."

Union members say they are also worried that armed forces recruitment fairs in schools glamorise the job by citing exotic countries that recruits will visit but fail to mention that they may be required to kill people.

According to an independent assessment of the MoD's recruitment material by the Joseph Rowntree Trust, however, the material concerned was "very dubious". The trust said it had used misleading marketing with advertising campaigns that "glamorise warfare, omit vital information and fail to point out the risks and responsibilities associated with a forces career".

Mr Sinnott said: "On their recruitment material, it tells what an exotic lifestyle this can be, but it doesn't mention that being in the military involves killing people. These things don't feature as they should in a proper, balanced view of what it is like being in the armed forces."

What the MoD's guide says... and what it omits

* "Iraq was invaded early 2003 by a United States coalition. Twenty-nine other countries, including the UK, also provided troops... Iraq had not abandoned its nuclear and chemical weapons development program". After the first Gulf War, "Iraq did not honour the cease-fire agreement by surrendering weapons of mass destruction..."

The reality: The WMD allegation, central to the case for war, proved to be bogus. David Kay, appointed by the Bush administration to search for such weapons after the invasion, found no evidence of a serious programme or stockpiling of WMDs. The "coalition of the willing" was the rather grand title of a rag-tag group of countries which included Eritrea, El Salvador and Macedonia.

* "The invasion was also necessary to allow the opportunity to remove Saddam, an oppressive dictator, from power, and bring democracy to Iraq".

The reality: Regime change was not the reason given in the run-up to the invasion – the US and UK governments had been advised it would be against international law. Saddam was regarded as an ally of the West while he was carrying out some of the worst of his atrocities. As for democracy, elections were held in Iraq during the occupation and have led to a sectarian Shia government. Attempts by the US to persuade the government to be more inclusive towards minorities have failed.

* "Over 7,000 British troops remain in Iraq... to contribute to reconstruction, training Iraqi security forces... They continue to fight against a strong militant Iraqi insurgency."

The reality: The number of British troops in Iraq is now under 5,000. They withdrew from their last base inside Basra city in September and are now confined to the airport where they do not take part in direct combat operations.

* "The cost of UK military operations in Iraq for 2005/06 was £958m."

The reality: The cost of military operations in Iraq has risen by 72 per cent in the past 12 months and the estimated cost for this year is £1.648bn. The House of Commons defence committee said it was "surprised" by the amount of money needed considering the slowing down of the tempo of operations.

* "Over 312,000 Iraqi security forces have been trained and equipped (Police, Army and Navy)."

The reality: The Iraqi security forces have been accused, among others by the American military, of running death squads targeting Sunnis. In Basra, the police became heavily infiltrated by Shia militias and British troops had to carry out several operations against them. On one occasion British troops had to smash their way into a police station to rescue two UK special forces soldiers who had been seized by the police.

* "A total of 132 UK military personnel have been killed in Iraq."

The reality: The figure is 175 since the invasion of 2003. A British airman died in a rocket attack at the airport two weeks ago despite British troops not going into Basra city on operations. Conservative estimates of the number of Iraqi civilians killed since the beginning of the invasion stand at around 85,000.

* "From hospitals to schools to wastewater treatment plants, the presence of coalition troops is aiding the reconstruction of post-Saddam Iraq."

The reality: Five years after "liberation", Baghdad still only has a few hours of intermittent power a day. Children are kidnapped from schools for ransom and families of patients undergoing surgery at hospitals are advised to buy and bring in blood from sellers who congregate outside.

Budget Defeat Over Child Poverty

JamieSW — Thu, 13 Mar 2008 19:07:51 +0000

In 1999 the Government said it would halve child poverty by 2010 - taking 1.7m children out of poverty. To date it has missed its targets and only removed 600,000 children from poverty. In the pre-budget briefings pouring out of Number 10 and the Treasury we were all led to believe that the Chancellor would make a major announcement today to get the Government back on course to meet its target.

