Do you think our educational standards are too low by expecting too much too early

[ReallyTired]

Ie. in Europe many children start school at seven after several years in nursery. They develop good fine motor skills and spoken language before they are expected to learn to read and write.

My son is six years old and is expected to write a story for homework, but he finds it a nightmare even to form his letters. Is this a homework for him or for me?

Prehaps there would be fewer dyslexic/ SEN children if children were taught to read and write when developmentally ready. A very high proportion of children with statements are summer born boys!

I think that year 1 children are expected to be able to run before they can walk. If children in the UK spent longer on the basics ie. If they spent time learning to add and substract before being asked to apply their maths knowledge to situations. Prehaps young children are better at improving their spelling and writing rather than writing in different genre.

Countries like Finland over take the UK and have better educated adults. No one there seems harmed by a later start to education.

agree with op.
I think 3 yrs of well organized, creative nursery school are precious.

I think allowing children to develop at their own pace is crucial. When they are young they learn through play. I think bombarding them with information isn't that helpful. Combined with large class sizes and lack of individual attention I'm not surprised children get left behind and find it difficult. There's been a few books written about it and also the importance of developing other areas than just academic. There are something like 7 other areas, artistic, musical, practical etc..

My dd goes to a Montessori, which is well organised and structured with wide-ranging activities and I've been looking for alterntives as it's about to close. In comparison the locaal nursery that feeds into the school struck me as disorganised, overcrowded, and they seem to just do activities by dictate .. this week the gov say do this - there seems to be a lack of cohesion, philosphy and ethos - makes me wonder about the schools too.

I think it depends on the child actually and the fact is the system is trying to group everyone together and from what I have seen keep everyone at pretty much the same level. My DD started reception last year, she had been in nursery since about 12 months old and then pre-school. Her social skills were/are very good, she was keen to start school. I am happy for her to learn through play where it is structured, with a purpose not just choosing to cut out of a magazine all afternoon.

As regards our system compared to various european countries, from what I can understand whilst they don't start formal education i.e school until 7 their preschools are much more structured than ours. The net result is that they attend nursery/preschool and learn through structured play and then start school where they go straight into formal learning. I think partly where our system falls down is that they start school in reception which is still like pre-school, get settled into this and then wham bham year 1 comes along and it is all work and hardly any play. So in this respect I think the jump from reception to year 1 is not managed well enough and yes too much is expected.

I do feel that the system requires me to send my DD to school in the year she is 5 for 5 days a week for a complete school year. If they are going to do this I expect them to do something with this time. I don't believe for many children they need a whole year of this before more formal learning. Schools should be identifying the different needs of children and adjusting their approach accordingly.

Some nurseries are grasping aspects of learn through play by gov dictate it has trickled in but their interpretation I have found to be very different to what I have seen in other environments and is quite chaotic rather than structured and beneficial. They do a lot of drama and role play at my dd's montessori, singing, dance etc activities range from making electric circuits to cooking jam. It's a really wholistic approach and developing a child when they are ready to.

There are alot of posts which seem to talk about delaying formal learning will help dyslexic children. There is a big difference between being dyslexic and simply maturing at a later stage.

I don't think a reputable Ed. Psych. would assess a child below the age of 6. It is very difficult to tell at this age whether difficulties are down to immaturity or a specific learning difficulty.

I don't think delaying formal learning at primary school will help truly dyslexic children in the long run.

hmm I think that children play for a reason, they consolidate and digest information, they develop senses I don't think sticking them in front of desks so young is wholy beneficial. They need to learn through practical application.

They need to be creative and imaginative

My children are not pushed (academically) at home, and so far they have had teachers that respect our desire that we don't want them forced (like rhubarb) in school. We let them learn at their own pace, and whilst my boys might have been slower to read at first, we have always been told how intelligent, how knowledgable and how much understanding of stories/books they all have. Now DS#2 is at least slightly above average academically in Yr 6. So I don't beleive letting him do it more slowly did him harm.

Yes I do think that if parents don't stand their ground and have sympathetic teachers, they can be disadvantaged.

lazymumofteenagesons,
Prehaps starting formal learning later would not help a truely dyslexic child. However I believe that the label dyslexia is often misapplied to any child who is bright but unable to read.

A bright child with undiagnosed glue ear may well have similar problems to a dyslexic child. Unlike dyslexia, most children outgrow glue ear.

I agree totally RT. The dyslexia label is banded about without much backing, there is much more to it than just not being able to read at an early age.

In my experience most of the late readers caught up with no problem in my sons class. Even those diagnosed with dyslexia learnt to read with the right help, but there are all sorts of developmental delays which can also be involved.

My oldest is slightly dyslexic and she learned to read 2 or 3 years older than her younger sister and probably would have benefited from doing it later. She stayed for two years in the year 2 as well (although she was a year young in the school to start with). By the way she also had glue ear and after the various operations suddenly seemed a lot brighter. Now she's doing her final exams and doing very well. But I would not delay everyone starting to read however just because a few children in a class may not be ready, not if those children may be competing for school places at 7 or 11 which will make the difference to their life chances later.

There is no perfect system tailored to every individual child anywhere, in any country. The best you will get, in all probability, is a good UK private school with small classes if you want individually tailored reading.

