Starting school full time - problems and concerns

[Tireless]

Has anybody else had experience of their children starting full time education when they had just turned four.

My daughter turned four at the end of august (last year) and then three weeks later started school. I believe this has had a dramatic effect on her behaviour, confidence and self esteem, she is clingy in the playground, rude to me (she was never this bad !!) and so unsure of herself around her classmates, some of whom are going to be six in september she is not even five until the end of august.
She seems so immature and young in comparison to some of the other children in her year. I wonder what the long term damage will be.

Does anybody share my concerns, or has anybody been in this situation before and found that it all works out in the end.???

copper, we've always had to take the birth certificate in on the first day of school...and you have to put the dob on the application from, they probably do check, people try to get them in early you know!

As I may have mentioned before my brother lives in Denmark, oh how I envy his children their education.

They don't have to start school untill they are 6 and then the parents can decided when they start. My nephew a very physical child did not strt 'till he was 7 as his parents felt he wasn't ready.

Decisions were made within flexible rules after discussion with nursery staff and teachers....just imagine that here.

Why do we want to make our children miserable in this country?? Four year olds in classrooms being expelled as they are not mature enough. Education in this country seems to be about forcing facts down kids, making them sit tests, and spitting them out at 16 tense little bundles of misery!!!

As Janh said changing to a more felixible system would be unpopular with parents cos they want there children at school early - despite the mounds (big piles of research) of evidence that show it doesn't work.

Phew - end of rant!

snowy - this flexible approach would be brilliant but there is another consideration involved - taxation! i don't know what rates are like in denmark specifically but i believe the scandinavian countries as a whole have far higher income tax rates than we do in order to look after their citizens better.

maybe someone should suggest this to t blair?

Well I'm that bored at work that I looked it up. Apparently Denmark's tax burden is 50% against Britain at 35% (on average family incomes). I am a bit confused about this debate as you're not legally required to send your child to school at 4 are you?.

Bells1, you don't have to send your children to school until the term after their 5th birthday. Unfortunately, they would then enter the year 1 class, not the reception class, with children who have already been at school a year. Also, it does depend on there being a place for your child at that time. Our local school (very well thought of etc) takes children from siblings & then catchment area, but if the places are all filled, they are allowed to refuse, in which case your children have to attend where there is a space. I would prefer to keep my youngest daughter (4 in July) at her nursery until christmas, and then send her to school, but the chances are she wouldn't get a place if I left it, so she will have to start 5 days a week from September.

Bells1, I thought city analysts (did you say you were one in another discussion?)lived a whirlwind, hectic existence? I'm very bored at work at the moment too (find myself checking mumsnet messages every couple of hours! - what other websites are good to surf?)
I've got a little boy due to start school this September who was 4 in April. I think he is ready for something more than nursery, but I do worry about the effect on him of being in a class of 30 and a year of 90. Although I know most of the first year will be playing, I do wonder why most other countries start at least a year later than we do. Are there any teachers out there who think it doesn't matter or alternatively that we should battle to change the system?

bells1, when you say tax burden do you mean overall, or just income tax, or income tax plus NI?
according to the tories the hidden rates (VAT, petrol duty, alcohol and cigarette duty) make ours much higher than we realise...could you check that at the same place? (if you have another spell of boredom?) thanks!!!

I live in Scotland where the system is somewhat different for starting school. The youngest a child can be is 4y 5.5mo. Your child does not have to start then but can be delayed by a year. They will then go into P1 as usual. There is no reception class in the system.

With regard to the English system, if your child has to start at the age of Debsb's daughter, is it possible to send them to school for reduced hours? As it not compulsory for a child of that age to be educated maybe it is not complulsory to attend full time. Or maybe you could send them for mornings only, on health grounds that full days are too taxing? Just musing out loud, here!

chairmum, yes you can keep them home until they're 5 but they may not then get a place at the school you want...if it's a desirable school you have to grab a place while it's going. not a good system but it's how it works.

