School Readiness

[MissLead]

So on the news this morning it was reported that 37% of kids going to school in UK are not deemed ‘ready’ often lacking basic speech and not being toilet trained.

Assuming these kids have no medical conditions - there must be some bloody lazy parents out there!!

For us

Specialist footwear that needs fitting every 12 weeks
Adapted clothing, we have to have this altered as what she needs isn’t available in shops
Physiotherapy, in the UK the NHS wouldn’t fund it until she was eight years old and not walking
Specialist pushchair
Insert for pushchair that had to be fitted every 12 weeks
Leg braces, again, every 12 weeks

Which of the above were provided by surestart when it was around?

Everyone also seems to forget that the official advice (on NHS for example) was to wait until your child is ready to potty train , for more than a decade. Wait. Look for the signs. Leave it if it doesn’t work and then try again. Parents were told not to worry, it will come. No intervention even if suspected issues , because “it’s normal” . Come back when they’re 5. Come back when they’re 7.

This only has started to change recently since the Kindred reports started coming in and now the ERIC foundation is doing a big push to not wait.

My comments don't shame you. I said in the past most children weren't toilet trained despite having NO SEN.
We have high needs SEN children in school that aren't toilet trained. We also have some very high needs children that are toilet trained.

There is more to being school ready than toileting. It looks like you and school feel that your son is not school ready but underlying SEN is the cause here. These aren't the children we are talking about.
It's those with no reason not to be other than lack of experience, exposure, expectation and parental involvement.
I am absolutely not talking about kids in daycare all day because their parents work. ALL children like this who come to my school are school ready. The ones that aren't are at home or only attend for their free 15 hours.

I don't think this is actually the case for most kids.

The children I know who have 2 working parents and went to nursery are all doing great.

The ones that are doing the worst have two parents out of work with no particular interest in finding a job.

However, regardless of whether it's working parents not having the time or stay at home parents not having the money, if you don't have the resources to raise kids you should probably wait until you do, or not have any.

Circumstances change but most people living a chaotic life after kids were living a chaotic life before kids.

It is not always down to lack of money or lack of resources. Many years ago ( maybe 2 decades ago) i watched a tv programme, they were talking to families on an estate very close to a beach, not one of the parents had ever taken their child/ren to the beach. A 10 year old had lived there all his life yet hadn't ever set foot on the sand. So bloody heartbreaking. Not one parent could give a reason as to why they didn't/wouldn't use this free facility.

They don’t think it’s their responsibility.
DDs BF at primary. Parents worked, plenty of money, had a car. We live 10 minutes from the beach.
Never took them, her and DH went without them. Tried to get me to take them. I think if it’s not entertaining/of benefit to them they aren’t interested.

We have resorted to whole class teaching, complete with a PowerPoint with photos, on how to use cutlery due to a massive increase children who have not been taught this at home. We are seeing similar issues with toilet training, how to put on a coat and shoes, and basic manners like saying "please" and "thank you". I am not talking about children with SEN. I am talking about children who are completely physically and cognitively capable of doing these things but have not been taught.

I agree. I don't know how to explain it. Decades ago there was a documentary about two families who lived in our area. One couple was very wealthy, lived in an enormous house and came out with cringeworthy statements like 'Now we've found this amazing state school for the children, it's so much easier to fund their extracurricular activities, skiing holidays and our second home in France! Who knew?' Anyway, the contrasting family lived in nearby social housing and appeared to have no get up and go at all. The mother moaned about how little there was for the children to do because she couldn't afford to pay for anything. All my sympathy for her evaporated when the director said 'What about the park? There's a playground there and it's free. You could walk there in five minutes from here.' The mother said 'Yes, but it's up a hill'. I know the area well. We're not talking Ben Nevis. Some people are just utterly hopeless and helpless. It must often carry on down the generations.

Where are the grandparents in this? If my husband and I had failed to teach our children basic stuff, my parents would have commented, and rightly so.

Absolutely this. The younger of my two children (no SEN) trained within the past five years, and the advice was still to wait until they showed signs of readiness.
So we tried at 3. Then when it didn't work we tried again a few months later and he basically got it. However there was definitely the odd accident starting school. So we would be derided by a lot of people on this thread, even though we followed the then-current advice.

I won't deride anyone who did that as I also got told the same thing, but it was bad advice. It definitely caused me to waver and doubt myself during potty training. Your child was fine, many children will be, but particularly for ASD children, the longer they are in nappies, the harder it will be to get them out, and this "readiness" advice is a big reason why this has happened. It turns out that it was a Pampers Exec who came up with the idea of "readiness"- why the NHS just swallowed it and started recommending it is beyond me.

While no one openly judged me for not doing the readiness thing I definitely got some raised eyebrows from some of people when I told them that I wasn't sure if they met the readiness criteria but I was sick of nappies.

I think the waiting until signs of readiness fits in quite well with a lot of other child led philosophies for a lot of parents. Probably TMI but what made me cynical was that as an adult I sometimes feel like I can't be bothered to stop what I'm doing and use the toilet so why is a two year old going to feel any more positive about it.

Just to clarify I mean I'll wait with my legs crossed when I'm engrossed in something. Not that I just sit there and wet myself 😬

In my country of origin (Europe), school readiness is about being able to sit, listen, follow instructions, use a pen. School starts later though, and a level of independance is assumed and expected incl. toilet training, dressing up etc.

Perhaps school starts too early. We seem to use Reception year as a preschool...

Many countries in Europe (I don't know about yours) start school later but it's immediately more formal learning. Reception and Y1 is an opportunity to gradually ease children into formal learning and away from a play based curriculum. Going straight from home to structured academic learning only works if the parents are engaged in giving children the skills to do that and the problem currently is they're not even getting the basics in place.

Yes I really have heard it all

...'look at the questions they asked - I'm not saying that there aren't issues, I'm just saying they've written them up for maximum shock value or allowing people to infer something that isn't really the truth.'

Also look at WHO they asked. Most are not Reception teachers.

By the time they start school, kids should be ready to sit at a desk and listen attentively to the teacher and make notes. If they can do it in China, why not here?

Aged 4? Haha, good one

If kids need more time to adjust to learning, and Reception and Year 1 bridge this gap - do they effectively get shorter primary level education?

Maybe not the taking notes part, but a reception child absolutely should be ready to sit still and listen attentively to the teacher. 10 years ago there was only the odd one or two per class that struggled. Now it's a significant proportion of the class.

I used to work in a very deprived area not too far from the coast, which was easily accessible by public transport. Lots of the children had never been to the beach. They didn’t go until the school took them on a trip. In the same area, the Council spent a lot of money doing up the local park. It was great, loads for kids to do. It was nearly always empty. I couldn’t understand the complete lack of any effort by a lot of the parents, to take their children anywhere. It was sad.

i don’t think grandparents should be blamed.
my children are very close to theirs but it’s up to me and their dad to parent, not our own parents.

Shorter than what? Play based learning is the most appropriate way to educate 4 and 5 yos.

I still can’t reliably do that and sometimes I’m the teacher.