Formal education for 2 year old. I am not so Wilsure.

[frumpity33higswash]

Is this education at 2 idea down to Chinese influence/

And is it a sort of critism of poorer families?.

I dont see Sir michael Wilshaw as Father cristmas. He is said to be a protege of Master Gove.

Unless I miss my guess, Sir Michael is talking crap. I was trying to work out why any sane person would say such things, and then it occurred to me that has head of the inspectorate under a zealous appear-to-be reforming secretary (pronounced secketery these days) Sir Michael can't just sit around all day, drinking coffee and saying

hmm, looks OK to me.

mrz said this would happen in a thread last week.

Well, interestingly, an advanced capitalist system appears to look remarkably like a communist one - the workers (ie everyone) must all go out to work in order to contribute to the State (you aren't contributing to society, aka, the State, unless you are doing paid, taxed work), and the children should all be looked after in industrial scale nurseries by other workers. Obviously, now that childcare should be covered by other workers, not the family themselves who are out at work all day, its purpose needs to change to fit the model of everyone working full time. Simples.

Except that in a socialist economy the childcare is paid for by the state. In a capitalist one childcare can (and often does) cost more than a parent earns. Methinks the sociocapitalistnannystate, or whatever it's called these days, needs to fix that.

He actually said 'school ready' was things like being able to go to the toilet, doing up shoes, being able to listen for a while, knowing some colours/numbers, how to hold a pencil/crayon etc.

Is that really not a normal expectation any more?

Depends on how far forward you put the school starting age. If you put teachers on duty outside labour wards you're bound to run into a few developmental issues.

So open to mis interpretation. If it helps reduce the number of children starting school at a massive disadvantage is that such a bad thing? I can't see it as compulsory but the correct type of nursery provision attached to school could be huge advantage for working parents too.

Hang on a minute, free nursery provision, in poor areas attached to primary schools, surely I've heard of that before...

columngollum - don't worry, it can work on that, by requiring people working with children in state funded nurseries attached to schools to work more and more for less and less. This will shortly be followed by other types of worker being expected to work more for less, too, because, obviously, having saved money on childcare costs, they aren't considered to need so much money in the first place, so the minimum wage can go down. Obviously, this means that people going out to work aren't any better off than they were before, but you can't really magic rabbits out of hats: increase the labour force by expecting everyone to go out to work and you have more people looking for paid labour than you need, making them all nice and cheap for the minority in control of the system.