The right age for children to start school is one of the longest-running and most polarising issues in education, but an ongoing debate in the U.K. is pushing already divided opinion to extremes.
In one corner is an influential former adviser to Tony Blair, who is calling for schools to start admitting children as young as two to try to counter the effects of poor parenting. In the opposite corner is a group of academics, authors and charity leaders who argue that children should spend more time playing and formal schooling should be delayed until seven.
The U.K. already has one of the lowest starting ages in Europe. Compulsory schooling starts at five (four in Northern Ireland), although in practice almost all four-year-olds are in school. Only Cyprus and Malta among European countries start school as early, with most starting at six and some at seven, according to the National Foundation for Educational Research.
But even five is too late for some children, says Lady Sally Morgan, head of England’s school inspection body and a former minister and adviser to Blair. She argues that some children from poor backgrounds need to start at three or even two to counteract the effects of their upbringing.
Baroness Morgan cited research published by the Sutton Trust, a charity that aims to improve social mobility, showing that four and five-year-olds from the wealthiest backgrounds were 19 months ahead of those from the poorest families (in the U.S. the gap was even wider, at 22 months).
Although such an early start is not yet government policy, the Department for Education appears receptive to the idea, making it easier for schools to enrol two-year-olds and championing the value of teacher-led early years’ education.
On top of this, a former adviser to Prime Minister David Cameron this week called for longer school days and shorter holidays, increasing the amount of time children spend in school by two thirds.
Pushing in the opposite direction is the Save Childhood Movement, a coalition of individuals and organizations who protest that five is already too early and damages children. Rather than starting earlier, the group believes children should begin school at seven, and the focus between three and seven should be on play rather than learning.
Although the campaign has some prominent backers, including a former archbishop of Canterbury and a former children’s commissioner for England, it has been rejected out of hand by government, with a Department for Education source telling newspapers the proposal is “misguided”.
But evidence on the link between achievement and school starting age is inconclusive, while work by Dr David Whitebread has highlighted the importance of play in child development. Whitebread, an expert in developmental psychology in Cambridge University’s faculty of education and a supporter of the Save Childhood Movement, also cites evidence that children from disadvantaged backgrounds in particular benefit from an extended play-centered experience.
Play is fun, but it is much more than that. As Whitebread argues, play is closely related to both cognitive development and emotional well-being. Children enjoy play, but they also learn from it.
It is easy to see why politicians find this difficult. A child-led experience not only requires them to relax control over early years provision, it also runs counter to the prevailing orthodoxy that earlier is better, reinforced by a belief that the success of Far Eastern countries in international comparisons is down to their ‘hothousing’ approach.
But childhood should be about more than equipping young people with a set of qualifications. Schools should be helping to produce rounded individuals, rather than processing them through exam factories. Until we accept that sitting at a desk is just one of the ways we learn, we will be condemning young people to a truncated childhood.