Instead, the Chancellor has admitted defeat in the war against child poverty and has confirmed that the Government will not meet its 2010 target - and will leave over 2.5m children still living in poverty in the fifth richest countries in the world.

The measures announced today will only remove at most a further 250,000 children from poverty by 2010. Some of the media and other agencies have grasped at this straw argung that at least the Government's budget proposals aren't as bad as some thought they would be . But on analysis the situation is even more disappointing. In calculating child poverty the Government has massaged the figures by removing housing costs from the calculation. If these costs are put back the real assessment of child poverty confirms that in fact 3.5 million children will remain in poverty in our society. The TUC has rightfully expressed the deep disappointment of the trade union movement at the failure of the Government to prioritise effective action against child poverty.

At the same time the Chancellor has done virtually nothing to tackle the unfairness of our tax system. Big business benefits from the lowest corporation tax in this country in decades, which is to be cut further on 1st April. Proposals to tackle the scandal of non doms, some of whom are paying less tax than their servants, have been watered down and there are no measures to address the £97 to £150 billions the Treasury now admits to losing each year from tax avoidance.

If after eleven years in office, a Labour Government cannot meet such a basic aim of lifting our children out of poverty, many will judge this period of government as the greatest missed opportunity in the history of the Labour party. There is a growing feeling that the Government is running out of both time and ideas.

How Not to Bore the Pants off Kids

JamieSW — Mon, 10 Mar 2008 21:24:39 +0000

Over the last ten years or so, the government has brought a regime into schools that has battened down on teachers to teach reading and writing in a way that bores teachers and bores kids.

What’s more, evidence has come out over the last few months that it doesn’t work.

The government has reduced the whole exciting, entertaining, uplifting world of books to what they call “literacy”.

Then they created a testing system which narrows this down to a set of questions about the so-called facts of stories and poems which emphasise the idea that the best a child can do with a story is to get its logic and order right.

The results of the tests (SATs) are published so a school’s worth is measured against the school’s SATs results.

The consequence of this is that schools are teaching to the SATs. When teachers look at stories and poems, they immediately start asking the children SATs-type questions – spot the adjectives in this poem, what happened next in the story, and so on.

Teachers are forced to spend less time reading and enjoying stories and poems and more time reading parts of stories and asking children “fact” questions.

This is a disastrous way to treat books and reading. Books are about ideas and feelings. We read in order to find out what it would feel like to be in this or that situation. We explore other people’s way of thinking and we look and how they and the society changes.

Reading small extracts from books, followed closely by “fact” questions, misses all this.

The government has introduced something else that detracts from what books are for – one hour a day, compulsory synthetic phonics teaching for all children between the ages of four and six.

This is to ensure, they say, that every child gets hold of what they call “the alphabetic principle” – showing children that letters correspond to the sounds we make with our mouths.

The problem with this is that English spelling is not regular. Many combinations of letters produce different sounds and a single sound we might make, can be spelt in several different ways (think of ‘ee’ in ‘sleep’, ‘ea’ in ‘lead’ and ‘ei’ in ‘receive’).

This means that synthetic phonics will never be enough to teach reading. We need other systems to learn how to read, such as learning whole words (known as “look and say”) and the only way we get the hang of that is reading from context, that’s to say, reading the words from understanding the meaning of the sentence, the paragraph and the story. The meaning is vital.

What follows is that we have to spend a great deal of time, thought and energy in working out how to make the meaning of what children read exciting, interesting and fun.

And here we have the key to it all. If we want children to read, we have to work out how to make book-loving schools and book-loving homes.

This means rethinking the whole matter of reading and writing. Schools should have the money to employ trained librarians and home-school reading liaison staff to work with parents on finding and reading interesting books.

Schools need time, advice and money helping teachers to get in the most exciting and interesting books and exploring the most interesting ways of reading them.

We need to dispense with the futile system of asking children questions that teachers already know the answers to.

Instead, we need to set up a space where we invite children to ask the people in a story questions that puzzle them and where other children can pretend to be those characters and try to answer the questions.

