Utterly damning report in @thetimes today about the growing unpreparedness of children entering reception. These aren’t rounding errors: almost a quarter of children begin lacking basic capabilities and habits, like toilet training, language or social skills, and coping independently. First of all, the smoking gun here is almost certainly a smoking phone. Apps, screens, and doomscrolling provides an easy, lazy simulation of childcare, but is really a pacifier for the growing mind, learning nothing, thinking about nothing. Secondly, I’ve always resisted calls for national parenting advice/ support programs, on the grounds of state over reach. But with this level of structural incapacity, I’m not so sure anymore. At a time when England’s schools are rightly drawing admiration from countries around the world, it’s vital we don’t lose that edge to the need to provide generational remedial support for the basics that parents should provide. We need a reset on the relationship of expectation.