Is five too soon to start school?

You will have read the recent think-tank report concerning this issue. I have agreed with this statement for some time and blogged a few years ago about the issue. I am re-posting what I said then.

Summary

Education; there is too much of it, too early and with too little effect. Increasing the starting age of education and stopping the transfer, at age 11, would contribute to making kids have a more focused and socialised school education. For the “iPod, skype and msn” kids of today “less is more”.

Explanation

The Labour Government believes that children should be educated and appraised from the earliest possible age. Children of 2 or 3 are now being assessed by some crazy Government doctrine that governs how nurseries and play schemes should have a “curriculum”. Other countries take a different view. The most successful education systems tend to be in Scandinavia, yet here formal education, reading and writing, does not start until children are 7, or even 8. Till then parents or playgroups are expected to give children the space to be children and learn to play. More importantly children are the responsibility of their parents and not handed over to some state sponsored pre education system, whose sole purpose, at times, seems to be to drive the mother or father out to work. The greatest looming crisis in our education system is the expected mass retirement of senior teachers, due sometime in the next five years. A policy that full time education of children did not start until age 7 would militate against some of those problems.

In the UK, the child having spent up to 7 years in the education system, we then inflict another injustice on them; transfer to secondary school. Why? Many teachers will tell you that the most difficult period for a child in education is the transfer from primary to secondary. All certainty in their lives is upended and many spend the first years of secondary school recovering from the trauma of transfer. Parents also do not survive the transfer. Whereas parents are often very engaged in their child’s primary education they quickly drop out when their child transfers. Once again the most successful systems have all-through schools that go from 7 or 8 through to 16 or 18, and we should adopt this system nationally.

Risks and opportunities

Teaching unions would complain that this is more change after decades of change. Political opponents would paint this as a lessening in the learning opportunities for young children and an attempt to limit the opportunities for poorer families to have both parents’ working. Would the policy actually not be a positive benefit to a Conservative party looking to give families more time? Currently GCSE
study takes two years – a more focused approached to learning leading up to that might actually increase the ability, especially if you did not have to spend a whole year adjusting to a new school and a whole new method of learning.

The cost of the idea

There are pluses and minuses. The cost of not providing formal state education for children between the years of 2 and 7 (£5,750 per pupil per annum by 2008) could be used to fund more generous child care allowances.

The opportunity for all-through schools is here. The current programme to rebuild, or substantially refurbish, every secondary school in the country is in its early stages. A more radical approach to this programme could be used to fulfil the difficulty of all-through schools.

A key problem would be the limiting size of urban sites within London to take all-through schools. However, not all schools need to have 2,000 pupils. There have been a myriad of studies that have shown that small “schools”, not necessarily small “classes”, are far better at raising standards and behaviour than the increasing size of school this Government is currently set on building. (See Lindsay, Paul (1982). The Effect of High School
Size on Student Participation, Satisfaction, and Attendance, Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis 4 (1), 57-65 and Barker, R. and Gump, P. (1964). Big School, Small School: High School Size and Student Behavior. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press)

If we accept that small is best then many of the existing secondary and primary sites could be adapted to suite a range of schools. After all a typical 2 form of entry primary school would have 14 forms. A 1 form entry all-though school, starting at age 7, would need 10 or 11 forms.

BBC NEWS | Education | Is five too soon to start school?