British childhood/schooling versus elsewhere in Europe. Is it really so bad?

[Rosacharmosa]

This morning I saw an Instagram post describing a British 5 year olds morning vs a Scandivian childs morning. It said that the British child will have a rushed and stressful experience being pushed out the door at 7am for school, whereas the Scandinavian child will have a slow morning looking at the frost on the grass outside before heading off to forest school in the afternoon.

I only have one European friend (as in still living abroad) with a same age child as me (4-5) and yes her child doesn't go to formal school but she goes to nursery which starts at 8am and finishes at 5pm because my friend and her husband still have a full time job.

The messaging seems to be that British children are locked away inside classrooms studying while their same age European peers are frolicking in the forests all day. For those who were schooled or whose children are schooled abroad, is this really true?

A school day here is only 6 hours with constant school holidays, seems like plenty of time for frolicking in the outdoors yet I constantly read that British children are shut away indoors, writing at desks and consequently have a miserable childhood. I'd love to hear about some of the differences abroad from those who have lived it, in terms of time spent outdoors/independence/attitudes to play vs academics etc.

I should add:

6 months - 2/3 - crèche
2/3 - 5/6 - maternelle (nursery)
5/6 - 17/18 - primaire, collège, lycée.

State-funded / provided childcare is the norm here from 6 months old.

The lack of support for children with SEN is dire here and autism has only recently even been acknowledged. There’s a real reluctance to make any allowances or exceptions for students with special needs - the French system is based firmly on equality of input, not of outcome. I dislike the ‘endurance test / survival of the fittest’ nature of the system and the pigeonholing of kids into specific educational streams age 13/14 is pretty brutal.

Where is this child that only goes to forest school in the mornings?

Who is looking after them? Someone is.

This magic idea that they aren't being shoved out the house relies on a stay at home parent or grandparent turning up to enable the parents to go to work.

For plenty that's not an option so they will still be shoved out the door at 8am.

This whole concept in the OP is fantasy land.

Yes this is exactly what I would like to know!

@RedToothBrush same as anywhere else - either people with loads of money (stay at home parents), or no money (unemployed, can’t afford childcare, often underprivileged with little resources to devote to children).
The first category can benefit (not always!), the second category is more likely to start school at 6 years old miles behind all the other with no chance of catching up.

Yeah most young children are gonna be in nursery, probably for longer hours than school but tbf nursery is a lot less tiring for a child than school is, even with longer days. Preschool was the worst for DS as he was there 7-17 and had 4 hours of school within that time, he was tired by end of day.

So still kicked out of the house at the same time not sauntering in the afternoon after a lazy morning at home then...

IG has lots of anti school/ anti UK content on it whereas in reality it's much more nuanced. As PP have said most European children are in childcare similar to a nursery or reception.

My UK four year old has just had a chill morning, left the house at 8.30, walked to school where he will mainly play with some short carpet learning inputs and then do forest school in the afternoon. Then I'll get him at 3.15 and we'll go to the park. This is because I work part time though so surely it's partly dependent on that.

Reception and Year One kids in the UK shouldn't be doing lots of formal learning. I think the campaign for more playbased learning in KS1 is hugely important here.

You're being unreasonable to think of 'Europe' as one single educating mono culture and UK vs 'Europe'. I imagine what happens in education in Finland is different to Denmark which is different to Spain which is different to Lithuania which is different to France, Germany, Greece, Switzerland, Malta, Belgium, Liechtenstein etc etc...

All countries will have positives and negatives. Some will do some things much better, some worse. Not all systems work for all the children of that nation even if they are considered fairly good ones like Sweden that often gets mentioned.

My kids are at high school on Wales, very happy, very sporty and musical as well as the traditional subjects. They also do something called Enrichment, sort of extra curricular stuff, that a school down the road doesn't do. Both state schools.

I have family in Sweden- the parents work and the DC were in nursery, now school. They most certainly weren’t frolicking in the woods all morning.

Likely a far less lazy morning than British children! Nurseries in Finland are often open 24 hours so there will be children being woken up at 5 to be dropped off so parents can do a 6am shift start, and others who'll go late in the evening and sleep at nursery because their parents work night shifts. Its great for parents, obviously, but I imagine its pretty harsh and tiring on very small children.