Books can also be seen as starting points for putting on shows, creating art, dance, music, film and

powerpoint displays. The work that children write shouldn’t be shut away in scrappy little exercise books but should be published and performed.

This way a connection is made in the children’s minds between the world of literature and their own ability to write.

The crazy thing is that we knew all this thirty years ago, but successive governments have got away with rubbishing it all. They even created the perfect democratic, professional structure (called Language in the National Curriculum, or LINC) where teachers, researchers and advisers came together to work out and publish the best kinds of classroom practice.

It started to become so successful (and threatening to their top-down, dictatorial methods) the government of the day scrapped it.

We need to fight for a return to the ways of LINC. This way teachers can research their own practice, share it with others and grow professionally as they work, rather than carry on with the present mind-numbing method of teaching by numbers.

And this is how reading and writing about our ideas and feelings can be put back at the heart of education.

Just as socialists fight for the right of people everywhere to be without war, poverty, exploitation and injustice, so we must fight for people of all ages to be able to express ourselves through what we read and write.

Government Targets Child Asylum Seekers

Ellie Keen — Sun, 24 Feb 2008 16:16:08 +0000

Under the guise of “more compassionate treatment for children,” the Home Office Border and Immigration Agency is tightening up procedures to forcibly remove an extremely vulnerable group of children to their countries of origin.

Proposals outlined in its document, “Better Outcomes: The Way Forward Improving the Care for Unaccompanied Asylum Seeker Children [UASC],” are the outcome of a period of consultation with key agencies such as children’s charities, health and Local Authorities. In spite of concerns raised by these organisations, the Home Office seems determined to step up the persecution of these vulnerable children in order to satisfy its policy objective of scapegoating asylum seekers and refugees for all of society’s ills.

Currently, approximately 3,000 children a year arrive in Britain seeking asylum. Many come from war-torn areas, including Iraq and Afghanistan. They travel long journeys to arrive in Britain, are often beaten on the way, and do not know where they are going to end up.

The proposals are a fundamental reform of the way UASC are supported and managed. Currently, their rights are safeguarded by existing children’s legislation, which treats an unaccompanied child under the age of 18 the same as a Looked After Child—with the appropriate Local Authority having a duty of care until they are at least 18 years old and often beyond. UASC are currently given exceptional leave to remain (ELR) until they reach this age.

One of the proposals is for the responsibility for funding UASC care leavers currently carried out by the Department for Children, Schools and Families (DCSF) to move to the Home Office, thus increasing the economic pressure on UASC to return to their country of origin or “disappear.”

The Home Office claims this will make it easier “to safeguard children at the same time as managing the immigration system effectively.” It is concerned that too many young people disappear when their claim to remain is refused once they are 18.

The new proposals seek to centralise the dispersal of UASC, who often arrive at the key airports and ports in the South-East of England, and send them for care in regional centres in designated Local Authorities. Alongside this will be a more rigourous approach to age assessment that is currently carried out by each Local Authority. A child will be screened at a unit before being sent to one of the Local Authorities. One of the most contentious aspects of this proposal is the use of dental records in determining age, which has not been ruled out.

On the basis that this will keep children safe from harm, the Home Office also argues for better procedures for identifying and supporting UASC who are victims of trafficking. The document uses the issue of trafficking to tighten up legislation by arguing that “we need to recognise as a rule the needs of children are best served by being with their families.” Not once does the document pose the question as to why families would risk sending their children across to the other side of the world if they did not face profound problems and hardships.

The document assumes that the children who arrive unaccompanied do so in an “organised fashion.” Some are brought as “relatives” and then left somewhere where they know they will be cared for. Others travel in the backs of lorries, not knowing which countries they are travelling through and losing siblings on the way. For many of these children, contact with families cannot be maintained due to the precarious nature of their personal circumstances.

This point was underscored by Donna Covey, chief executive of the Refugee Council, who said, “We’re pleased the Home Office has recognised that it needs to improve the way they safeguard and protect these children. However, we have serious concerns about some of the proposals outlined, and we oppose government plans to forcibly return children to their country of origin. The government should not try to force any child to return against their wishes where their safety and welfare cannot be guaranteed.”

