Children not to start school until age 6

[JamMakingWannaBe]

The SNP have made their usual headline grabbing decisions at their Party Conference without the detail.

How on Earth are parents, expectant parents and "thinking about becoming a parent" meant to plan?

Will we move to an English type system where kids have to be aged 6 by the start of Primary 1 (nominally 20 August) so September born kids are actually going to be nearly 7 before they start a formal education?

Will their age 3-6 kindergartens be in existing nurseries? Will this be compulsory pre-school education? If so, have they consulted nurseries on this? (I'm guessing not)

What will be the hours of any pre-school education? If it's currently 30 hours a week from the term after a child turns 3, will that be the case until they start school (at possibly at nearly age 7)?

There are bound to be parents waiting until their child starts school so they can start saving on the childcare bill and this will scupper those plans.

The current system with a bit of flexibility seems to work well.

With my March born boy I was glad he was a little older. But my summer born daughter was totally ready and is much happier in P1 than nursery.

Maybe it's a way of disguising the teacher shortage

"If it's just leave kids in nurseries for another year, it will be devastating for the attainment gap".

They would also have to raise the school leaving age because if you have a child that doesn't start until 6, and then leaves at 16, they will have 3+ years less formal education than a child starting at 4/5 and leaving at 18.

This is a good evidence based idea.

It won't come in anytime soon though. As a conference resolution it may end up in the 2026 holyrood manifesto to be begun (as pilots in certain areas first) by the end of that parliament in 2031.

It will mean additional years of full time (30 hours) of learning over what DC's get now. This is evidenced as reducing the attainment gap.

It will mean some DC's are almost 19 by the time they finish school but this is already the case in England.

There will need to be new kindergartens built for this. But freeing up one year of school in primary will create more capacity in so many bulging schools.

Hopefully this move will lead to a professionalisation of early years staff. This will benefit staff and pupils.

Current early start ages have nothing to do with the intricacies of English language learning. It was to keep wayward DC's off the streets!

@greenteafiend

whether they want to reduce the attainment gap and be internationally competitive.

This won’t happen in a lot of areas outside the central belt though. Because there isn’t enough vocational training in schools and there are many areas outwith the central belt where kids will never reach those attainment stats because they leave for c&g trade apprenticeships workplace training or the forces at 15 and 16. Outwith the central belt there are fewer opportunities for jobs requiring degree level qualifications and not everyone wants to leave their home. Those who fare best in our areas are time served tradesmen or oilmen or fishermen/farmers/crofters etc.

Yes there are no doctors, health visitors, district nurses, dentists, opticians, pharmacists, social workers, teachers, occupational therapists, council administrators, shop managers or politicians/ their office staff in rural Scotland??

Never mind all the online jobs that can be done at least mostly remotely now: academia, psychology, writing, art, admin, banking, software engineering, research, design etc.

Living rurally doesn't have the same impact on career availability it had 20 years.

The impetus behind the vote was the work of Upstart. You can find out the detail here: https://upstart.scot

It will mean some DC's are almost 19 by the time they finish school but this is already the case in England.

Will this be the case? I thought the proposal was to convert P1, which is already mainly play-based, into a kindergarten year. Then formal schooling would start at P2 and carry on as it is now.

So is the proposal to still have 13 years of formal schooling but starting at P2 so kids will have an extra year?

I also understood that the attainment gap is largely to do with poverty, which Scotland has a lot of so surely that needs tackling as a matter of urgency? Quality jobs providing training and paying decent wages.

But what happens to the p1 learning, they cant just start at p2 level the whole education will have to be reorganised, teachers retrained, classrooms and resource updated to . It's a massive undertaking. The issue I touched on above was if the leaving age remains at 16, some will only have 10 years education which I don’t think will help the attainment gap.

eergh, posted early by mistake but hopefully it makes sense

I've taught P1 and now P2 for years. I am very torn.

My experience in the past few years of taking on play-based P1s has been very, very difficult. They don't want to sit down and be told what activity they have to do. They need to be trained in all of the school routines like standing behind your chair, how to share equipment with other children, that you have to sit down in your chair and not wander around.

They're also extremely behind academically, so you don't really have time to 'waste' on settling in these routines and they can't work independently because they are used to only doing something hard at the teacher table.

Unfortunately, to staff the play, P2 then doesn't have any support, so our lovely learning experiences get cut.

It's an enormous, enormous adjustment and tbh the transition to formal learning after such a wonderful P1 year actually makes them unhappier in P2.

Our local nurseries offer good childcare, but the education side of things is not good. Teachers were taken out at least ten years ago.

If it was properly funded, it would be amazing, but as someone said, where are our classes of 18...

@readsalotgirl63 No it isn't, honestly, I can't say for Scotland but it doesn't differ too much so it should be the same (I'm English and moved here 2 yrs ago to be closer to DH's elderly parents). School has been cheaper to provide than daycare/pre-school per head. Also it is off the back of some half decent research in the field here - they've been letting and actively encouraging parents with children born Aug to Feb defer a year. And the evidence from other countries whose children don't start formal schooling until 7 (there are lots), says that the later they start (within reason obviously) the better they do and that play is king and should be protected up to 6.

So the intention is sound and honorable and I am all in favor (as opposed to in England where I don't think the government could care less). However, it must be executed properly, as @MrsSkylerWhite is right this isn't daycare, and shouldn't be staffed as such, the countries where this works have highly qualified educators specialised in providing this kind of education.

It is very, very interesting what @user1477391263 says about the complexities of the English language in comparison to those spoken in other countries that employ this framework for education. I wonder if this has been considered. FWIW though my DC goes to a private preschool here and they've been introducing phonics in a play-based way since 3.5.

Sadly though and given what I've seen so far I don't particularly trust the SNP to grasp the full metal and implement this properly. I hope I'm proved wrong though.