Discussion - School is NOT beneficial to young children at all!

[shappyred]

The UK education system is antiquated and damaging to children. Formal learning would ideally begin from age 7-8, until then, children need free-play, social time and lots of outdoor time.

What are the best alternatives to this? Home Ed? Forest school? Also, it's very clear that parent/child attachment becomes strained and kids become peer attached at school, this is wrong on all levels!

What type of provision could work better? Private schooling it seems isn't much better.

A play based provision from 5-8 year olds?

I'm very interested in this subject..

Would love to hear some opinions on this topic too!
My little girl is 6 months and I am already dreading the school system. This is my first child but observing UK education for my nieces and nephews has been a huge eye opener! We have two in private school which lasted around 5 years then home schooled instead, one home school mixed with forest school the rest in mainstream. At the moment forest school/home schooling seems to be the better option in my opinion. One parent would definitely have to be on reduced hours/self employed/unemployed.

Intrigued to read some opinions on this.

Most schools use play-based learning in Reception and Year 1 already, and that’s increasingly into Year 2.

In a lot of European countries, most children are in excellent nursery/kindergarten provision before they start school which isn’t dissimilar to EYFS/Y1 in Britain.

children need free-play, social time and lots of outdoor time.

Sounds pretty much like reception class to me.

My kids have thrived since starting school. I have no issue with the starting age at all.

It depends. I have three children who thrived at their state primary schools and benefited from the fairly ambitious and fast paced early curriculum. It was especially amazing to watch them become confident readers within a handful of months.

Meanwhile, I was taught by a bunch of hippies who spent most of their time singing and and painting and we were expected to absorb reading and writing skills out of the ether. It was shit.

DD thrived at school, I supplemented her school learning with family activities at the weekend and evening. Most schooling is play based to begin with and most children enjoy learning about dinosaurs, Tudors, Romans and the world around them.

Children are only at school for 6 hours a day, 10 hours sleeping, that's another 8 hours a day you can spend doing fun engaging things with your child. Bushcraft type groups exist too it's not all or nothing you can do plenty outside of school to allow your child to engage with nature and to improve resilience by doing risky things safely. If they get picked up from school and plonked Infront of the TV then thats a different issue but it's not a school one....

I think nursery and reception are generally done well in the UK but year 1 is too formal.

I don’t think any one can claim that school isn’t benifical as that simply isn’t true as children make measurable progress. You could possibly argue that on balance it’s more negative than positive. I
don’t agree with this but it’s an arguement some people could make.

If both parents need to be working full time to support their family thanks to the enormous rise in the cost of living, who will be facilitating this magical outside childhood free play? And who will pay for it if the parents can't afford it?

I entirely disagree.
We already do learning through play in the UK via EYFS, until year 1 when children are 5/6.
Most children are excited and ready to start school, and thrive.
Lots of children love routine, love the social aspects of school and knowing the expectations of them.
My children were absolutely ready for school and becoming very bored of playing all day, all were keen to be learning to read and doing maths!

In what way do you imagine that child-parent attachments become strained, op?

Another one who completely disagrees.
I think we have it about right in the UK with starting ages and nursery/reception. The first few years being largely play anyway.

Totally agree.
My main gripe is homework.
The stress and disruption of family life is simply not commensurate with any benefits.

Encourage a joyful love of learning and let them fly. Not this awful draining nonsense.

Homework should go for primary aged children (unless it’s targeted at specific children in areas where they might need help)

Asking small children (and then of course so much falls to the parents) to do extra work outside of school hours is unfair and unnecessary. Any study they do outside of school hours should be a choice and only done if they enjoy it (I will caveat this by saying I think reading is very important but writing comments in a little book about Bif and Chip and a Magic Key nightly is not)

Homework for children in primary is fucking insane.

The school system isn’t failing all children by being academic. My dd was done with play. She was ready for more academic work than the school was ready to provide. It was too slow, the ramp-up far too gentle.

it's very clear that parent/child attachment becomes strained and kids become peer attached at school, this is wrong on all levels!

So you're saying kids make friends and Mummy gets jealous?

You sound like an anxious parent. Children's brains are like sponges, it's well known that their language development skills are far better when younger, so its much easier for them to learn a foreign language. Schools could do much more in this regard I feel. They miss a trick by not teaching other languages at that age.

I completely disagree. My daughter thrives at school and it has in now way had a negative impact on our relationship. Play based learning is a huge part of Reception and Year 1 learning anyway.

Are you a teacher ?

If only we'd had a recent experiment where young children were banned from going to school for a significant period of time and could see how that worked out.

My son is in Year 3. He got one small bit of spelling homework a week in Reception to Year 2 and no sanction for not doing it.

Reading book home and 10 mins a day reading aloud to us in the evening.

Learning very play-based, the Reception class had dolls in it. He loved the routine. Also the music and the drama. I tell you what absolutely would have damaged our parent-child relationship- him spending all day every day with me!

Home ed? As if millions of people (mostly women) can afford to pack in their jobs and home-educate. And kiss their careers and earning potential goodbye at the same time.

How about we continue to send kids where they go already, and tweak that a bit?

Mine have all finished school now But I do think they start too young in the UK.
My oldest was in Reception before moving abroad and then having to wait till he was old enough to start Kindergarten. Kids 2 and three never went to preschool or nursery (nothing available in our rural location unless they were at risk kids) and they started at 5 1/2 years in half day Kindergarten and loved it.
2 went to Uni and one to College and is doing more courses for work as they come up.

There is no UK education system. I assume you mean the English system?

We are in Scotland where my August born ds started school two weeks before his 5th birthday and no child can be younger than 4.5 at start, most are 5 or older.
We have no homework at primary except for reading in the first year or two.
Our children do lots of independent investigation and lots of outdoor learning. The school is a caring and supportive environment that mixes children from different backgrounds and extends my child's social circle in terms of friends with different religious and cultural backgrounds well beyond what I could provide.
It is absolutely not perfect, and does fail many SEN children, but certainly not the majority of children.

Rubbish, I absolutely hated the free play and outside of my nursery and spent my whole time in the school room section of my nursery. By 4 I was reading and writing, ready to learn.

One of my dc were reading and writing before compulsory school too, hated playing outside and free time in the class room because she loved learning. The other was keener on running about but she got plenty of that outside of school time the 6 hours of the school day minus one hour lunch/playtime I wanted her learning. Both are adults now

Some children are ready for school and formal learning earlier, and have a real thirst for knowledge. Other children won't be ready for some time. Perhaps it would be more sensible to find a way of accommodating all children's differing needs in the same setting instead of a one-size-fits-all approach.