maizieD, just picking up on your comment re having to start earlier with reading instruction in English speaking countries due to the complexities of the English language orthography.
It's a point that is frequently made. I find it very illogical!
If something is more complex, it requires more mental skills/abilities to master, so you should start teaching it later, not sooner. When the children's mental development means they are ready for this more complex thing.
Say, algebra is complex, requires abstraction skills, so should we start teaching algebra at age 4? We could leave addition and subtraction until later, as that is way simpler isn't it, and doesn't require a lot of time to learn.
No that doesn't make sense as 4yo do not generally have the mental development to be able to abstract for algebra. All the time trying to learn algebra at age 4 would be wasted and counterproductive.
The only time I'd say it makes sense to start sooner because there is more to learn is when it is something that younger children DO generally have the mental capacity for. Say if learning to read where mainly a task of memorising many, many words (as in the Look&Say method...). By all means, start early, and gradually build a stock of memorised words. Whereas languages that can be read by phonics, by applying a method rather than by memorising... just like Finnish. Or German (method a bit more complicated.) Or err... English? (Complex method, but still a method)
So IMO the push to start learning to read so very early is all twisted up with the idea, not that English has a very complex phonetic code (which would implicate later starts), but that English is a language that needs a lot of memorisation in order to be learned to read.
Not saying that some children aren't ready to learn how to read (or to do algebra) at very young ages, but many aren't. WHEN they are, they could learn all that they covered in e.g. three painstaking, frustrating, demotivating years within one year full of feelings of success and confidence.
And it is also often said that those countries with later school starts will have had children learn basic reading and numeracy in 'pre-school' of whatever kind there is in that country. I am sure this is true in some cases, but not all. E.g. Germany and Switzerland; Kindergarten is often not compulsory though one year is recommended, two years possible. So children CAN start Kindergarten at age 4 or 5. But Kindergarten will be half-days at most. And by the time the children start school at age 6 (the youngest ones) or 7, they are expected to ... be able to recognise their names. Perhaps count to 20, and recognise numbers 1-10.
In those countries, teaching children to read before school is often seen as spoiling their childhood. There is plenty of time for learning to read, there is no hurry, and isn't their pre-school time much to precious for that? Never again will they have this freedom of childhood. In England we cut that freedom down to 4 or 5 measly years.
(I have nothing against early readers. My own DS was well on the road of learning to read when he started school just after his 4th birthday. I am however concerned about early schooling, and trying to teach children things for which they do not have the mental development yet.)