Imagine a Year 8 science lesson. There’s a toy doll in the classroom that is being used to help students understand brain development in early childhood. The teacher gives the students a scenario: they’re looking after a three-year-old for the afternoon. How should they interact with the child?
To provide context, the teacher explains the role of neuroplasticity (how our experiences affect the structure of our brain). She talks about the ways in which caregivers - not just parents - can foster healthy brain development and how early experiences are linked to health later in life.
It may not sound like typical key stage 3 science, but the researchers behind a new project hope that it soon will be.
The SEEN (Secondary Education around Early Neurodevelopment) programme is a set of three science lessons that aim to teach teenagers how to talk to, and nurture, young children, as part of a wider effort to raise public awareness of how crucial the first few years of life are in shaping the adults we become.
Felicity Gillespie is director of Kindred2, an early years advocacy charity that is behind the programme. She explains why there is a need for this kind of learning in secondary schools.
EYFS: How the early years is crucial for later development
“We have this unassailable body of evidence showing that what goes on in the early years really matters,” she says.
“We know that development at 22 months is a strong predictor of educational attainment at 26 years of age. We know that 40 per cent of the disadvantage gap at GCSE is evident before children even go to school. We know that children with poor vocabulary skills at five years old are four times more likely as adults to have reading difficulties and three times more likely to have mental health problems.”
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Yet she maintains that public awareness of the importance of the early years is incredibly low. She points to a 2020 report from the Royal Foundation, which says that only 24 per cent of people recognise the specific importance of the period from conception to age 5 in securing health and happiness in adulthood.
Add that to findings from Kindred2’s latest school readiness survey, which reveals that 50 per cent of children are not ready developmentally when they enter Reception, and it becomes clear that there is a need. But where do teens fit into all of this?
“Nobody gets taught this stuff,” says Gillespie. “There is nothing in the national curriculum about the way in which human infants develop, the way in which their brains develop, the way in which we have the opportunity to be ready for school, to be developmentally hitting those milestones that are so crucial.”
Preparing the parents of the future
So the charity developed a curriculum unit that would place this knowledge in the learning pathways of “the parents of the future”. The Department of Psychiatry at the University of Oxford was brought on board to do a year-long pilot study headed up by Louise Aukland (a former science teacher with 15 years’ experience).
But what exactly does the unit cover? Lesson one is all about brain development in the early years: how both genes and environment affect brain growth during this time and how neurons make connections as babies have new experiences.
In lesson two, students learn about the crucial role of those caring for babies and young children, and how caregivers’ actions affect brain growth. This is about not just parents but anyone spending time with the baby - grandparents, siblings, careworkers, babysitters. The lesson explores the importance of using “baby talk” (using a singsong voice), exaggerated facial expressions, regular repetition of words and being playful with infants.
The final lesson goes on to look at the data around why brain development is so important in the early years and how it is linked with long-term health outcomes.
Aukland stresses that this final lesson also reassures students that all of this isn’t deterministic and that adolescence is another sensitive time for brain development.
“So if you’ve got a child sitting in the classroom who’s had a particularly difficult first five years of life, they don’t sit there thinking they’re stuck for life. We look at plasticity during adolescence, how this period is an important time for developing brain resilience as well,” she explains.
Inspiring curiosity
A total of 3,722 pupils and 100 members of teaching staff in 29 schools were involved in the pilot.
Surveys revealed that 100 per cent of teachers and 91 per cent of pupils felt that the lessons should be taught to other pupils of a similar age. It also found that after the lessons, 86 per cent of pupils could give a practical example of how to maximise a child’s development through daily activities or play, and that 80 per cent knew that a child’s brain develops fastest in the first five years of life.
“We had an increase in knowledge associated with the importance of brain science in the early years, an increase in awareness of what you can do to interact with a baby or young child in order to support healthy brain growth. There was also a lot of qualitative feedback: we did focus groups with teachers and with students, as well as feedback and evaluation forms,” says Aukland.
“The full qualitative analysis that came back was that the lessons inspire curiosity, that they’re relevant to teachers and to students. A lot of young people may find it difficult to find relevance in the science curriculum, whereas every young person felt this was relevant to them now.”
Aukland sees the impact as being immediate, not just when those Year 8s potentially become parents down the line.
“A lot of the young people [in the pilot] have younger siblings and what amazed me was that about 33 per cent of the young people went home and discussed what they had learned in the lessons with their parents, their family or friends,” she says. “Having been a science teacher for many years, I don’t think many of my students went home and told their family how a plant grows. So that level of 33 per cent was really high for us and really pleasing.”
Ryan Badham, deputy head of science at The Holmesdale School in Kent, taught SEEN lessons to his Year 8 students last year as part of the pilot. He says that a large number of students from the school “go on to work in health and social care and [SEEN] applies quite closely to that. Also, most young people know someone below the age of 5, so it’s a good way to start educating our students about how to best act around, and care for, them”.
As for the future of the unit itself, Badham says that the pilot went down so well at his school that it has kept the lessons this year and will continue to do so. “It’s a good fit because we cover the nervous system in Year 8,” he says.
And, he adds, there has been another benefit to teaching about the brain: “It has helped students to understand a little bit more about the way we try to teach them, the kind of strategies we put in place, working towards their long-term memory to make sure they remember things.”
Right now, Kindred2 is working to roll out the SEEN lessons to as many secondary schools as possible. It sees this as being something for the whole school, not just key stage 3.
“We had Years 7, 8 and 9 do the lessons, but we’ve had some schools try it out in Years 10 and 11. We’ve had a sixth-form group and we’ve had interest from primary schools wanting to try it out for Year 6. This is something that could become part of the whole-school learning journey, from early years to early adulthood,” says Aukland.
As she puts it: “We’re hoping to educate not just the next generation of parents, but a generation of possible carers and community members. It’s this recognition that interacting with children in the first five years of life is a communal and societal responsibility.”
To find out more about SEEN, and download free materials, visit kindredsquared.org.uk/seen-community