Covet continued, “Any way forward has to reflect the experiences of these children; some are trafficked, some have been politically active, some have been the victims of violence, including torture and sexual violence. These are not children who come here seeking a better life, with their families waiting for them in peaceful homes. Many of them are children from war zones.

“While we recognise age assessment procedures need to be improved, it is clear from the consultation responses and subsequent work that x-rays are not going to be the answer. We hope that further consultation will lead to this idea being dropped altogether.”

Syd Bolton from the Medical Foundation for the Care of Victims of Torture said in response to the proposals, “Children’s experiences of torture and serious harm take time and expertise to explore and explain. They need to come to terms with their traumatic pasts whilst at the same time struggling in their present lives with a complex and often inadequate legal and welfare situation.

“The only way in which tortured and seriously harmed children and young people have any chance to recover psychologically is through care systems and decision-making processes which emphasise their long term welfare and best interests, not an approach which fits with a hard line immigration control message.”

Recent research by the children’s charity Barnardo’s has found that an estimated 100,000 vulnerable children are condemned to a childhood of poverty, uncertainty and fear after being caught up in a UK asylum backlog that may not be cleared until 2011. This appalling situation is being cynically used by the government and the Home Office to introduce legislation that will intensify the inhuman practices already being carried out against the most vulnerable sections of society.

Generation ID: lessons in kiddyprinting

JamieSW — Tue, 15 Jan 2008 20:02:09 +0000

The innocuous term ‘kiddyprinting’ refers to the controversial practice of routinely fingerprinting schoolchildren. Many parents are unaware of it because they have not been asked for their explicit consent, or in many cases even notified that it is taking place.

There are no official figures for how many schools in England use some form of biometric identification system. Terri Dowty, director of Action on Rights for Children (ARCH), claims ‘thousands certainly. But local authorities aren’t keeping any records.’

Fingerprint templates do not count as sensitive data in the UK, she says, and so controls are limited. It was only after years of pressure from ARCH and, more recently, the Leave Them Kids Alone campaign that non-statutory guidance on the use of fingerprints was issued to schools in July 2007. Campaigners are far from satisfied and a House of Commons early day motion has been tabled calling for a full debate.

But isn’t this alarmist when the fingerprints are only being used for library, catering and registration systems? Dowty argues that behind the issue of biometrics there is the question of what kind of information the databases themselves are storing: ‘School canteen systems are storing information on each child’s individual school meal choices and library book reports are being generated that break down by ethnicity, age and gender what a child has been reading. This is a terrible intrusion.’

There is also a security risk: ‘Manufacturers say that they’re encrypting the fingerprints so the systems are secure but they won’t guarantee them beyond ten years. And that’s because with the developments in technology, in ten years’ time the landscape will be unrecognisable. We are entering a stage where biometrics are becoming increasingly important for security-critical functions and if there does come a time when it’s easy to reconstruct fingerprints where you have access to accompanying personal data, it will be a bonanza for anyone who wants to forge identities.’

Helping the police

Jim Knight, the minister for schools and learning, also said this summer that the police could help themselves to the children’s fingerprints if they are trying to solve a crime – regardless of whether they have ever previously been in trouble with the law. Dowty says it is turning us from a nation of free citizens into a nation of suspects: ‘Why should we have our fingerprints or DNA stored if we have done nothing wrong?’

The Criminal Justice Act 2003 gave the police new powers to retain DNA samples of anyone arrested for a recordable offence. As a result of increasing numbers of children being picked up for low-level offences and then routinely DNA-sampled, Dowty estimates that samples from close to one million children are now on the National DNA Database. According to Home Office figures, between 33,000 and 82,000 of these have never been convicted or even reprimanded. Going by Youth Justice Board arrest statistics, Dowty believes the figure is probably at the higher end of this range.