We're in Belgium. Maternelle from 2.5 to 5. No "formal" reading and writing but very structured - with a teacher. My dd "themes" e.g. they'd learn about wheat, so they'd draw pictures, go to a farm, go to the bakery to see bread being made, do some rudimentary baking, bring baked things from home etc. Then Weather, or insects etc. I was always amazed that the teachers managed to achieve anything beyond getting 20 tiny ones to go the toilet or sit still for long enough. Nap at lunch time. Primaire from year they turned 6. I remember the teacher telling me that the kids would all learn to read and write within the first 6 months and being surprised, but it happened. Desks all facing the front. Lots of rote learning and tests. Homework. The school buildings were generally open from 7.30 to 6 / 6.30 with different staff covering lunch time and wrap round. This was very cheap. School was 8.30 to 3 or 3.30. No school on a Wednesday afternoon - usually when sports clubs / music lessons were laid on elsewhere.

Secondary school - 12 - 18. All subjects studied effectively for the the whole 6 years - even RE - but you could specialise in later years and do e.g. more languages, less maths, or doing social sciences and less chemistry / physics etc. Lots of home work and tests. If you don't pass the year, you double and do it again - this is very common.

I’m always surprised how little time british children spend in education!
School is 9-3 at max, with 1 hour break, that makes a maximum of 5 hours per day. Homework in primary basically nonexistent, in secondary minimal (2hours per day maximum).
My home country school is at minimum 8-1, (3:30 at least twice a week in secondary, with a 45 min lunch break ) with two 15 minutes breaks, so 4.5 hours per day, plus a minimum of 1 hour homework (early years), going up to 3-4 hours per day (secondary school). So a minimum of 5.5 (early primary) hours to easily 9+ hours (secondary)

I don’t have kids yet so can’t comment on specifics, but as a European living in the UK, surely the elephant in the room is the UK class divide!?

To me it seems like here, the kids from well-off families have wildly different experiences to the ones from lower-income families. At least in the countries I grew up in (one in southern Europe and one in northern Europe) there wasn’t such a big socioeconomic divide to begin with, and while there were obviously differences between children’s backgrounds, there was also a lot more mixing.

Little frolicking to be had in my tiny corner of Italy.

Even the most engaged parents have had enough of the stress by mid 2nd year of middle school. The high school parents are often trying to juggle peri menopause, knackered, suddenly less compliment + mucho hacked off knackered teenagers and increasing mountains of studying for the endless bombardment of written and oral tests.

Teachers dropping like flies.

Behaviour impossible to manage because sanctions (notes to parents, parents called, sending to the vice-president) doesn’t phase that cohort or their parents. The behaviour grade seems to get adjusted to a pass come what may. The well behaved kids get the worst of it with surprise punishment test, or whole class punishment of writing the school rules for an entire lesson while the teacher takes the Usual Suspects off to be told off.

It wasn’t great 20 years ago, but the teachers are 20 years older and tireder, the behaviour has become a bigger issue (potentially because sanctions like being held back a year, suspended seem to have been taken off the table) and teaching time gets eaten by the Usual Suspects acting up so the homework load increases to fill the gap and parents/kids find all free time sucked up into playing catch up with what failed to happen at school.

My parent/tutor coffee meet ups have required more tissues than I remember at any time other than during the pandemic. Which also didn’t help.

All feels very frolic-lite in these parts.

Also in Luxembourg it wasn't uncommon to repeat a school year if you didn't do well enough.

I remember having eczema from the fear of repeating a year!

Didn't want to be a legal adult going to school with 15-16 year olds!!

What is meant by 'rote learning' and PISA scores?

These stories are written by people who don’t know what they are talking about. Primary schools in the U.K. generally start at 8.45 (varies a little bit) and finish shortly after 3, if the child is going in earlier it is to optional breakfast club because the parents work (same across Europe) as for the education, my dc lives in a country often cited for their perfect childhoods starting at 7 yet in reality parents are complaining about how the education system isn’t working, kids get so behind other countries, end up finishing school older, and many more affluent are paying for private preschools from 4-6 to give them a better start meaning that the poorest kids are the disadvantaged ones, they also send them to English language preschools to give them a step up.

there isn’t a perfect system but it varies from child to child what suits them best

I'm in Austria. Kids age 1-6 can go to kindergarten where the lead staff have to have degree equivalent qualifications. The kids have autonomy but strict boundaries so the behaviour is frankly excellent. They are outdoors every day but not in the rain!

It is a black box though, there is nothing like these apps in the UK recording every bowel movement, just a parents meeting once a year.

Big difference is that parents have a legal right to work part-time until their child is 5 so most kids are picked up at 3pm and/or don't go every day.

