Almost 30 per cent of four and five-year-olds lack the early literacy skills expected of them DOMINIC LIPINSKI/PATackling social immobility in the UK means focusing on early years education and what is going on at home, the education secretary has said. Damian Hinds said all the evidence suggests interventions have to come early in the child’s life and that means focussing more on what parents are doing when their children are very young. “Although it is a difficult area, because nobody wants to be interfering with what happens in the bringing up of children, and rightly so, I find that parents tend to welcome support. Just witness the pile of books that you see in many people’s houses on bringing up children,” he said. In his first major speech on social mobility he pledged to cut by half the number of children…

Source: The Times July 30, 2018 23:27 UTC