In addition to the principle of routine DNA sampling, Dowty is also concerned about how reliable it is in practice. She says that people don’t realise how often mistakes are made with DNA samples, especially with techniques such as low copy number (LCN) DNA testing, where forensics try to generate a DNA sample from one cell. Far from being the infallible test of popular understanding, the FBI and others have, since 2001, urged caution when using LCN DNA sampling as a forensic technique.

Database Central

In an effort to predict which children will become delinquent the government now wants to collect children’s data in a central trilogy of databases containing medical information, school results, social work case notes and records from other public services.

First, ContactPoint is an index of every child in the UK from 0-18 years. Second, the Electronic Common Assessment Framework (eCAF) will serve as an in-depth profiling mechanism; it is, in Dowty’s opinion, ‘the most intrusive personal assessment tool’. And third, there’s the Integrated Children’s System (ICS), holding the social care records of each child.

Dowty argues that: ‘Because we’re so penny pinching we’ve developed this secondary prevention, which identifies all children from deprived areas as potential criminals and of course stigmatises the child completely.’ She sees these surveillance techniques as just a technical fix for the real problems and dangers facing children, and believes they mask the chronic shortage of child protection social workers.

‘In most areas there is something like a 20 per cent vacancy rate for child and family social workers and in some closer to 50 per cent,’ she says. ‘What we’ve never done is tackle this shortage and look at why so many are leaving the profession. We also have this obsession with managerialism and targets. We’re pretending that people with social care problems are susceptible to a production line approach – and they’re not. It’s actually a very dangerous approach.’

Dowty believes the government must be prevented from going any further. ‘We must start enforcing laws on consent. It’s something parliament hasn’t looked at since 1969 and it is time we had a review. That’ll be a start,’ she says.

Further reading:

- Action on Rights for Children: www.arch-ed.org

- Leave Them Kids Alone: www.leavethemkidsalone.com

- The advisory council of the Foundation for Information Policy Research (FIPR) has conducted a report on ‘Children’s Databases – Safety and Privacy’, downloadable from www.ico.gov.uk

Forget the Stereotypes:

Ellie Keen — Mon, 24 Dec 2007 00:44:22 +0000

...Teen crime is a plea for help

The figures are rising – 26 teenagers have been murdered in London this year. For me, a 19-year-old female, it causes sadness, anger and unease. I'm not scared of walking out my front door and being gunned down but it does worry me that many teenagers wouldn't hesitate to do just that, regardless of how minor the motive may be. A momentary look, an accidental shove, a minor disagreement, your postcode.

I spent the first 11 years of my life in Manor House, not too far from where the recent Stoke Newington murders took place – the shooting of 17-year-old Etem Celebi and the stabbing of 16-year-old David Nowak. After moving to another area, I kept in touch with people whom I had met at school and in the area, meeting up whenever I could without my parents catching me out. After all, my parents moved out of Manor House to make sure my younger brother and I grew up in a slightly better area.

By the time I turned 14, I fell into the typical route of teenage rebellion: skipping school, incredibly heated clashes with my parents, anything I shouldn't really be doing. If my group ever got into a dispute outside of our circle, it was not due to some stereotypical gang mentality of wanting to gain status. It was simply about supporting your friend. Friends are the family you choose. For inner-city teens, it's about a sense of belonging – something that isn't present in all family environments.

With my friends I'd experiment with drugs, be present when dealings took place and then go home to my family and get on with whatever coursework I had to complete for school. In many ways it was like leading a double life.

As part of this group I witnessed my friends being beaten up by other teens and vice versa. I wouldn't frequently start fights, but if someone tried to make me look stupid or inferior to them I would try and counter that. I never witnessed anyone use a knife or gun but I knew that a couple of the boys usually carried some sort of weapon, usually a blade.

During my first year of A-levels, I decided that I'd had enough. Not in some dramatic Hollywood way but because I was lucky enough to realise that what I was becoming increasingly involved in would not end positively. My "us against the world" mentality weakened. I broke off all contact with my former friends after a violent falling-out with a girl whom I had known for about nine years.

