Keir Starmer "sick and tired" of hearing about children who aren't school-ready

I imagine Covid has had a big impact on this. My DS was of course way out of nappies, could speak properly, read and know numbers at the right level. But socially he struggled and his teacher said every child in his reception class was the same. I remember adults shouting at him/me if he waddled too close during Covid years - at such an age when you’re developing this has had a massive impact.

Couple this with many people who were expected to work from home and manage childcare at the same time no wonder many have relied on screens.

It’s not aimed at SEND children but just ridiculous that children with no extra needs are going to school in nappies, which is just lazy parenting. 25 year ago the only children who weren’t toilet trained between 18-24 months was just SEND children, schools now have can’t get themselves dressed, they can’t concentrate as are use to screens so they just flick from one thing to the next.

I doubt (if it’s true that he said this) that he’s talking about children with the sorts of issues you’re describing.

In fairness. Nice middle class women can also suffer from mental health struggles/postnatal depression. And it can be hard to see from the outside how well someone is doing with the whole parenting malarkey. I had a lovely friend who became very unwell after her second pregnancy, but this expressed itself in extreme perfectionism- being beautifully put together, having perfectly dressed children, perfectly clean house. Even if it meant staying up all night cleaning (which just made her more unwell). Or having a huge emotional overreaction to some clothes getting dirty. On the surface of you walked past her in the street she probably would have fitted the description the other poster wrote. But once you saw a bit more it was obvious she was deeply unwell and needed help for her own and her children's sake.

That's not to invalidate the fact that having a space filled with smug middle class types could put off other service users. Maybe there need to be more spaces/more peer support. But it's not always the case that everyone who looks well put together isn't drowning.

I watched and didn’t hear that at all! Need to go back to the recording.

I'm 44 and when I started school there was no expectation that children could read and write at all. Those of us who could, great, but it wasn't the norm. We were taught to read and write AT school. If 4 and 5 year olds aren't reading and writing it's not an indication of anything at all.

Dammit, quote disappeared.

Honestly your use of vocabulary and correct spelling leaves me doubting how ‘working class’ you appear to others even if you truly are.

This !

I've worked in reception classes previously and by school ready they mean toilet trained / can follow basic instructions , can dress / undress (not buttons , but a T shirt and trouser / simple skirt or dress ) and non lace shoes / socks . Recognise their name (written ) use cutlery

With exception of those with additional needs , most 4 year olds (even summer born ) with a bit of parental support are capable of this !

Support staff are valuable commodities (I shared one with the other devotion class teacher ) and there to support learning not toilet train kids because parents won’t !

This is not an issue for parents alone, it's a societal issue.

Many people no longer want to have kids. Parenting nowadays looks too hard and thankless. Parent-bashing has to stop.

There is very little evidence that today's parents are lazier than their predecessors. By contrast, they spend much more time with their children, while also working longer hours, than parents did in the past.

There are clearly things going wrong in family life but that is only one part of the puzzle as to why children are behind on skills that would previously be expected.

But that’s your problem to fix, not theirs. There’s nothing they can do to fundamentally alter themselves?

Back in the day..... Groan, I know, but......

You didn't wait for children to be ready to be toilet trained, you did it from the minute they could sit up. Yes, yes, it's not completely independent, but if you start early with the concept of sitting and weeing, it's very easy to progress from that.

No baby led weaning. Sit at the table in your high chair, and get fed pureed whatever everyone else is eating. Watching the table etiquette, the use of cutlery, joining in. Again, you don't expect them to pick up a knife and fork at age one, but if they have been involved from that age, it's not a stretch when you move on a little later.

Lots of other little things, getting choices of what to eat and what to wear, No. Being consulted on what you want to do. No. Being taught to respect your elders, and conforming to societal norms. Yes.

It all sounds very old fashioned, but it worked.

DD's went to (Montessori) nursery very young, and even there they were expected to play nicely, share, eat at the table, have set naps, do what they were told etc etc

Many countries where formal education starts later still have nurseries/kindergarten. And in fact some of these countries positively encourage parents to send their children to them, so much so there are very few playgroups, toddler sessions unlike this country.

