Nurseries and school readiness

[JoyousGreyOrca]

A new survey by Kindred Squared has revealed insights into school readiness, with 90 per cent of parents in 2024 believing that their child is ready for school, even though teachers say a third of children are not.

What I do not understand though is that nearly all children go to nursery. Are nurseries not preparing children for school?

I expect they are, but the most important early years influence is parents.

Yes, many of the issues are around things like toileting and dressing, which nurseries can support but not tackle in isolation if parents aren't on board too.

What skills should a child have to be school ready?

This article in the Guardian references toilet training and muscle strength developed through outdoor play. That’s something that’s definitely parent facilitated.

https://www.theguardian.com/education/2025/jan/30/some-children-starting-school-unable-to-climb-staircase-finds-england-and-wales-teacher-survey

That said, I agree with the criticism of COVID being used as an excuse. My youngest was in the cohort most impacted by COVID in the early years. He was just 2 and just about to turn 3 at the 2 national COVID lockdowns. His nursery was closed for a matter of weeks each time. Otherwise he was interacting with other children 8 hours a day all through that year or so, mostly outside. I can’t really say it changed much about his life and development other than we did fewer days out to attractions on the weekends. He got plenty of fresh air and time climbing trees and running around and was toilet trained and well socialised. But that’s because we did that, with support from nursery. And he has no SEN, which is key too.

Children spend the majority of time outside of nursery with their families. Just as at primary school, an engaged nursery cannot make up for bad parenting.

Suspect that increasingly expecting schools and nurseries to do parents jobs is partly how we get into this mess.

Ultimately, it's the parents responsibility to prepare their child for school readiness.

I have a 2 year old in full time nursery. He's been potty trained since 18 months, can climb the stairs (though, more clumsily as I imagine a typical 4 year old would be), can eat with a fork (but sometimes still likes to use his hands because it's quicker) etc.

Full time nursery isn't an excuse, it's poor parenting.

But surely children are running around and sitting on the carpet at nursery so developing core strength there as well?
I was shocked to hear that it is not uncommon for children not to have enough core strength to sit on the floor. I simply do not remember that happening in the past, even when parents were pretty neglectful.

The survey also talks about half the children at reception not knowing how books work. I know parents should be teaching this, but surely nurseries do as well?

I found this really shocking. But I was thinking about it, and I think there’s several issues:

• In many families both parents work full time. Therefore kids are in nursery almost all their waking hours 5 days a week. Nurseries are often one small room with very limited outdoor play time.
• many parents are burned out with trying to work full time and manage kids/household. On top of that a cost of living crisis. So they resort to screen time at home. I dont think this is an excuse but it is a reality for many.

Obviousky there’s also just lots of lazy/crap parents, but the way society is set up nowadays doesn’t help.

@MuskIsACnt But that is why I was wondering why nurseries are not teaching these things

Nursery have ratios of 1:8, 1:5 and 1:3. They quite often don't have enough pairs of hands to supervise all the children as they would like. There was a post on here a while ago about a nursery that had eighteen babies in one room!

Sorry just looked back at thread it was 21 babies in one room.

In my experience, they do. I imagine the majority of children going to school not knowing how to turn a page in a book, not potty trained etc were less likely to have been in full time nursery rather than more likely.

What do you think of Learn with Lammy?

I think there's a few issues supporting this statistic:

• A significant number of children don't attend nursery before Reception.
• Parents are not potty training. This can't be done by nursery alone. State funded nurseries are 15 hours per week for the majority. I have a child where I work who is past 4. She could do it, I'm confident, but the parents don't want the hassle so... I can't do it in the 15 hours she's with me. She just holds her wee for 3 hour time periods (so she has control).
• Huge rise in special needs, which affects all development. If 5 of the class gave SEN and 5 didn't attend any nursery, that's already a third of the class.

I've worked in a few places and we teach it all but potty training. We can support potty training but we can't do it.

I think kids who don't understand how books work or can't sit on the carpet have not attended any nursery.

Sorry, they either haven't been to nursery OR have significant developmental issues. We have 2 going to school in September who would qualify in this area - including potty training. There's about another 20 going who are absolutely fine in all areas, apart from 1 not potty trained.

Nurseries will be doing things like reading books to kids but their free flow nature means that if a child doesn’t choose reading books as an activity then they won’t be the one holding the book and turning the pages (they are seeing this action in reverse ) Plus the rise in Kindles and people reading the internet rather than print media means that kids don’t see people reading books very often.

The physical strength thing is presumably kids going out less and riding cars more. I’ve lived in flats with a lift but my kids did walk up hills which presumably develops the same strength as walking up stairs.

Not sure about sitting on the carpet. Are these kids lying on the carpet or a sofa when playing ? Doesn’t sitting when eating develop the same muscles as sitting on a carpet ? My youngest couldn’t sit still on the carpet until end of year 2 but his teacher at the time said that a lot of kids were like that and as long as they responded to the “please sit still” reminder card that she held up then it wasn’t a problem. I remember showing him standing desks on the internet and thinking he’d get more work done if he was allowed to work at one. (He watched TV standing up until age 6 ish)