The Youth Crisis in Nottingham
Nottingham is a 'young city' demographically - particularly in the adolescent and early adult age band - but this group is made up, in turn, by two very different sub categories. There are the high flyers who Nottingham's elite wishes to make a focus for its development strategy - the 'smart kids' at the two universities who they hope will stay, making Nottingham a 'vibrant' European leader in science, technology and culture. And then there are the other young people - the people who were mostly born and bred here by parents who have lived in Nottingham for generations - very often to unemployed parents - young people whose grandparents used to work in Nottingham's manufacturing industries. And it is creating a future for these young people that represent the biggest political problem that the city's elite are trying to deal with.
There is a youth crisis in Nottingham - and how! In the most disadvantaged areas of Nottingham the young people are caught in a series of vicious circles that add up to a virtual disintegration in the community and social structure. Parents who have lost the structure to their lives because of long term unemployment when the manufacturing industries and the pits closed, and whose poverty is preventing the organisation of decent life styles, are sending their children to school at 5 years old with poor communication skills, no socialisation and massive behavioural problems.
Like everywhere else Nottingham's schools are differentiated into those for the middle classes and schools for the rest and the crisis in the low income estates has accentuated this process. In the disadvantaged estates the limited social mix makes it virtually impossible to create any culture conducive to aspirations and learning, something about which a lot of parents are completely indifferent.
The result is a very low achievement rate in Nottingham's schools compared to national averages - for example so that there is just no way in which the young people leaving them are going to be able to participate in high tech 'vibrant' economy of the future emphasised by the city's elite. (Except in tiny numbers as car park attenders, cleaners and caretakers). In the context of low educational achievement and little chance of getting a decent job, teenage pregnancy rates in Nottingham are particularly high (360 conceptions a year among young women under 18 in latest counts). In this devil's brew of misery, youth offending, vandalism and anti social behaviour rates are particularly high and it is not surprising that, in the words of a city council document 'Nottingham has been targeted by drug dealers as an easy target'. Caught in this downward spiral the next stage of the process of social decomposition is the development of gangs and gun crime, addiction - and prostitution to pay for drugs.
What hits the headlines and gets attention in all of this are the young people who misbehave. What does not receive the same amount of attention, often enough, are their victims - the bullied and traumatised children, the children whose classes and lessons are disrupted. In St Anns there is also now a high rate of suicide among young people - plus many people are so stressed out by where they live that they are ending up on psychiatric wards - and unfortunately it has to be said that the psychiatric wards are less places of asylum than they ever were, given the way the city's brutality and misery has washed into them.
Unfortunately this is not all. As has been highlighted in recent days in national level publicity there is also a serious problem with young people's diets in the city. Within two weeks two long standing teachers - in primary and at a seconday education - have talked to me about how the poor diet of children is affecting their physical and, possibly their emotional health. Schools now sell cans of unhealthy fizzy sugar drinks and are under pressure to do so to raise money. How parents no longer have the skills to cook ? it being taken off the curriculum by Thatcher to make way for technology in the 1980s (e.g. How would you design a pizza box!) and of small children coming to school with 'packed lunches' from their parents consisting of a packet of biscuits one day and two packets of crisps the next.
As if to prove that these anecdotes are not isolated exceptions, but reflect a generally grim picture, a survey by the Nottingham Food Initiatives Group of the packed lunches brought to school by children in the city confirmed the worst fears about a high proportion of the food being high sugar and high fat based. 77% of the children had a packed lunch without any portions of fruit and vegetables at all in them. (Verbal report presented at the FIG General Meeting on 27th May at the International Community Centre).
Part of the reason for this diet is actually that children are unhappy and are comfort eating. According to an article in the Independent on Sunday of 14th September last year scientists found a biological mechanism that shows the body craves sugary and high fat foods because it helps block the effects of stress. However, the consequences are not just obesity and long run health problems, there are good reasons to believe that the high sugar/fat food and drink, replete together with additives like caffeine, contributes to concentration problems and hyperactivity and thus hinders learning and impacts on behaviour. Thus, research carried out at Reading University found that children who miss out on proper breakfasts in favour of sugary snacks end up with the reaction times of pensioners. Nine to 16 year olds performed better at mental tasks after a traditionalo breakfast. Those who took the tests a few hours after having fizzy drinks or chocolates reacted at the level of a 70 year old, affecting their schoolwork. (BBC News Online 21/8/03) Caffeine and sugar laced drinks may also contribute to dehydration and throught that, again, reduction in the quality of concentration.
Of course, the city's managers are increasingly aware of the issues and are seeking to address them in their own way - through a plethora of multi agency policies, strategies and meetings, together with endless case conferences about individuals. Increasingly the operational idea is of 'extended schools' in which not only education, but a host of other services and influences are brought to bear upon young people, including mental health services, education about diet and healthy eating and so on. Many of these efforts are having positive effects - e.g. The much praised free fruit programme for the youngest primary school children has effected children's diets - as well as influencing their parents and is now taken up by all the primary schools in the city. Another programme is seeking to get children to simply drink more water (what a sad testimony to our society that people do not realise they are thirsty!).