@notthedogsfault there is a huge difference between schools in affluent areas, and schools outside in my home country . Combined with an early selection grammar school system (after 3 years of primary - only children from involved backgrounds stand a chance), social mobility is pretty much zero - much, much worse than in the UK

Thanks for all the comments- it's really interesting to read some real life examples of what it's like elsewhere in Europe. I guess everywhere has its pros and cons.

Definitely pros and cons everywhere but whenever I tell my DD about school in Britain she declares that she's so glad she doesn't have to go to school there! Strict rules and uniforms seem to be her biggest issue with it, or the dressing up as different things days in primary school (she refused to partake in similar things in her primary school but they were just once a year)

I've voted that you're being unreasonable for believing what you read/see on Instagram!

We've got a different educational system to other European countries (well they differ from each other too). Hell, we've got a different system to Scotland, a nation in the UK! I'm sure we've got broad things in common and that there are differences due to culture and climate.

A friend has brought her children up in Switzerland and from what I can see there are upsides but also downsides. There are aspects that seem better to an outsider for sure. But it seems to be very much a one size fits all system. I know people say that about England, but despite the government's best efforts we do have a bit of choice in the system if the local school doesn't seem suitable.

Rote learning = memorising facts and knowledge.

I trained a teacher educated in Sri Lanka and she said their system is all like that. UK came as a shock.

PISA scores - International standardised testing. England does quite well.

I went to school in Scotland, but my children (aged between 7and 14) go to school in Slovenia (normal, state run school not private/international school). There are plenty of differences, pluses and minuses of both systems.

I don't think education is perfect anywhere right now - the world has changed so much in the last few decades and I don't think any of us really know what sort of future the next couple of generations are going to be dealing with.

The massive difference school in Slovenia is that compared to the UK, private education is not really a thing (there are some international schools, but mostly used by foreigners who travel a lot) and education is standardized across the country, so all children regardless of what area they live in, or how money their parents earn, experience basically the same educational opportunities.

Here, children don't start until the September after their 6th birthday (or are very nearly 6 - the youngest children in the year start aged 5 years and 9 months) and they don't start learning to read and write until after new year in 1st grade, when they are all 6 (or nearly 7) and it seems to go really easily - I would say from what I've seen, average 7/8 year olds here read and write at the same level (or higher) as average 7/8 year olds in the UK, just spent a lot less time learning how to do it.

Language teaching is good. They all start learning English in 1st grade, by around 5th grade (age 10) most are completely fluent. From 4th or 5th grade they have the option to learn more languages.

They all do a cycling proficiency test, during school hours, at the start of 5th grade (age 9 or 10) and then get given a bike license. After that they are allowed to cycle to school on their own - and bike is how they take themselves to all activities/sports training /meeting friends /going to birth parties etc etc from that age onwards. Because most of them do it, it's normal (some parents insist on driving them everywhere, but that's a new thing).

There is kindergarten available 5 days a week from 1 year old to 6 years old, but it is optional, and payment is means tested, so you only pay if you can genuinely afford to. Most children go from around age 3 or 4, some go younger, some don't go at all, it depends on the family. It makes it a lot easier for all parents to return to work.

What I don't like... They get masses of homework, a lot of it just rote learning. There is a lot of pressure on grades from 3rd grade onwards, some parents (and consequently kids) get really stressed if they don't get top marks. A lot of life skills (being kind, being independent) are not noticed at all. If children need extra help, it is up to parents to do it at home or find and pay for extra tuition outside of school.

The school day starts very early - some days at 730, some days 8.15. It's fine when they are little but gets harder when they are teenagers - especially for high school (aged 15/16 onwards) as most high school classes seem to start around 7.30 and if you have to travel to get there it gets very hard for some of them to get enough sleep, especially as they are expected to work/study a lot in the evenings.

They finish around 12 or 1pm though, so another positive thing at primary school (which goes til 9th grade, aged 15) is that there is lots time after school for unstructured play or sports/music training every day.

If we’re talking about primary school:
We got up about 7.30, left the house about 8.15 - if not raining or really cold we walked to school (20 minutes).
Play in playground before the bell.
In nursery/Reception loads of outdoor play in the school day,
Three break times outside (inc lunch)
PE twice a week.
I did usually drive to pick up as they were tired at the end if the day. Sometimes they’d have an active club too like drama or football.
We took them to loads of parks/soft play etc at weekends and holidays.
Both v slim throughout their childhood.