Addressing the question 'are social skills taught or caught?', Kathy Sylva, professor of education at the University of Oxford said, 'Because of Government pressures we have, over the last ten years, concentrated on teaching academic skills. In the process we have neglected the social skills side. We have assumed that while we should teach the academic side, children will catch the other side. The point is that they don't. They need to be taught these skills.'
Professor Sylva is a leading researcher on the five-year Department for Education and Employment-funded study, the Effective Provision of Pre-School Education (EPPE) project. She said the study of 3,000 three-to seven-year-olds had so far found that centres offering care and education that were rated as 'excellent' in their academic provision were only 'good to moderate' in the way they taught social skills.
The centres that were most 'brilliant' on the academic front, she said, were most likely to be state nurseries rather than playgroups and private nurseries. But achieving that academic excellence had been at a price.
Professor Sylva said social skills included co-operative work in problem-solving, knowing when and how to act independently, and the ability to resolve conflict. 'A very articulate kind of training is needed so that teachers know how to teach these skills,' she said. 'Yet Government resources in training have been concentrated on the academic side.'
The changing structure of the family could result in children missing out on social skills training entirely, she warned. 'There are more single parents and more parents who work full time now. It is less likely that children are being taught at home, or can even copy social skills. Parents expect schools to do this. It is important, therefore, that they do.'