By "school ready", it is meant at expected developmental milestones. These aren't arbitrarily set by government. They are agreed developmental milestones it is expected Westernised children meet at broadly - and that's a key word - the same point.
The issues nursery, reception, primary are finding, and this is what's meant by "school ready", not high school (all different matter), is children are not demonstrating decades long researched and understood milestones when entering these educational processes.
There are nursery children who cannot demonstrate the ability to formulate basic words through speech. There are reception children who are in nappies and not toilet trained. There are children who have never interacted with other children or other adults before and don't know how to appropriately regulated for their neurodevelopmental age. I.E. they're presenting as regressiv
This is down to family, parents, home life. For instance, it has been found that with the advent of the pushchair that is now so prolific and favoured over the traditional pram, children's speech development has suffered, as too has their ability to pick up on social cues, and also form secure attachments to their primary care givers. The reason? Partly because a pushchair faces outwards,and children's eye sight isnt honed like adults and so they are flooded with sights, sounds etc... but no one to focus on. In a traditional pram they would face up and look towards their primary care giver snd focus on their sound, their words, their lip movements, and this is a very early stage of childhood development that teaches the infant speech, speech recognition, emotional identification through speech (tone, meaning), and helps with attachme
Some children, way beyond the age they should be in a pram or pushchair are still in them bc the parent finds it easier than having to have a toddler or junior walk around with them where they want to go, when they want to
I frequently see families with young children out very late at night, and by young I mean pre-school. Children's brains are not developed to adapt to that. They actually should be sleeping. They're growing rapidly and they need more sleep than adults to accommodate for that gro
It seems some parents just want to be out doing what they want to
However, it's not all beat a parent. Our economic model if neoliberalism demands that for it to be propt up with "growth, growth, growth", both creative givers in a 2 parents household absolutely have to work as the economy succeeds or fails on productivity - it's not immediately economically productive to have 1 care giver stay home and raise childre , for example.
And this is how we measure GDP - everyone out working. We don't have to measure it that way, btw. We could measure it by life fulfilment, happiness, wellness, family life, care in raising our children to be well balanced individuals.
How many here are doing their best, but are so ridiculously busy with other things, like work, house work, other responsibilities, that they've negated to take the road less travelled with their offspring at times, and instead popped them in front of a screen to placate or dismissed them because we're busy.
And this is what Starner is getting at - it is becoming commonplace that children starting nursery,reception, primary etc...are just not capable with basics and he's asking why? The answer is neoliberal economies, poor guidance, information and support from health professionals, a breakdown in the social contract, modern technology (so many parents on their screens as their little ones come out of nursery or other school - zero interaction), and some unfortunately just also not giving a you know what.
I suggest if Starmer is sick of it he radically change our systems, but that would require some socialist policy and all he's got, along with Reeves, is same old,same old neo-liberalist policies- the doyne of Thatcher and Regan.