The face of my three-year-old daughter crumples into tears as I leave her at pre-school. It’s a familiar but agonizing moment experienced by many parents on a daily basis. I drive away feeling guilty that I have left her, worried that she is too young to be staying a full day and baffled that she is due to start full-time education in less than six months.
As she approaches her fourth birthday this month, it seems Molly is already having to learn some of the most difficult lessons in life: how to say goodbye and endure separation, how to cope with other people, how to be an individual with some control over her life.
These lessons get played out between us each day in an emotional rollercoaster ride that leaves us both exhausted. She loves me, she hates me, she kisses me, she kicks me. She wants to please me, she wants to defy me, she wants to be me, she wants to not be me.
Molly surprises me with questions such as: “Mummy, when are all my wishes going to come true?”
I am left speechless as my mind struggles to think of a way of answering this question. Eventually I give up and ask her what she is wishing for? “Ice-cream” — at 8 o’clock in the morning.
Her mind works in the most mysterious and wonderful ways, she makes up songs that she yells at the top of her voice, she doesn’t want her favorite dress to be seen by anybody, and she faces any challenge in life firmly attached to a dirty, torn, rag of a soft toy known affectionately as “Bear.”
The few sessions she does at pre-school are based on play. The idea of her soon being taught formally to read and write at school does not seem entirely appropriate or relevant. If she starts school in September, she will only be four years and four months. She may still be clinging to that little bear.
CHOICE
I was therefore delighted when our local authority, South Gloucestershire in southwest England, offered us the choice to defer her start at school. A letter arrived offering her a place at our local primary school in September. It included two small tick boxes offering the options of Molly starting in the following January or April. In January, she will be four and nine months; in April, five.
While this option of deferring entry used to be hidden in the small print of the schools’ admissions brochure for our county, it was now presented more forthrightly on the letter of admission. It struck me as a very real possibility.
I am aware of the concern that summer-born children can be at a big disadvantage — they are up to a year younger than their autumn-born peers on entering reception class and can struggle academically and emotionally as a result.
But I soon realized that our choice was not that straightforward. I asked around and found that none of the other parents were considering delaying their start. If we held Molly back from a September start, she would be left behind at pre-school while all her friends moved on.
Many parents are keen for their children to start school at the earliest opportunity. Living with a pre-school child is not an easy option for full-time mothers, who are often only too ready to hand over their challenging charges to the expertise of a teacher. Working parents are often struggling to meet the costs of childcare. This leaves parents of the youngest children with little choice but to follow suit.
One mother, Helen, whose daughter Claudia will be four years and two months old when she starts school in September, says: “I do worry that she will get very tired. She still has a good sleep two or three afternoons a week. But what else do you do with them? All their friends would move on and they would be left behind.”
Child psychologist Penelope Leach believes parents are being offered a false choice.
“Exercising your right to delay is fine, but a huge obstacle to your decision is your child’s friendship group. It makes a huge difference for your child to have friends as she starts school. Some children might even feel demeaned if kept down with the little ones,” she says.
“So you have a freedom which isn’t very free. These fake choices bedevil parents in modern life,” Leach says.
As well as falling out of her friendship group, I also realized that Molly would miss the gentle introduction to school that is offered by the reception class. Here, she will have more freedom to play as she becomes accustomed to school life.
CHALLENGING LEAP
Our son, Tom, started school two years ago. We were struck by the jump he had to make between his reception year and his first year of primary school, where he has to sit at a table and do much more formal learning. Even with the benefit of an autumn birthday and a full year in reception, he found this a challenging leap. We realized it was not going to be beneficial for Molly to have perhaps only one term in reception, and then be exposed to this demanding transition.
Local authorities in the UK have different arrangements for admitting children into reception class, with the majority taking all children in September, a significant number taking children with autumn birthdays in September and those with spring and summer birthdays in January, and a minority taking children at three points during the year.
But childcare experts seem to agree that offering deferred entry is not giving any real choice to parents. They are looking for more far-reaching change to address the issue of children starting school too young in England.
Sue Palmer, a literacy expert and author of Toxic Childhood, says: “To hold your child back in nursery without her friends, and then give her possibly only one term in reception class, would handicap your child — so the system is incredibly wrong.”
“In England, we are obsessed with an early start. But the system is too competitive and driven. The danger is that children are more likely to fail early, particularly boys and those from disadvantaged backgrounds. It is then difficult to motivate them later on,” she says.
Palmer and others have looked to Europe to find better ways of doing things. Finland always comes top in international literacy tables, and children there are not asked to pick up a pen until the age of seven. Before then they have a kindergarten approach, with an emphasis on play and social skills, and a lot of art, music, singing, drama and stories.
“Interestingly in the UK, Wales is picking up on this example and drawing up a new foundation stage curriculum for three-to seven-year-olds, which is not driven by the tests and targets agenda,” Palmer says.
Fears are that, under the current system, children could experience failure very early on, or could become overly compliant and under pressure to succeed. Either way, they are not becoming well-rounded individuals with adequate social and emotional skills.
“A question we don’t often ask is, what will make our children flourish?” says early years education expert Richard Eke, of the University of the West of England.
He feels that with performance outcomes, children become statistics, entering a regime of surveillance and coming under the downward pressure of a skills agenda.
Such talk does fill me with fear that I will lose my beautiful, colorful daughter in a grey system designed to meet targets. Yet the very human face of this system is presented to me in the form of a wonderful set of teachers at our local primary school. As I seek their advice on my daughter, they are at pains to find out what she is like and what would be best for her.
So our decision will probably be to opt for the September start, with a few afternoons off a week. We are following official recommendation, which seems to be appropriate within the confines of the present system. But a move to nearby Wales also sounds tempting — to find a new system that may be better suited to the needs of young children.
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