My three-year-old son and I went shopping for his school uniform over the
summer holiday. As he stood in the changing room, swamped by even the
smallest trousers, several people commented that he looked too young to
start school. I couldn’t agree more. Scarcely will he have blown out the
candles on his fourth birthday cake than I’ll be waving him off at the
school gates. The poor little man still puts his pants on back to front,
needs a nap after lunch and thinks baby pigs come out of eggs. How is he
going to cope with literacy and numeracy hours and SATs, let alone the
horrors of school toilets?
Yes, I am an over-anxious mother but I surely can’t be the only person who
feels that British children start school far too young. In other parts of
Europe children embark on their academic career aged 6, or even 7 and a
growing body of research suggests that channelling children into formal
learning structures at such a young age breeds a sense of failure and
disaffection that will dog them throughout their school career.
The law states that the statutory school starting age for children in the UK
is the term after a child’s fifth birthday, but it is common practice in
England and Wales to admit children to reception class at the beginning of
the year in which they become 5, which means that most children start school
at the age of 4. The latest government figures indicate that around 80 per
cent of children enter school before their fifth birthday and last year
there were almost 800,000 four-year-olds in our primary schools.
By comparison, children in France, Portugal, Belgium, and Norway start school
at 6, while the school starting age in many Scandinavian countries is 7.
This is the starting age in Finland, where students recently beat those from
39 other countries to come out tops in maths, science and reading, according
to a study by the Programme for International Student Assessment.
Solvie Jorgensen moved to the UK from Norway when her daughter had just turned
4. She initially opted to defer school entry for a year: “It seemed much too
early: in Norway Freya would have had two more years of nursery.” But Freya
pleaded to be allowed to start, so they enrolled her in November. “I was
pleasantly surprised, but still think there’s a far greater emphasis on
numbers and letters from a young age in British schools than in those back
home. There, formal teaching doesn’t start until 6, and even then teachers
are more concerned about children being happy at school and making friends
than whether they can write their name and count to ten.”
So why do UK children embark on formal education at an age when most of their
continental counterparts are following a more play-based kindergarten
programme? It all dates back to 1870, when MPs plumped for 5 as the school
starting age to protect children from exploitation at home or unhealthy
conditions in the streets. Despite continuous calls for it to be reviewed,
it has never been changed.
Today, arguments in favour of the UK’s early starting age usually centre
around the need to level the playing field for children from disadvantaged
backgrounds but, paradoxically, a study by the Organisation for Economic
Cooperation and Development indicated that by the time they reach their
teens, the gap between the achievements of students from professional and
working-class backgrounds is wider in the UK than in most other countries.
Caroline Sharp, of the National Foundation for Educational Research, sums it
up thus: “There appears to be no compelling educational rationale for a
school starting age of 5 or for the practice of admitting four-year-olds to
reception classes.”
The Government is quick to defend its policy. The Department for Children,
Skills and Families (DCSF) says: “The formal school starting age of 5 has
served children well for decades and standards in our primary schools have
never been higher.” It maintains that “all the evidence – key-stage results,
international comparisons and Ofsted reports – make this clear.”
But many teachers at the chalk-face disagree: a recent survey by the Times
Educational Supplement (TES) found that 39 per cent of British primary
teachers believe that children should not start formal education until they
are at least 6, and fewer than one in five believes that children should
start at the age of 4.
“Research has clearly shown a correlation between pushing programmes that
promote early academic achievement and disaffection in teenage years,” Debe
Lawson, of the Professional Association of Teachers, told participants at
the organisation’s recent conference. Hungarian, German and Flemish teachers
do not start teaching reading, writing or written numbers until children are
6, believing that many are unable to cope with these skills at a younger age
and if forced to do so will fail, building up a negative attitude to school
life that can be difficult to break down later.
“A plethora of research advocates the importance of play for the overall
development of the child,” says Lawson. And while the DCSF claims that “the
first years of schooling focus on play-based activities in addition to
formal learning”, Lawson contends that, in reality, “teachers, nursery
nurses and early-years professionals struggle to provide a play-based
curriculum because of the pressures of performance tables and targets,
particularly in literacy and numeracy”.