Chairmum, my daughter will actually be going 1/2 days for te first month, but from September will be going full time. She has gone to a fairly structured nursery for 3 days a week, so I don't think the actual school structure will be a problem, but I do think she will struggle with 5 dyas a week. I also work part time, so my eldest has been going to after-school club (until 5:30) 3 nights a week. I know my youngest will just not be able to cope with this, so have had to reduce my working hours to 2 days per week. Also, my eldest gets 3 reading books per week, one every 2 days, and she sometimes finds it difficult on the days she has after-school, she is just too tired.
BTW they are both in bed by 7:15 on school nights, so are getting plenty of sleep, I think its the winding down time they miss out on.

sorry about the typos!

Janh, yes, I understand the system in England means you have to take the place whilst it's there. What I was trying to say was that in Scotland we can keep a child home for the extra year and they then begin in P1, exactly as they would have done a year earlier.

I've had children in education since 1980 and have never heard of anyone not getting a child into the school of their choice in the three areas we've lived. Maybe its different in the Central Belt of Scotland, though.

For anyone who is interested, the way the Scottish method works is this. A child is eligible to go to school in the year running from 1st March to 28th February that he/she turns five. There is one intake, in August. For instance the children who will begin school August 2001 will all be five between March 1st 2001 and 28th February 2002. The oldest child could be 5yr 5.5mo and the youngest, 4yr 5.5mo. If you don't want your child of 4+ yrs to begin school they can have an extra year at nursery.

I'm lucky in that all my four have been spring/summer babies so have been five by the time they started school. Even so, my third child could have benefited from being home with me for another couple of years. She really wasn't ready to leave me for so long until she was nearer 7.

Tee hee, Janh, fortunately it never takes long for boredom to strike!. I was looking at something produced by our own bank and they define "burden" as including direct income tax and indirect taxes that a person on the average income would face so I guess it should take account of everything from VAT to petrol and so on. Can't vouch that it is 100% accurate though. I guess a 15% difference between us and Denmark isn't excessive when you consider the extraordinary superiority of their education system not to mention maternity and childcare provisions.

Hate to disillusion you Sid but having been here 55 minutes, so far I have answered 2 Emails from our Hong Kong trader on what I am wearing today (yes really) and the rest of the time has been spent debating the venue for lunch!.

sid asked for another good website to surf... i haven't tried it out properly yet but dulux have one where you can decorate a virtual room and see how it looks...the furniture in it has to be white or one of their paint shades apparently, no stripes or prints, but it's fun!
dulux.co.uk - mousepainter!!!

bells1 - gissa job!!! (was this HK trader male or female btw?)
i'm surprised it's as low as 35% altogether from the way the tories go on but i think it should be higher meself...i would rather pay more tax and have better services. it's ok (financially) for those whose salaries are high enough for private health care, private education etc but for the middle incomes down - especially down - it would be nice if education and health care could be of a higher standard...
dream on, eh?
chairmum, i am intrigued by the scottish system - i knew it was a bit different from ours but i didn't realise you had different dates for the academic year. 4.5 - 5.5 is certainly an improvement on just 4 - just 5. and in scotland the spring/summer children start older than the autumn/winter children...interesting!!! do parents of the autumn/winter children object to this up there? (i suppose not if they can keep them home if they want?)

Janh remember that will be on an average income so will be before the 40% threshold and a level at which (I guess) direct income tax is only around 22%.

He was male - I am the only female worldiwde in our entire department. My new name is "Bloater" in recognition of my pregnant state - I guess it's better than "Fat Bird" which is what it was last time around...

