Brits Getting Kids To Brush Teeth At School & Parents Love It

British Primary Schools Running Supervised Tooth Brushing

Mums and dads are reporting that this initiative makes things easier for them at home. The trials were launched in response to data indicating that the most common cause for kids attending hospital between the ages of 5 and 9 was for decayed teeth. Colgate has got onboard by donating 23 million tooth brushes for the national roll out of this new programme.

“The government said the roll out will reach up to 600,000 children every year.”
“Health minister Stephen Kinnock said getting children to grips with teeth cleaning from an early age will benefit the NHS.
“An operation in a hospital is a lot more expensive giving a three to five-year-old child some toothpaste and a toothbrush,” Mr Kinnock said.”
– BBC.com

UK Government Funding Dental Hygiene Initiative At Schools

This is just another great move by the British government at a time when populist campaigns are drumming up anti-government feelings globally. The reality is that governments do important work, especially in the education and health spaces. It is all too easy to blame institutions undeservedly because of general grievances toward modern life at times of cost of living crises. Bureaucracy becomes an easy target for those looking for something to blame. The truth is that most people don’t know what these government departments actually do in terms of the breadth and depth of their services to the public. This initiative is not perfect and there has been criticism from the teacher’s union. Many teachers feel that they already have too much to do and are being asked to fulfil the roles of parents in this regard.

“Paul Whiteman, the general secretary of the National Association of Head Teachers, said: “This week we have seen guidance on mobile phones from government and a new dentistry duty from the opposition. This is not the immediate response needed to solve the mounting crises in school. We need to see greater ambition in the short, medium and long term.
“We have serious reservations about how such a policy could even work. It is not the role of teachers to be making sure children brush their teeth each day. “
– The Guardian

Shared Behaviours & Surveillance Capitalism

Despite the teething problems this initiative is seeing solid support and good results from parents and the kids respectively. It seems sensible that if children are going to eat at school that they should also be encouraged to clean their teeth there too. So now the Brits are getting their kids to brush their teeth at school and we should introduce it in Australia because the parents love it! Doing stuff like this together with their mates at school is proving popular. We live in an age of social media, where social activities and the sharing of them are encouraged by the surveillance capitalism driving these tech modified behaviours. Every home is full of networked devices replete with apps, which urge all and sundry to get involved with the digital sharing of information. Human life is being seen through filters of socialised online structures. Stuff is not real unless posted on social media in the form of images and videos.

“Dr Charlotte Eckhardt, the dean of the faculty of dental surgery at the Royal College of Surgeons of England, said: “We strongly support supervised toothbrushing in schools and nurseries – this is now urgent.
“We know that children in deprived areas are at greater risk of poor oral health. By establishing supervised toothbrushing in school settings, we can directly improve children’s oral health and influence their toothbrushing routine in the home.”
The British Dental Association, which represents the profession, said it was encouraged by Labour’s proposal, given ministerial inaction over introducing a similar scheme.”
– Richard Adams & Denis Campbell, The Guardian, Oct 2023

What we are seeing in places like the UK and elsewhere in the West is a crisis of tooth decay and gum disease due to the poor diets being poisoned by refined sugars in processed foods. The cost of living crises impacting ordinary people in what they can afford to buy at the supermarkets has exacerbated this. Fresh fruit and vegetables are more expensive than ever due to the effects of high inflation over the last 3 years. Too many people buying unhealthy processed foods, out of a combination of dietary ignorance and price pressures, has created a real problem in oral health for too many Brits and their families. At the same time, the NHS has been underfunded by decades of government neglect in this regard. A new Labour government in a Britain suffering from a post-Brexit economic hangover admits that prevention is much cheaper than fixing the decayed teeth of these kids later on. The NHS is already struggling to meet the health needs of the population in so many departments.
– BBC.co.uk

The Data Driving The School Tooth Brushing Initiative

“Data published this year, shows 1,045 children and young people per 100,000 of Swindon’s population need extractions compared to just 376 in the rest of the south west of England.
Jermaine Badman, a mobile dentist who helps runs the sessions, said she joined the team after seeing children repeatedly admitted for “invasive dental treatments”. “
– BBC.com

Children and their parents are prone, in economically depressed regions of the country, to imbibing too much sugary soft drink, sweets, and processed foods full of unhealthy ingredients and additives. Indeed, many of us, wherever we live, are facing the same dietary, nutritional and economic pressures. Neoliberal ‘the market knows best’ government and economic policies are to blame for where we find ourselves re-health. Public health is not best served by neoliberal economics. We end up with expensive dental bills that private citizens at the lower end of the wealth ladder cannot afford to pay. In the case of kids, who may get subsidised coverage from the NHS – the public health system cannot cope with the demand levels and waiting lists go on for years. Meanwhile, the oral health of these kids continue to suffer and things get much worse.

Thus, Brits getting kids to brush their teeth at school and parents love it, is understandable. It is a small, but positive, step in the right direction.

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