BC Business Council says lack of school readiness is a major economic disaster.

The BC Business Council highlighted the lack of school readiness as one of the major economic issues of our time. Virginia Green, the person I heard on the radio talking about this, said that when children are not ready to learn they miss out on their education and then find it difficult to get good jobs and contribute to the economy of the Province.

It makes sense. If teachers have to spend time helping children develop the basic skills they need to help them learn they are going to be spending less time on actually teaching them what they need to learn.

What I don’t altogether agree with is that the problem is caused mainly by parents not being able to spend time with their children because, in the present economy, both parents need to work full time to make ends meet. I know that finding time to spend with their children is a problem for some parents but I think that an even greater problem is that parents are not sure of their role in helping their children get ready to learn.

Too often parents try to help their children develop school-type learning rather than the basic readiness skills children need, readiness skills such as language, confidence, and curiosity.

Why do parents do this?

My research pointed to are several reasons:

1. Parents tend to value ‘school learning’ over ‘home learning’
2. They do not understand the special role they play in helping children learn
3. They do not have the information they need to be able to help their children develop these skills.

So, although making sure that parents spend more time with their children does not necessarily mean that the same children will be ready to learn when they start school.

Parents need to know what to do in the time they have with their child, how to lead their child to learning (now you know where my business name came from!)

If you want to know more check out my articles, click on the blue Ezine logo on the left to access them.