Oh Bells, you make me laugh! I bet most of your colleagues are far from whippet sized too. When I was pregnant and getting large, my boss (ex broker) used to call me "Tweedledee" which was a real honour as apparently there used to be a really dim secretary on his desk and they called her "Tweedledum". Ho, ho!
Sorry to interrupt this thread with careers advice but I was thinking more about our discussion on Tuesday. IR is not new at all as Pupuce pointed out but what is new is specialist consultancies dealing with that alone. I worked inhouse for a multinational in Corp Comms (which included IR - how I got into it in the first place) for 3 years and now I work for an IR consultancy. If you work inhouse you will inevitably have to deal with other stuff as well, from Financial PR to, God forbid, internal communications, depending on the company you work for. If you work for a consultancy you can just focus on IR. The dossing potential is probably slightly higher when you are inhouse but to be honest I'm hardly under loads of pressure now either.
Apologies to the school debate for interrupting.

Thanks for that Bugsy. I would certainly like to avoid internal communications and so on at any cost!. I have made a preliminary appointment totalk to a recruitment specialist in the field and will let you know how I get on.

Janh, yes, it is quite different here in Scotland. Really, the system works very well for almost all children. It can be a problem if you have a post-Xmas baby who seems too immature to go to school at 4.5 but is raring to go by 5.25, and then has to wait another few months but the option is there to keep the post-xmas ones back a year, after consultations with the nursery staff. They are then funded for another year at nursery, so it all works out in the end.

The system is the same everywhere in Scotland, AFAIK, so there is no competition between schools to get children in early or anything like that.

The Scottish system seems really good. My main concern is that parents are being forced to make decisions they feel are bad for their child. The scottish system is different/better because more money is spent on it.

About Denmark - yes taxes are really high, but you get what you pay for. MY brother is worried about his son being in class that is too large - there are 22 children in it! Will he get the attention he needs with that many? The average is about 18.
I won't go on about the buses (clean, prompt, frequent)or the cycle lanes.

There is so much concern about education, yet a lot of research points to the problem being that we start children far too early and put too much pressure on them. Educationalist know this but parents and politicians won't listen to them. After some of the experements of the sixties there is a deep distrust of 'experts'.

When I worked in IT my opinion was respected, now I am a teacher no one cares what I think. After all everyone has been to school and knows how to teach don't they?
I am deeply cynical about ENglish parents and their attitude to education. It seems to me it is merely childminding with exams thrown in. If we really cared about our kids we would not, NOT, throw them into classess of 30 + at 4 or 5. Our teenagers are now the most examined in Europe, and then we gasp in horror at childhood suicide (sp?).

And don't ask I have no idea what I am going to do about my son when he reaches that age.

Snowy, I am v. interested as to whether the argument against educating children early should be applied to nurseries/ creche.

If it is not very good to send litle ones to school, what does that say about those of us using nurseries from 3 months upwards? If the child is used to nuresry for up to 10 hours a day, wouldn't that mean they would find the change to school easier - or are the changes re: class sizes and sitting at desks, too much of a change?

really would appreciate some views on this.

It is formal education that is the problem, sitting at desks, being taught to read and write. Nursery education - well thought out and supported play is vital. Children need to be children first.

Many children especially boys do not have the motor skills needed to write, so there first experince of writting is of failure. Another couple of years drawing in a structured environment helpes overcome this.

Children need to be educated to expect to do well, to do this they need to suceed. In Europe most children don't start to learn to read untill they are 7, by 9 in most European countries, they are reaching higher standards than in the UK. These are the facts we in the UK ignore them.

We have a big problem with low achieving boys much of it can be traced back to early years education. Boys (not always, but often) are forced to sit at desks far to early, often doing tasks they know they will not do well.

Lil, My eldest was at nursery from 7 months for between 3 and 4 days per week until she stared school - in Scotland - at 5 and 3 months. I always thought that being at nursery from an early age would have made her more sociable and helped her when she started school, but it took her ages -about 7 months - to settle in and for her to walk from the gate to playground on her own. I think it's all down to personalities - some childrn I know who never went to nursery seemed to take to school like ducks to water.