At the risk of sounding like a turkey voting for Christmas, I would like to make an argument that the funding priorities we have for our children and young people are both woefully inadequate - and completely the wrong way around.

At the tertiary stage, when school-leavers have already made a conscious decision to further their own education - and will earn on average around £200,000 more than their counterparts without degrees over the course of their lifetimes - public expenditure for their university courses is around £9,000 or £10,000 a year per student. Meanwhile, at secondary school, the spend is around £6,500, decreasing to just under £5,000 at primary and a mere £1,700 for day care for three- and four-year-olds. In healthcare, the figures are similar, with far more being spent on the final days of a citizen’s life than on their first 1,000 days.

There is a very powerful argument for turning this situation on its head, as evidenced by Alan Sinclair, founder and former chief executive of the Wise Group in last year’s Postcards from Scotland publication Right from the Start (see also “Am I going to be hugged or ignored?”, a piece he wrote for tes.com in March - bit.ly/TesSinclair).

Drawing on 10 years of research from both the UK and overseas into what can be done to ensure positive outcomes for our young people, Sinclair puts forward a plan for making much better use of public expenditure, hand in hand with a fundamental change in how we look after our children. There are inherent lessons for the education system as a whole. And while I would hate to argue for a cut in my school’s already diminishing funding, in the long term, the only way out of our current malaise may be some fundamental change.

The argument is powerful. In the most robust study on child wellbeing, carried out by the charity Unicef, Scotland, along with the rest of the UK, ranks 16th out of 29 of the world’s most advanced countries.

More than one in four Scottish children start primary school designated as vulnerable in terms of physical health or mental wellbeing, emotional maturity, language or cognitive ability or social competence. Many of these children have multiple vulnerabilities and have been traumatised in some way by their family or the society into which they were born. As they go through life, they are more likely to be disruptive in school and to have poor attainment. Later on, they are more likely to be affected by mental and physical health problems, alcohol and drug abuse, and to be unemployed or end up in prison.

How is it that we have lost our way so badly in how we, as a nation, bring up our children? And why is it that other countries not so very different from our own can do things differently? The Netherlands, for instance, is at the top of the Unicef list, and it places much more emphasis on pre- and post-birth childcare, reaping the positive benefits as babies grow into young people and on into adulthood.

Following a high degree of prenatal care through midwives and local wellbeing clinics, many Dutch mothers give birth to their children at home (although the hospital option is always available). But it is over the first few days of life that the most remarkable care takes place.

Almost immediately after the birth, a maternity care assistant, called a “kraamzorg”, arrives to help with breastfeeding, nappy-changing and assisting with older children while the mother rests and sleeps. Visitors will be fed by the kraamzorg, who will also go shopping to ensure minimal discomfort for the family in the days following the birth, as well as maximum bonding for the mother and her baby.

Paying down the sleep debt

The supportive environment continues as the baby grows. The work-life balance enjoyed by the Dutch is something those working in education in Scotland can only dream about. If a parent - mother or father - has childcare commitments, they will leave work early and nobody will ask any questions. A quarter of all men and three-quarters of women work part-time to enable them to devote more time to their children.

Studies show that this works - on average, for instance, Dutch babies get two hours more sleep a night than babies in the US. Those of us with children will know full well that this also means two more precious hours of sleep a night for parents. When thinking back on the past 16 years of my own child-focused sleep deprivation, I can only imagine the difference this might have made to my stress levels.

Would it be possible to do the same in Scotland? I look at the kids in my school, many living in areas of multiple deprivation, and I see confident young people who can talk about their skills and attributes and, in many different ways, show compassion to their peers and to children younger than they are. However, I know that many of them go home to chaotic lives, and have been brought up in single-parent families or families where one parent has a succession of different partners. Some lack a male or female role model and have rarely seen how appropriate relationships work.

Attendance and lateness are issues because teenagers are fending for themselves at home, while parents are absent early in the morning because they may have two or three low-paid jobs, leading to unsociable working hours.

Other issues relating to poverty, including young carers’ duties and paper-thin walls in cold and damp houses, not to mention domestic violence and noise, lead to interrupted sleep - all adding to the toxic mix.

But the problems do not lie only within the schools in Scottish Index of Multiple Deprivation (SIMD) 1, 2 and 3 catchment areas. In previous jobs, in both leafy rural schools and in the private sector, I have seen children suffering similar levels of abandonment, with the issues disguised by general affluence. Absent parents with successful and demanding careers in banking, finance, law and business compensate for their lack of time at home with after-school care and money furnished to their children for school trips and going out with friends.

Again, the role models are missing and, above all, the nurture that children require in the first few years of their lives. For those living in poverty, the future for a significant number will be poor mental health, lives filled with violence, alcoholism, obesity and unemployment. For those neglected in affluence, there may be a lack of connection with society and community - and little empathy for those less fortunate than themselves.

Sinclair puts forward an agenda for change that has one end in mind: to build a country where each and every child has a real chance of a decent life. Everything stems from a change in the way we pay for the help our children need.

The economic benefits of doing so are easy to see, with statistics showing a higher rate of return over an average lifetime for investment in prenatal programmes than anything else, closely followed by programmes targeted towards the early years. Post-school and employment-based training rank among the lowest of all and, although these programmes are highly necessary, the need for huge investment in them reduces if we get things right much earlier in life.

From crisis point to turning point

Achieving the right balance will require fundamental change. The first step is to recognise we have a national parenting crisis and that the timescale for change will be measured in decades rather than normal political cycles. As schools, we can look at the way we talk about pre-conception - possibly from primary school age - with help from outside agencies including charities and the NHS.

More support is needed, too, for mothers and fathers with new babies, perhaps along the lines of the Dutch kraamzorgs. Sinclair has calculated that such a simple change would cost only £12 million a year if made available for the one in four most at-risk families in Scotland. Later on, with childcare for toddlers, the Netherlands, Germany and other European countries have a more highly trained and highly paid workforce than we do, running day-care centres and providing help and constructive feedback to parents.

The Scottish government has been active in its commitment to improving child wellbeing in a time of austerity and reducing budgets. But there is still more to do (especially by parents) to give our children the future they deserve. The recognition that things cannot continue as they are is growing. But it will require a high level of political will, coupled with a realisation by society as a whole that things can be better, in order to start the change. Schools can play a role - but there is so much more that needs to happen.

John Rutter is head at Inverness High School

This article originally appeared in the 5 July 2019 issue under the headline “Begin at the beginning”