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

He’s right though.

He’s stating the bleeding obvious.

I don’t know a person in education who isn’t absolutely fed up with the amount of kids coming into school absolutely unprepared.

And I am not talking about those with particular needs.

Parents need to step up!

I would assume if both parents are in work then the child would be at nursery, then surely the child would be learning most of these skills and the family would be getting support from them?

I have worked with preschoolers and reception aged children for nearly 30 years and have seen the level children attend nursery 3+ and reception drop significantly. Many eat with their fingers, their expressive language is poor, they have poor attention and they are not toilet trained. There is a significantly higher level of children with significant additional needs. Everything seems to have got worse and it’s really concerning.
There are always the exceptions but as a whole the picture is not healthy. Parents do need to do more. TV, tablets, phones are probably at the heart of why things are deteriorating not just for the children but for the parents too.

All of the above is fine and dandy but none of its relative if a child has undiagnosed SEN. No amount of involvement is going to make the issues significantly better, so it wouldn’t matter what the parents did/didn’t do because ultimately they will likely struggle throughout to varying degrees.

I despair of some of the kids I see who are absolutely massive. I'm not talking about "puppy fat" i'm talking about rolls and rolls of fat.

I think we've lost sight of what a normal kid should actually look like. You should be able to see their ribs for example.

I guess it might be a bit of a dig at parents increasingly thinking that teachers should take on the responsibilities of parenting. A lot of ‘gentle’ parenting seems to absolve parents of actually preparing their children for a classroom situation. Some aren’t properly toilet trained, some have a poor relationship with food, some have no social skills, some have barely touched a book or learnt to count, some don’t know how to re-act to the word ‘no’. It’s important that parents understand that education for academia and social skills actually starts at home and not just in the classroom.

I think we are all tired of ‘addressing’ aka paying for intensive support for lazy adults to escape their most basic duties

Yep

I am staggered at the number of Y4 - Y6 (with no additional support needs) who still cannot use a tissue or wash their hands. Those are things they should have learned before they started school.

Well he’s the Prime Minister, so I’m afraid it’s his job to address it, not be ‘sick and tired’ of anything. The majority of the country are sick and tired of him, but we still have to put up with it for another few years.

Potty trained, know how to clean themselves after a poo (best effort basis…), knows how to eat with cutlery (even if uses hands occasionally), can get changed for PE (even if the clothes are sometimes back to front), can put coat / shoes on, is used to sitting down for 10-15min to listen to a story or watch something not on a screen.

DS1 started school at just turned 5 (due to a house move). DS2 started at just turned 4. There is a huge difference in a year at that age and IME, no allowances made in a class of 30.

I’d also agree there’s a shift in expectations and children just aren’t expected to do small self care tasks that would have been normal not that long ago. Busy parents probably find it easier to just do things for them.

Agree, we shouldn’t be lessening expectations based on parental failures rather than what should be normal development.

The parents around me are woeful. Half of the kids are visibly obese by 7 or 8. The parents rush them to the corner shop after school pick up for more sweets and crisps. They ignore the letters telling them their children are fat and chuck them away, claiming it’s all a big body shaming conspiracy. They bring the kids mobiles so they can stare at them all the way home. Their only parenting tools are food and screen time, and if that fails, make up some excuse about the kid having some complex psychological tendency which means they can’t behave.

While I’m in favour of strict immigration control simply due to overcrowding, I will add these are mostly white working or middle class parents. The above doesn’t seem to apply to the immigrant families here.

How do you know at 4 for certain that they are NT though? That’s the point.

It’s fine saying they should be ready etc… however at that age it’s impossible for the average Jo to know whether or not those difficulties are due to ‘neglect’ or whether there is underling SEN. Most ND isn’t diagnosed until much later unless it’s the extreme end. There are people with ASD that have degrees and are more academic than the average person, yet they struggle to get their clothes on…. It’s not as simple as lazy parenting.

Just an anecdotal story re starting school -

My Mum was a SAHM and I could read before starting school - but the school wouldn’t believe it and held me back behind those who’d been to preschool. I was not happy!

Shed also taught me weights and measures - but they were all imperial and school were of course teaching metric! I remember not being happy about that either (now I think exclusively in metric and can’t remember the how imperial measurements work at all).

It was a bad start in a primary school where I was never happy. Loved secondary school where they treated you as a person.

This. Some parents just can't be arsed and I don't see the point in denying that.

If the children who can be school ready are, it will leavethe school staff more time to help the children who need more help.

Tbh aren’t a huge number of the people these services were aimed at just at work?!

I remember sure start, 11am stay and play on a Tuesday morning and similar.

We have a free stay and play which is run by the council. They have weeks where different professions come in to give talks and advice on dental care, potty training, behaviour etc. All the mums who attend are middle class sahm, none seem to need the help. How do you force those struggling to use services?

Many things are intuitive like sitting quietly, follow instructions, those things don’t need to be ‘taught’ so even children from deprived/complex backgrounds would be able to do those things.

Sadly, this really isn't true.
Children given a lot of screen time, sat in a pub with dads phone etc tend to have poor attention span or won't sit quietly unless there's a screen involved. Children who live in homes where there are low demands and few meaningful consequences if they don't follow instructions, tend to be poor at following them/doing things they don't want to do.

I disagree.

Children who have never been expected to sit down in a specific spot to eat a meal, children who tare allowed to ake a few bites and then hop up to run around, children who are parked in front of a tablet for long stretches every day, children who are disrracted by a tablet instead of being conversed with when doing daily stuff like going to the supermarket, children who are never read to, children who are never taken to places where they can't run around, climb, or roll on the grass are all turning up in schools where they are expected to sit down, to.engage in conversations with teachers, to have an interest in a story a teacher is reading, etc.

I don’t think the govt is making policy based on Starmer’s birthday!

There’s definitely an attitude shift of lower expectations.

I do agree with that.

Though I think that they made it easier to defer a year is a postive move that's happened since mine started school.

Nurseries tend to support potty training really well though, although of course they don’t do it for you.

The kids who aren’t toilet trained on starting school tend not to have been to nursery. It’s usually those kept at home and with a parent almost exclusively until they’re 4/5 that struggle - obviously not if it’s a good parent, of whom there are many amongst SAHPs, but the rubbish parents within this group.

Also I don’t think Starmer “wants both parents working”, he just wants them to have that choice. Supporting parents will subsidised nursery will cost as much as the govt gets in tax from those parents. And you do know he doesn’t personally keep the taxes!?