The DCSF insists that it is important for children to make progress in
literacy and numeracy from an early age, “as these skills are critical to
their ability to get the most out of learning later on”.
“The evidence seems to suggest that teaching formal skills early gives
children an initial advantage,” says Sharp. “But children who embark later
on literacy and numeracy programmes quickly catch up. By the age of about 8
there is no discernible difference.”
Studies carried out by the International Association for the Evaluation of
Educational Achievement (IEA) support this view. Looking at the relationship
between the age of starting school and reading performance at the ages of 9
and 14, they assessed children from 32 different countries, in most of which
children started school at 5, 6 and 7, and found the top-achieving countries
had a later starting age.
So should concerned parents delay their child’s entry into school? When I was
a child pupils could start school at three different points during the
reception year. As a summer-born babe myself, I was launched into the world
of academe after Easter, by which time I was nearly 5. Research carried out
by the NFER indicates that there are advantages to this system. “Among older
[autumn-born] children, those with the full reception year did best,” says
Sharp. “But for younger [summer-born] children, those with the full
reception year did not do as well as those who were of the same age with one
or two terms less time at school.”
In theory, at least, parents still have the option to delay entry – and there
are those who do so – but in practice this is not as easy as it sounds. A
study by the TESindicates that most schools now admit children only in
September, to maximise funding. It is worth checking with your local
education authority about its policy on deferred entry, but when we inquired
about it for our young-in-the-year son, we were told that we would risk
losing the place that we had secured at our preferred – and heavily
oversubscribed – school. Not much of a choice then, really.
Nevertheless, much can be done to ensure that children who are not quite
“ready” will not be disadvantaged. Dr Helen Likierman, an educational
psychologist and the co-author, with Valerie Muter, of Prepare Your Child
for School: How to make sure your child gets off to a flying start
(Vermilion, £8.99), says: “Free play and ‘downtime’ are essential for
children’s wellbeing, socialisation and creativity. But the more
high-quality social and preeducational experiences that children have before
starting formal school, the better prepared they will be – and the
transition will, therefore, be easier for them. This is important not just
for academic skills, but also for helping to ensure that the child is
confident and happy.”
According to Likierman and Muter, I didn’t need to spend the summer teaching
my son nuclear physics and quadratic equations, just how to wipe his bottom
and put on his PE kit. But the question remains: do children in the UK start
school too young?
“There’s no such thing as a right age,” says Caroline Sharp, whose overview of
the body of research concludes that there is “no definitive evidence” to
prove that late is better than early (or vice versa). “International
comparisons are indirect evidence at best because they involve such
different cultures and educational systems. What we can say is that a later
start appears not to be a disadvantage to children’s progress.”
What is important is the nature of a child’s early school experiences.
“Effective programmes tend to emphasise exploration, language development
and play, not academics.” Debe Lawson agrees, going so far as to suggest
that: “If we move to a broader early-years curriculum, in which the emphasis
is not on the academic achievement by the age of 5, but on a broader
preparation of life and lifelong learning, we would not need to raise the
school leaving age.”
I’m not sure where all this leaves me. I could opt to home educate my son, of
course, but I think that we’d end up killing each other. Or we could take a
risk and defer entry for a year, hoping that some kid in his class will
decide to emigrate to Outer Mongolia and free up a place for next year. But
he’s so excited about going to school, and already head over heels in love
with his wonderful teacher.
So, come next week, I guess that I’ll just shorten his overlong trousers, pop
his blankie into the pocket and leave my anxieties at the school gate.
School starting ages elsewhere in the world
4 Northern Ireland
5 England, Malta, The Netherlands, Scotland, Wales
6 Austria, Belgium, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Greece, Hungary, Iceland,
Republic of Ireland, Italy, Liechtenstein, Luxembourg, Norway, Portugal,
Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Turkey
7 Bulgaria, Estonia, Denmark, Finland, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland,
Sweden
Source: the National Foundation for Educational Research
