Andrew Dickens Afternoons

There’s times I start wondering why anybody tries to do anything to help people these days when it seems that people are no longer able to help themselves.So this morning I’m reading about the nations before school check programme.When every child in the country turns four they are offered a check up which can help identify health, behavioural, social or developmental issues, such as a hearing problem, which could affect learning. The aim is to help those children access health and learning support.About 55,000 children will be covered this year at a cost of more than $10 million.That sounds good.  But after a review called Welcome to School, there are concerns that the programme isn’t working and in fact making things worse.So how on earth can anyone stuff up a health check. One example given was the eye test. There had been a misunderstanding about what checks covered. Schools thought that the test was a comprehensive one but in fact it was just checking for lazy eye.  So then we have kids at school with vi