Building Core Strength
It is important to determine where teachers, leaders, parents and carers might begin. Over the last five years it has become increasingly apparent among the 100,000 targeted children and young people engaged in Achievement for All programmes that the common starting point for the majority is the need to build core strength.
Core strength can be described in this context as the confidence and ability to learn, develop and participate in society. Children and young people experiencing disadvantage and underachievement lack confidence, find learning challenging, develop differently and have limited participation in society.
Underlying factors, or needs, may be cognitive, physical, emotional or social; each manifest in a fundamental lack of progress of the child or young person when compared to their peers.
Causality is often misinterpreted as a diagnosis rooted in a deficit model i.e. children and young people defined by ‘they can’t do this because they have a problem’, which leads to labelling, low expectations, and a rhetoric of failure. Yet Achievement for All has demonstrably proven in many different contexts and settings that ‘they can succeed’.
Meaningful change in society will only occur if we invest in all children and young people. This means finding what is great inside them, digging it out and sharing it with the world not judging or classifying them in a negligent manner.