When parents are asked the question, "What do you want most for your children?" the common three top responses are to be; 

• 1. "happy"
• 2. "healthy"
• 3. "successful"

Being happy and healthy can be considered to be fairly straight forward; however "to be successful" has many interpretations and facets.  What it means to be successful is important for parents to reflect upon and unpack so that they can have a clear vision of what it is that they actually want for their children.

What is success in life?  Is it to be;

• as straightforward as a high academic score at the end of year 12?
• about a particular reading level or obtaining 10 out of 10 for some spelling?
• becoming a movie star or a high earning sports woman or man?

How success is defined differs between individuals in relation to their own values and expectations from life.

Certainly, helping children to attain competence in numeracy and literacy, to be skilled in sports or music or whatever interests a child may have as they grow older is part of a mix of things that help a child develop holistically over their lifetime.

Within this context however, we are faced with significant challenges at the present time in Australia. Despite all the great and wonderful opportunities we have in health, education and other areas of interest for our young children, we have as a country an increasingly alarming suicide rate for young men, an increasing level of depression and anxiety and mental health challenges. We have an increase in binge drinking and excessive use of alcohol.

We have a society that is often rushing and hurrying children to grow up quickly, to push down expectations and experiences at earlier and earlier ages and stages of life.

Many young children are being placed under increasing pressure to grow up to quickly!!

So when we come to reconsider and reflect upon the question, "what is success"? It is interesting to consider what other aspects of life are necessary in order to support our children to indeed have a successful life.

Let us consider some of the issues that are so very important in a life time and yet are not always discussed or supported or recognised as much as areas of literacy and numeracy.

• To be able to express your own feelings without hurting yourself or others
• To know how and when to reach out to others and find support when you need it
• To be able to bounce back, to try again, to have another go when some things are difficult or challenging
• To be able to communicate, to listen, to question, to respond, to enjoy conversations.
• To be able to form relationships that are healthy and productive and meaningful, partnerships, friendships, associations with others.
• To feel confident about yourself and to like yourself.
• To have a positive self concept.
• To have a strong sense of identity, culturally, socially, within your own community and beyond
• To feel valued, respected and acknowledged for who you are
• To have the skills of learning how to learn more, to seek answers
• To plan, to dream, to have ideas and to look forward to the next part of your life
• To feel happiness and well being

There are many more aspects of what constitutes a successful life.

In the very young years, success for a two year old may be as simple as walking, communicating, playing and enjoying their relationships with their parents and others in their lives.

To help promote a strong foundation for our young children to "succeed" in life, as families we can focus upon our relationships with our children, finding time to chat, to interact and to play with them. We can give them opportunities to be creative, imaginative, to take their time and to not rush them through their early childhood years.

Our young children are just at the very beginning. As Plato is attributed to saying:

"The beginning of something is always very important; especially when it is young and needs time to grow."

In growth, we nurture, we provide time and experiences that are best suited to being at the very beginning of life.

Children don't need to be perfect when they are in their early childhood years; they simply need to be able to be children, warts and all!!

Success in life is built upon sound relationships, effective communication, and lack of pressure in the early years and opportunities to learn through the richness of play.

We want and need our future generations of young adults to be able to feel "successful" simply because of who they are, not just because of what they actually do.

The current preoccupation with rating and measuring learning through literacy and numeracy scores and attempting to compare them across a country as diverse as Australia continues to show a very narrow view of what successful life and learning is about.

Whilst our organisation is committed to the support of enhancing literacy and numeracy, we continue to urge all parents, educators and policy makers to remember that the importance of self esteem, identity, resilience are just as important. Not until the measurement of these issues starts to become a focus for government, will we truly see a more proactive emphasis upon these in early learning and primary education.

The hundreds of stories we received from parents and teachers about the NAPLAN testing, only reinforces our position that the preoccupation and emphasis of these tests are placing teaching and learning and children at considerable risk.

Here is a quick overview of some of the emails, phone calls and stories we received in May after the NAPLAN tests.

• Our school told us to stop our normal work for three weeks so we could teach to the test
• Our principal told us that if we don't get our students to do well on the results he may be under even more pressure than he already is from the region to do better. This is despite the fact that most of our children are refugees and don't even speak English when they enter school!!
• My child came home crying saying that even though he does well at school, he hated the test and felt pressured by his teacher
• The teaching just stops at our school in the term of NAPLAN and we (teachers) are all under pressure and threats of somehow waving a magic wand to ensure our school looks good on the myschool website
• Our principal is too scared to stand up to the region who is telling him to stop letting children play, interact and investigate, and just keep upping the formal instruction of literacy. This is despite the fact that the children already get 3 hours of formalised teaching in literacy each day!!

Success in life and learning is often described in curriculum documents and frameworks and by policy makers as needing to be "holistic".

However, the current testing and measuring of children's learning based upon the current system places lip service to the need for children to have a holistic education.

We have a long way to go still in this country to truly engage, encourage, and promote a healthy sense of well being, resilience and self esteem in young children.

Success for us all will be when our suicide rate is reduced, our children aren't so anxious or depressed, they drink less alcohol and they feel better about their own sense of identity.

Starting to address these issues is too late once they reach adolescence. It is now in their early years that we need the education of a child to be so much more.

Kathy Walker