Ken Robinson says under-achievement among Low-Income Families is being ignored, as selection grabs the headlines
Ken Robinson MLA, Ulster Unionist Assembly Member for East Antrim, a member of the Assembly’s Education Committee and a former Headmaster, today described the latest figures from Save the Children and the Joseph Rowntree Foundation as “sobering.”
The report said that children in disadvantaged areas were turning away from school as early as age nine.
“The problem of negative attitudes towards school and education sets these children on a road to disadvantage for the rest of their lives. Disadvantage is a self-perpetuating experience. Negative attitudes to education lead to disadvantage and that in turn leads to more negative attitudes towards education. Somehow, we are going to have to break this inter-generational cycle of deprivation.”
“One aspect of this issue worries me. That is the view that this is just inner-city deprivation. It is well beyond the bounds of the inner cities. It also effects the big re-housing estates in the towns around Belfast – in Antrim, Newtownabbey, Lisburn and elsewhere. There is also the problem of rural poverty and low educational expectations and job prospects in isolated rural communities.”
“There is, I believe, a very significant loss of talent to our overall community from our failure to adequately address these related problems. One of the biggest challenges facing the Assembly is how we deal with this underachievement. So many educational headlines are grabbed by the Grammar School and selection issues, that this problem of low attainment and low achievement and its persistence in areas of high unemployment and low incomes is being missed.”