Pride is very important to teens. She didn't understand where I was coming from; her belief that I considered myself better than them justified physical fights and the threat of being raped by her drug-dealing boyfriend. I knew they were serious in their threats but I would never admit or show any fear.

There is more pressure placed on teens today than ever before: family, school, friends, money, looking and acting a certain way. I could go on. There are too many teenagers today who feel they have no option but to fall into a life of gangs or crime. Unfortunately media glorification of such individuals fuels the "get rich or die trying" mentality. Others are driven by fear.

We can't tackle this ever-increasing problem by alienating teenagers. What we need is a voice to bridge the differences that divide us from our elders. Teen crime is almost always a plea for help.

Possibly the scariest thing is that knives and guns are no longer being carried for protection but in order to feel significant and gain repute. Yet these youths are a minority. We're not all gang members from rough backgrounds with attitude problems. The majority of us want to do well in life. It's just a shame so many of us are getting lost along the way.

Children’s Plan...

Ellie Keen — Mon, 24 Dec 2007 00:35:10 +0000

Gordon Brown’s scheme ducks the key questions

The “Children’s Plan” is a bold attempt by Gordon Brown’s allies to present a new child-friendly image. It will take time to digest it properly, since it contains hundreds of proposals, ranging from positive but token measures to others which are suspect and downright harmful.

This article can only highlight a few of the issues it raises.

In the report the government has been forced to admit to some of its widely publicised failings (see “Labour: Failing the Test” below). But even here the tone minimises the extent of the problem. The plan coyly states that “some children, often from disadvantaged backgrounds, are still underachieving”.

It also attempts to win back the support of parents who are sick of their children being treated as part of an endless efficiency drive. Government policy has been dominated by this “conveyor belt” approach to schooling.

In the plan there is, at long last, a greater emphasis on play. One measure it suggests is improving play for the early years of primary schooling.

But the concrete proposals are limited. For example the plan proposes 30 new adventure playgrounds in disadvantaged areas – spread across the whole of England. At that rate, cities the size of Liverpool or Bristol might look forward to one each.

Targets

The government’s obsession with target-setting is not over. Obesity will be reduced – to the level of the year 2000. Hardly ambitious.

“Child poverty will be eliminated by 2020.” In other words, a whole generation will have grown up in misery since New Labour first took power in 1997 – a generation of lives ruined and hopes destroyed (see Growing gap between ‘leafy suburbs’ and ‘estates’).

The government will spend £8 million a year on a scheme to give individual help to children struggling with writing. That will only provide about 200 extra teachers across the whole of England.

Changes in testing are proposed, but these will not necessarily improve things. The plan is to replace testing at ages seven and 11 with tests “when the child is ready”, as is already the case in Scotland.

In practice, this can mean children being tested every year to see who can jump the next hurdle. Since teachers are still to be judged by test results, and there is no proposal to end performance related pay, the same pressures will remain. So will teaching to the test.

A review of primary education is promised – even though one is already under way, commissioned just a few months ago. The findings of that review are damning of Labour’s policies, so the government has decided to start a different one.

Skills

The plan argues for more time to be spent on literacy and numeracy – already about half the timetable. Other subjects will get “more flexibility” – maybe a euphemism for “will largely disappear”. This is part of an extended process of reducing primary education to a narrow version of “basic skills” to meet employers’ demands.

The same neo-liberal strategy of reducing education to work training is also being pursued in secondary schools. We are told that every secondary school will have a university or business partner. We could ask whose schools will have university partners? And how much influence will the business “partners” have? Will they be like academy sponsors, able to choose the staff and dictate the curriculum?

Finally, this plan sees individual teachers as both the problem and the potential solution. For instance, the report says that teachers who are not “effective” can be “helped to leave the profession”.

Altogether too many questions for comfort. Will those who see education minister Ed Balls as Santa Claus end up thinking they’ve found the white witch instead? Will our children and grandchildren step through Uncle Gordon’s wardrobe into New Narnia, only to find it’s always winter and never Christmas?

Labour: failing the test

This has been a year of bad news for a government obsessed with targets.