However, for the schools to be able to deliver this extended range of services it is not quite as simple as packing more and more into the school - teachers ideally need to be able to have greater flexibility and time to adapt cultivate better person to person relationships with pupils and need be trusted to adapt curriculum to the specific needs of their pupils. In large part, however, they do not now have this flexibility. Over the last few years the regime has changed to put more and more emphasis on testing and performance pressure in certain key subjects. This has stressed schools and stressed the teacher-pupil relationship. It means that teachers have much less the time to relax with their pupils and simply spend time enjoying each others company, as on old fashion school outings. They dare not overlook the fact that individuals might be day dreaming at the back of the classroom now and then and are having to drive all the time so that children themselves are stressed. The high stress school is a place where many children are highly alienated.
Above all children are expected to perform academically in the core subjects English and Maths - which will supposedly open to them a gateway to higher education and from there onwards the job opportunities of the post modern information society. But extra pressure is conterproductive on the less academically able young people. Measuring themselves using the new regime of Best Value Performance Indicators the Nottingham Local Education Authority is seeking to raise standards. There is some movement, but, set the targets it has to be said, not very much. Much was recently made of the improvements of in the % of 15 year olds in city schools who achieved 5 or more GCSEs at A* - C level. This went up from a very low 30.30% in 2001/2 to 35.1% in 2003/4. But, as is often the case with statistics it depends which statistic you choose to look at. The % of 15 year olds receiving grades A - G including English and maths actually fell from 72.9% in 02/03 to 70.2% in 03/04 ? and compared to a target of 82%.
Moreover, there are issues of what produced the changes in the higher figures - it doesn't follow that a rising indicator like this represents better academic achievement. For example, some of the children in the city attend county council schools, across the city boundraries. These are sometimes better than those in the city and take more middle class children. If the city can stop more able middle class children crossing the boundaries, then it will retain the more able children that bring in the higher results.
In regard to the crime crisis there seems no evidence at all that the situation is getting any better. The figures speak for themselves (although not all of these are committed by young people of course). The latest available statistics, produced for a March report to the city, include an estimate for the last quarter - but they show no improvement over last year, they show increases. Violent crimes per 1,000 population 02/03 - 37.3. The projected estimate for 03/04 is much higher at 50.52. Burglaries per 1,000 households 02/03 - 64.5. Projected figures for 04/05 - 67.04%. Only vehicle crimes per 1,000 appear to have reduced slightly - for 02/03 it was 50.88 and for 03/04 it is estimated that it will be 50.52%.
A lot of young people grow up with the gut feeling that they have no satisfactory future in the job market - in so far as their expectations for their own future are inevitably influenced by the experience of their parents. For them the local Mr Big drug dealer provides a more exciting role model than the teacher and professionals from the health service at the local school. Without a real prospect of employment, which is also necessary to stabilize the lives of their parents, there is little prospect of preventing the vicious circle of influences that are driving towards disintegration.
In particular there is a real danger of expecting too much from the city's neighbourhood workers. At the recent One City Partnership Meeting a heavy emphasis was put on the crime prevention agenda that has been put together under the slogan 'Respect for Nottingham'.
As I have said in the article 'Green Nottingham' on the Nottingham Social Forum web site 'A friend of mine, who started teaching in the Players School, on the Broxtowe estate in the mid 1970s, tells me how, at that time, the National Coal Board would recruit a third of the male school leavers and Raleighs, the bike maker, another third. The textile industry would take a large proportion of the young women. Players did not have a reputation for academic achievement but the young people leaving school were seen as reliable workers. Thirty years ago the parents and grandparents of the young people in Nottingham's crisis zones were mostly employed. There was still a factory and manufacturing sector - Raleighs, Boots, Players, Plesseys, the textile and hosiery industries as well as the coal mines - all provided substantial manual unskilled, semi skilled and skilled work.' These jobs and the structure that they provided to the lives of communities have now gone and the youth crisis, a reflection of a deeper crisis in community life in general, cannot be solved without putting back non office based practical work on a routine basis to give meaning, structure and dignity to the communities.
How this might be done is the subject of another article - see the article, also on ths web site, about Nottingham's economy and the fuel crisis. Handled in the right way a fuel crisis could conceivably be a blessing in disguise - because it will compel a fundamental restructuring of the economy towards energy saving in the food and household economy - which has a potential to provide new lifestyles, inclusive of more manual work - and a very different kinds of future to today's young people in an economy that puts more and more emphasis on sustainability. Unfortunately, there is little sign that the politicians understand the policy package that they would have to adopt to meet an energy crisis in a way that is perceived as fair and that generates more jobs - and the state of community decomposition in the estates may simply be too far gone.
© BRIAN DAVEY