The National Youth Agency: Comment - Lessons for brat bullies andlittle emperors

I'm fairly sure Michelle Elliott's depiction to the Education Select Committee of the middle-class "brat bully" will have met with vigorous agreement in many education workplaces across the nation. It's a problem well known in China, where the one-child policy introduced in 1979 led to the creation of what have become known as "little emperors"; children to whom no-one has said no, who've never had to learn to share. The other side of this coin, of course, is when parents pour all their hopes and expectations into their offspring and put intolerable expectations of achievement on them.

All of which prompts reflections about the role of youth work. We've all got used to increased targeting of provision that aims to stop young people taking drugs or being antisocial, make them more employable, or otherwise redress some inequality or compensate for some perceived deficiency.