School readiness survey - surprising?

[GirlfromtheNorthLondonCountry]

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

Is it really the case that 4 year olds (absent disabilities) are unable to climb stairs or sit on the rug because of too much screen time? It just seems so extraordinary to me.

Yes my dgd was born in Covid and she is doing well luckily

It reads like exactly what happens when you cut off every single support available for new parents.

We need to get back to parents doing their job and not palming everything off onto other people! A baby is a responsibility, not merely an Instagram brag!

I ran a toddler group when my two were little and, as a psychologist, it was really interesting to see the way in which parents watched and learned from each other. I think the positive impact of these groups, and of just hanging out with other parents, is really poorly understood - seeing how someone else deals with a situation (e.g. when a child throws a toy) can be really helpful in shaping habits and understanding parenting tactics. Anyone how became a first time parent in 2020 lost all that.

What kind of support do you think that families need to cover these very basic skills that children need to function? What kind of support that wasn't around say, thirty years ago?

No, it's neglect!

Is that question to me?

If so, support like being able to have another adult in the same room.

So there's just something about all these parents, not related to covid, that means they're all suddenly neglectful at the same time?

So the atomisation of wider families? Yes, I don't think that helps.

Agree! I'm a childminder and some things are very worrying....

No. During covid you were not allowed to have anyone in the same room as you, other than your partner. If you had no partner, or they were away, you were entirely alone.

I'd love to know how much time these young children are spending on screens and how much time that their parents are on them when with their children too. I think that might be enlightening.

So, you are suggesting this just a problem for children with sole parents? The numbers seem too large for that.

Because they would have to get off their arses and do it, instead they leave it to others.

Again no. I'm saying that every single person who had a new baby in 2020 was not allowed to be with other people, besides the people who lived in their household and that that had an impact on them.

How did you come to that conclusion? That was not what was being suggested at all. The poster was setting out the context.

So you think this is an epidemic of neglect caused by lonely parents?

It was trendy long before the excuse of covid to neglect to toilet train. Yes there's something about these parents, they are lazy, poor parents who want an easy life.

Surprising, absolutely not.

Appalling, definitely.

I work across a large number of schools and have been in education for 30 years. Definitely a huge change in developmental expectation and stage. This isn't just COVID, more about screen time and isolation.

At one time, children weren't allowed to start a school nursery at three, unless they were toilet trained. We had the very occasional child where this was the case, parent deferred the place and within a couple of weeks they were back with the child toilet trained and ready to start. Now I see numerous children at age 4-5, in full time school, requiring toilet training.

Language is affected too by screens. The number of children with American English and an American accent. No need to guess how they fill their time.

Children who swipe the bottom of a page in a book and look puzzled when the page doesn't flick over.

Children who can't follow an instruction or answer when asked a question.

Children without curiosity, to investigate, to try, to fail, to become resilient. To problem solve.

I really do worry about parenting and the impact on young children, our adults if the future.

What would be interesting and useful to have actual data on is the circumstances of these kids who are struggling.

Many people have suggested potential reasons on this thread but we don't know the real reasons without drilling down a bit with more data.

I agree @JobhuntingDespair - we urgently need to do some genuine research into what's going wrong, and come up with some initiatives to help mitigate it. Basically we need a societal rethink about our whole approach to childhood and how we view it.

But none of that will ever happen, because as a nation we're not really all that interested in children/young people/families, and all of those groups have been deprioritised for years. And other than a few lone voices, like the amazing Frank Cottrell Boyce, no one is really speaking up for kids right now.

I was reading the new, extremely glowing, Ofsted report for a local primary school the other day - Outstanding in all areas. It's a school that we could have chosen for DD but wouldn't touch with a barge pole because of its ethos - super strict, narrow curriculum, data obsessed and so on. The Ofsted report was waxing lyrical about how the school was amazing because 'children move around the corridors in an orderly fashion' and 'core learning is repeated again and again until fully consolidated, with good information retention'. Not a single reference to music/art/outdoor learning/extra curriculars. Then most of the children from that school will move on to the nearby zero tolerance academy secondary, with its silent corridors, obsessively strict uniform and similarly narrow academic curriculum.

We have our priorities completely backwards at the moment.

I can only speak from My own experience.

But I live in a deprived shithole. I also used to work in a school in another deprived shithole.

I am not from here. When I moved here a few years ago, I was shocked by the parents I encountered. While I'd previously seen them at work, I'd never lived outside of my middle class bubble before.

My older child is now year 6, she started the school in year 2 and it was like we'd stepped into a different universe. It's all fags, weed and peeling wallpaper.

My youngest started reception in September and I've been shocked at many of the children in her class. They act like babies.

It's got fuck all to do with iPads and screen time. I've never had a limit on that.

In my lived experience, it's parents who are scum and only care about drinking, hanging out of windows on their estates shouting at each other and can't string a sentence together.

Sounds awful

Is it also to do with risk assessments and litigation so if they fall over outside or something or lack of parent helper on a trip because most people are working.

My children went to a mix of a school preschool and a private nursery. The school preschool will not accept children who are not toilet trained. The private nursery allow them longer. I have always thought there was an irony re all the children going to the school preschool being coincidentally “ready” to toilet train and those in the private nursery being late starters, just not ready. Same area and demographic…! Amazing how many weren’t ready at the summer stay and play at got sorted over the 6 weeks of summer after being told that exceptions were only made for SEN.

You don’t think lockdown played a role, at all?

Well the adults of the future are going to spend a lot of time on screens, aren't they?

I feel like my whole life is on a screen. I work on a screen, do meetings over Teams, bank on an app, shop, pay bills, book appointments online. Communication with school is all online - updates during the day, school dinner menu choices, consent forms for trips, payment for after school club. They don't even have newsletters any more - guess what, it's online. My DD was ill a week ago and school didn't even ring me - they messaged on the app (which I complained about). There are no travel agents any more - just book online. No bank branches - just bank online. Items in shops not available in store - online only! The poster who mentioned Wall E had it nailed.

Modern life - depressing. But is it really any wonder some kids are on screens a bit too much?