Here in France we have to grapple with the last year of primary school, which is completely redundant for clever children who learned to read early and sailed through primary school. The last year only exists to ensure the really slow children enter secondary school knowing the basics. The clever children just switch off (and get demotivated) for a year

I agree I actually think too much is expected at an early age.Every kid is different dd is in reception and is desprate to read where as DS in year 2 and who is dyslexic really struggles with school full stop "he is a summer born "

I also agree that come year 1 they are expected to run before they have learnt to walk.More time is needed on basics maths and english

I think that there should be a bit more choice which academic year summer born children are in. A huge number of children with statements are summer born boys. I think that a lot of money would be saved if immature, summer born children were allowed to defer starting school. At the moment its a joke, if you decide not to send an August born child to school before they are five they miss reception. Scotland allows young children to defer starting school, if necessary.

Xenia, surely the fact that one of your daughters learnt to read at three shows that being at nursery has not held her back. Countries like Finland have very good nursery provision.

The Finnish outshine us academically. They might not be as ahead at seven years old, but certainly they are ahead at 11.

I agree with the OP. We are too keen to fit our dcs into targets and statistics.

I read in the paper today about the new curriculum for nurseries and childminders etc. Apparently the aim is for 3 year olds to be able to read and write simple 3 letter words 'sat', 'can' etc AFAIK this is reception work atm.

I don't want my dd to fit into a box, I want her to learn at her own rate and not just academic things. I want her to be confident in her abilities, not 'failing' at the age of 3!

I think there's a lot of sense in what you say, RT. Lots of children are turned off and tune out by simply not being ready. DS2 was born 4 hours before the school year cut off, and I think he is phenomenally lucky that reading etc has come easily to him. In the international school that DS1 started at, 4 boys in his class with June to August birthdays had been held back a year. They were so much more ready to learn.

My son has picked up reading reasonably easily inspite of having hearing problems. Spelling is much harder as my son simply cannot hear all the 42 sounds of English.

However he finds writing difficult because his fine motor control is weak. My son was born new years eve. I hate to think what it would be like if he had a summer birthday.

I think that we label children as being high ablity or low ablity too early. This must smash the self esteem of the supposely "low ablity" children. Some high achieving countries have mixed ablity teaching right up to secondary school. Is grouping by ablity really necessary in infant school? Are there better ways of differentiating for different ablities.

Even if a summer born child can cope with the academic work they are often socially immature. For example one of my son's little friends cried every night when she started school. Academically the little girl had no problems, but the school enviroment made her unhappy as she still needed her mummy.

"Xenia, surely the fact that one of your daughters learnt to read at three shows that being at nursery has not held her back. Countries like Finland have very good nursery provision."

ReallyTired - I think there is some confusion going on here.

Xenia's daughter, as far as I understand, did not go to nursery (crèche in France) but had a nanny at home and went to nursery school which these days is called pre-school (and is the equivalent of a French école maternelle).

The Finnish nursery model as far as I understand it is quite different.

Has anyone read 'Proust and the Squid'? In it the author describes how the brain learns to read. Children can't learn to read until their brains are physically ready and this can typically happen between the ages of 3 and 7. So that means some of our children are spending up to 3 years in formal education (years 1-3) being expected to do something that they are not ready to do. This must be damaging to the children's self-esteme and development. Imo, this partly explains our schools poor performance figures at age 11. These children feel failures from the start.

I volunteer in school and notice with reading that for the vast majority of children, it just happens between the age of about 6 and 6.5. Some get it sooner, but by the end of Y2, most children can read pretty well.

I so agree about labelling children early on. I also agree about the motor skills issue. DS1 used to hold a pencil correctly, naturally, in nursery, but he didn't do much writing or drawing. In Reception, at just 4, he had to start writing and he wasn't strong enough, so he adapted his grip to cope - now he has a dreadful grip and it's really too late to sort it. If he hadn't been made to learn to write properly until 6, he'd probably have retained the instinctive grip he had at 2 and 3. So it has damaged his writing for ever.

We recently moved back from Spain, partly because of their education system. Children start school from the age of three and go from 9-5 (with a two hour siesta built in). It is supposed to be nursery but is much stricter than our schools, much more emphasis on discipline and the three 'Rs', learning by rote etc. Not much concept of creative play or learning through play. The children are exhausted and brain-dead by the end of the day.

By comparison, British schools seem to me lovely warm, creative places, with frequent short breaks and a lot of emphasis on creative, imaginative activities eg, music etc, and also working a child's own pace ie, with their own workbooks etc.

But then, my oldest is only reception-age - am I in for a nasty shock?!

Let me try to remember - she is 21 now and doing university finals so it's a while back. We had a nanny at home. She went to a morning Montessori nursery school when she was almost 3 and seemed to pick up her letters quite quickly. She was probably also copying her older sister at home who would have been learning to read at 5 at school and she seemed to take in words from stories we read to her at night. Then she left that school and went to a full time I think it was one when she was 3 going on 4 in the year before she was going to try to compete for a place for her sister's school which in those days began at age 5. She had a very good class teacher in a very small class who helped her.