It began with Unicef, the United Nation’s children’s organisation, placing Britain at the “bottom of the class” in a survey of young people’s happiness and welfare across 21 industrialised nations.

Our children were growing up “unhealthy” and “unhappy”. Labour’s obsession with testing was partly to blame.

One of the report’s authors sited underinvestment and a “dog eat dog” society.

The year ends with international tests showing Britain tumbling down the league table for school achievement.

It is almost impossible to compare countries fairly, so these “league tables” should be treated with a pinch of salt. But they have worried Labour politicians and advisers. These reports and other recent research insists that poverty is a root cause of underachievement.

"Dog Eat Dog" Society Damns Children

JamieSW — Thu, 20 Dec 2007 21:03:38 +0000

Yet another ‘new plan’ by New Labour was unveiled on December 11. The function of this particular review is to try and square the circle between the supposed devotion of the New Labour to ‘education, education, education’ and the ranking of the UK in world league tables: 18th for reading, and one from bottom at 24th for maths.

What cannot be disguised is that a perilous slippage in standards, down from 3rd in reading for instance has occurred over the ten years of New Labour management. So how will the proposals such as ‘texting a parent if a child dosen’t turn up at lessons’, or ‘bringing foreign language lessons’, (when one in five currently leave primary school semi-literate) or more information for ‘parents using the internet’ help when the elephant in the sitting room is invariably ignored.

An utterly damning Unicef report nine months ago found that Britain was failing its children and youth. The Unicef study put the UK at the bottom of a league table for child well-being amongst 21 industrialised countries. NHS records show that there were for instance 4,241 attempted suicides by children under 14 in the 12 months up to March 2007. Take into account the rise in gang culture and the murders of a further 26 teenagers this year and its easy to see what Unicef is getting at.

The UN children’s organisation examined 40 indicators including poverty, family life, education, health, smoking, drinking, drug-taking, and unsafe sex and teenage pregnancies. Britain was bottom overall below Poland, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Austria, and the United States. It propped up the table for family relationships and risky behaviour and came 18th out of 21 for poverty, 17th for education and 12 for health. Predictably Ministers sought to play down the findings, saying much of the data used was several years old.

But this is a line devoid of a shred of credibility unless standards could be shown to have climbed dramatically in the interim. If anything, with 200,000 children joining those living in poverty last year the situation is arguably getting worse.

Professor Jonathan Bradshaw, from York University, one of the reports author’s pinned the blame on the UK’s dismal ratings on long-term under-investment, that has resulted in a “dog eat dog society”. He said: “In a society which is very unequal, with high levels of poverty it leads to what children think about themselves and their lives. That’s really what’s at the heart of this.”

Class divisions in the UK are just as wide as they were 30 years ago, according to new research.

They are so stark, according to the report, that a three-year-old child from a poor home who shines in tests is likely to be overtaken by a low-performing child from a rich background by the age of seven.

The report by the Sutton Trust, the education charity set up by Sir Peter Lampl, says social mobility in the UK remains at the low level set in 1970 – when the country was bottom of an international league table. Only the United States amongst Western democracies is on a par with the UK.

It adds that children born today face "stark inequalities", with 44 per cent of young people from the richest fifth of the population going on to university, compared with only 10 per cent of those from the fifth of the population living in the poorest households.

It also says that the expansion of higher education has – almost exclusively – been achieved by increasing the number of well-off students from middle-class or rich families going to university.

Indeed, the proportion of children from the poorest-income homes dropped from 11 per cent to 10 per cent between the early 1990s and 2002 – while those from the richest groups rose by four percentage points.

Sir Peter described the report's findings as "shameful" and called for an independent inquiry into how to break down class barriers. "It is appalling that young people's life chances are still so tied to the fortunes of their parents and that this situation has not improved over the past three decades."

Or putting it another way; inequality of income, leads to inequality in opportunity resulting in inequality in outcome. Social mobility in the UK fell sharply between 1958 and 1970, according to the report, and has stagnated ever since.