Tristram Hunt: Four-year-olds arriving at school unable to speak because parents don't get on 'all fours' and play with them
Labour's education spokesman: 'Parents haven't been sitting down on all fours and sitting down an intereacting with their children'
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Your support makes all the difference.Four-year-olds are arriving at school unable to speak because their parents do not get down on "all fours" and play with them at home, Labour's education spokesman Tristram Hunt has said.
Mr Hunt, speaking at the National Association of Head Teachers' conference in Liverpool, said: "When you talk to headteachers, one of the big issues is the delayed and under-developed speaking and listening skills of children that come through play and talking to children."
He told the conference: "Parents haven't been sitting down on all fours and sitting down an intereacting with their children.
"I am struck by how often headteachers say this (pupils' communication skills) has got markedly worse over the last decade."
He added: "Whether that's the influence that TV and smart phones and ipads have, whether it is poverty, both parents working and not enough time or whether it's about the failure to understand the importance of this, I'm not sure."
He criticised the Coalition Government for presiding over the closure of Sure Start centres - where parents could go with pre-school children and learn parenting skills. He said that 750 had already closed and a further 1,000 would go if the Coalition returned to office. "That would be the end of it," he said.
Labour would halt the closure but he acknowledged there was unlikely to be enough money to re-open any of those already closed.
He added that there was a need for a "bully pulpit" approach - stressing the need for parents to spend more time communicating with their children.
Mr Hunt also told heads he would argue for more pay for teachers to over the recruitment crisis facing the profession - but was not convinced he would win against the Treasury.
"I can deliver on (improving) workload, I can deliver on conditions but I can'y yet deliver on the pay packages you would like to see," he said
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