Tuesday 11 December 2007

Children's Plan / Commercialisation of Childhood

If you've seen the news today you can't have escaped noticing that today is the day that the Government unveils its Children's Plan which encompasses it's vision for children's services over the next decade. The plan is very wide-reaching, covering such diverse topics as modernising playgrounds, making more support services available in schools, a review of testing procedures for children and much more.

Click on this link to be taken to a page with links to the Plan itself and a more managable summary version. You may also be interested in a document entitled Children and Young People Today, which contains much of the evidence that forms the basis of the plan and gives an incredibly detailed picture of children in the UK today. Overviews of the plan's contents can also be found in this BBC story and a similar one from The Times, while the Guardian has put together a page of related resources.

A story making the headlines yesterday was the publication by the National Union of Teachers of Growing Up in a Material World. This is a charter on the commercialisation of childhood, and is the result of a consultation exercise which asked children and parents how they felt about exposure to advertising for products aimed at young consumers, and the consequences that this could have.

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