To be shocked at ‘school readiness’

I think it will continue to get worse, probably due to a combination of spending hours watching tv on an iPad or phone wherever they go and gentle parenting/no parenting.

Children raised by iPhones. And phone addicted parents.

Recognise their own name? Written or called out? I can't believe 90% of children in your class don't know their own name when you speak it.

Not shocked but I bet they learn this very quickly if you enforce the routines every time. (I work in 2 schools an infant and junior) the infant school kids are so well behaved very quickly. (Apart from the few with more needs and requirements)
What were the pre-school settings like? Did they work on school readiness (i know it should be a parents job, i'm just curious).
We have quite a few who have come from abroad and not accessed pre-school because they are relatively new in the country. It makes a difference.

You should be shocked at the age children go to school in the UK. In the former socialist countries where profit-seeking (I know, K.Marx again) was not the most important thing, children went to school at 7 years of age.

Yanbu. I think more and more adults are not ready to be in the wild, yet alone children.

YANBU. I was a reception TA up to two years ago and have retrained in a different field because I think something fundamentally changed about parenting and children and I could no longer see any chance of improvement.

It's a perfect storm of SEN that can't be met, helicopter parents that don't allow their children to do anything independently, and parents who are not parenting and have no respect for education (while thinking their children are angels).

This sounds nothing like the part of the country I’m in, but I can well believe it. Mine had to be fully potty trained to start nursery, so 2 and 9 months. Could write their own names, even tie shoelaces (in the days before Velcro). Standards have slipped massively.

A lot of European countries start their kids at 6/7, have never understood why we wxpect not quite toddlers to manage a full day!

I don't believe what you're saying is true.

Where is this school?

It will not change much, even if at evenings before children join the school spells out very clearly what is expected.

There need to be consequences for parents who don't make this effort, SEN excepted. Not sure what would be appropriate or enforceable.

You want us to believe 90% of your class don't understand how to even attempt getting a coat on, or recognise their own name?

Sure there are school readiness issues every year but using exaggerated hyperbolic examples just waters down your point.

There’s an epidemic of shit parenting. Kids are on far too much of a pedestal and get everything done for them.

That said I agree that kids start formal schooling at too young an age and I find it difficult to believe so many don’t know their own name.

As someone who has also spent time in an EYFS classroom this week in a very leafy middle class area I am not at all surprised. My experience is similar and every year they seem less and less ready. I suspect sadly it is going to get worse unfortunately.

When children start school at 7, they have been at nursery for several years. In Marxist countries, mum is working in a factory and children are at a quite structured nursery.

I think the teacher means recognise it when it’s written. Most of them should be able to read their own name by the time they start school.

Oh not this old chestnut again. The vast majority of EU children are in formal childcare well before 6 - it’s just not called school. Much as our EYFS is play based.

I’m sceptical that the entire class is displaying these problems tbh.

I’m also sceptical that you can know these aren’t SEN children - my own kids were diagnosed at 5 and 9, and they have pretty obvious needs that were not picked up on in the early years environments.

This is a red herring. In other countries formal education, i.e. sitting still and working hard on reading, writing and arithmetic, may not commence until the age of 6 or 7 but I bet they all send their children to some form of kindergarten or nursery for some years before that, so they learn a lot through play, including social skills (taking turns, saying please and thank you, at a minimum), spoken language, how to sit still and listen when an adult is reading a story, how books work (look at the pictures, follow the story, turn the pages to get to the next bit), how to recognise which is their peg, and so on. The OP is describing children who don't appear to have done any of that, which is pretty shocking.

I can well believe this OP, have friends who are teachers.

Shit parents who care more about their mobile than their own kids.

I can believe it op!
the preschool I manage has a huge job of supporting children’s independence.

we have so many parents asking about what they are going to learn. My answer is always basic skills and a drive to be independent first!

all the things you mention we focus on heavily.
we find that the returning children lose a lot of the skills they had before over the 6 week holiday and have to be reminded continuously for the first few weeks!

it’s such a task, I would so prefer to be teaching new concepts and more about the wider world bit they’re just not ready until they have the basics.

I've seen similar in several schools I've been into. It is not at all uncommon nowadays.

Me either.

Or that a teacher would confidently state that none of the children have SEN after just 2 weeks.

They're expected to manage an even longer day at nursery, aren't they? What's the difference?