We are soon going to struggle to blame COVID for new school starters as they will have been born post the most draconian lockdown rules.

When I was a child (many years ago!) I wouldn’t have been able to go to preschool/school in nappies. You had to be toilet trained. Nowadays, schools can’t refuse entry because of SEND but I think quite a few other families take advantage of this.

There is a difference between children with additional needs and school readiness. The school needs their resources to be used for the benefit of children with SEN and these are massively diluted and shared out if you have children starting school who haven't been taught basic independent tasks like putting on and taking off their coats, opening their lunchbox or drink bottle, using the toilet, opening and closing their bag and knowing what a book is and that you don't swipe it to turn the page. They should be able to sit and listen to someone read a story and not lose interest because it's not on a screen. Rhymes and story are hugely important for development along with talking and playing with your child.

I wish there was more outcry over this not less. If you are worrying about having your children ready for school, you're more than likely already trying to do a good job at raising them.

I remember children who puddled the floor in assembly being smacked 🙈 and no, you couldn’t do it legally. Just arsehole teachers.

I miss the sure start centres. On paper I wasn't who they were targeting, but as I hadn't grown up around babies so didn't really know how to really interact with them. The sure start centres really helped me get extra help for DD .

My DD was behind on everything, but it turned out that's because she is Autistic.

I do think that as more people grow up in single child families, that the centres will be needed more as less people will know how to act around babies.

Me too. And they were sorted out by teachers without any drama. And the children went on to do well and did wonderful things in adulthood.

I started school 64 years ago this month. My birthday is at the end of August, so I was the youngest of an intake in a small village school, not an affluent area. We could all write our names and write figures up to 10, we could all read a bit and there was no one who was not toilet trained.
I don’t think our parents could tolerate dealing with towelling nappies indefinitely so we had to learn quickly!
My parents would write words and numbers for me to copy everyday and would encourage me to read newspaper headlines as well as children’s books.
Several of us went to grammar school a year early, and were quite OK.
My parents left school at 14 but somehow managed to achieve school readiness without any difficulty. Maybe the lack of even TV for most people helped.

Sorry, but imo that is just an example of whataboutery.

I've seen homes where parents pooh-pooh the idea of establishing a routine, of sitting down to eat with their children and insisting on a modicum of table manners, of requiring their children to not write on the walls, who allowi their children to roughhouse with each other indoors to the huge detriment of furniture, etc - parents who think they're successfully rewriting the parenting wisdom of centuries and doing everything better than their own house proud parents did. These are often parents who are very conscientious about 'screen time' (because that's a marker of being middle class). These kids have a very hard time adapting to school even at age 5 when the desire to fit in is starting to develop. The problem.is more pronounced in families with a majority of boys, where rambunctious behaviour is tolerated or even smilingly encouraged.

I get the feeling that the concept of "late developer" (ie a child - like Einstein! - who is slower in the early years but then goes on to be equal or more advanced) no longer exists in the public mind. But it does still exist in the scientific world. Please don't listen to Starmer on this, he isn't an education expert and he was probably tired and cross about something else at the time.

I and most of my school had packed lunch sandwiches in primary and middle in the 80s. No one knew whether we could use a knife and fork. School lunches were mainly only eaten by those on free school meals because they were so vile.

It was fairly obvious he wasn't critising parents. He was decrying the lack of support for parents and children. He wants all children to have equal opportunities in school.

I can remember fairly regular 'accidents' from other children when I started school, I don't have that many memories of the early days but that is one of the things I do remember. That was in the mid 80s. We also had twice-yearly intakes then.

I don’t think you can make judgements at that level. All the children my DC started school with (they are 6 and 9) were toilet trained too. Clearly a sample size of a few experiences doesn’t represent what’s apparently happening in reception classes all over.

We really didn’t have kids who were in nappies or couldn’t use cutlery when I started school. I remember the head gently correcting me because I held my knife and fork in the wrong hands. But teachers weren’t expected to be nursery assistants. So what has changed in the past 50 years? If children were capable 50 years ago, why wouldn’t they be capable now?