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Hey! Minister! Leave them kids alone!

Ten years ago, my neighbour and friend was in despair. Her son, only a month younger than my daughter, was almost three and was not reliably potty trained. Pressure from relatives left her with the feeling that she was a failure to her oldest child and all his ante & post natal class peers were happily requesting toilet breaks every hour. I had no stores of home-spun wisdom to draw on, so I tried the obvious. ‘Relax’, I said. ‘You don’t see children starting school in nappies, do you?. He’ll get it in his own time’. And of course he did.

It seems that I know more about how children learn than Dawn Primarolo, Minister of State for Children, Young People and Families. “Boys aged three ‘must work more’,” shouts the headline in the papers, in response to a report from Ms Primarolo’s department, which aims to stop boys ‘falling behind’ girls before they even reach school.   

Apparently at the age of 5, more than one in six boys cannot write his own name or simple words such as ‘mum’, ‘dad’ or ‘cat”‘, double the number of girls in the same position. The government believes that this is a terrible problem. Why? I certainly don’t.  Is there some rule that says children should be writing before their fifth birthday?  Child development experts believe that many children do not develop the fine motor skills needed for writing until they are six or seven and most European countries do not start formal education until this age. Finland starts children at the latest age of any Western economy and has the shortest school year, yet has the highest level of literacy in Europe.

The British way of starting school early is a throwback to the desires of Victorians, some of whom wished to see children away from their gin-swilling mothers as soon as possible, whilst others wanted education finished by 12 to ensure a plentiful supply of young workers. It also means that, unlike the Scandinavians, we don’t need to bother with funding decent childcare, but can use schools, with much lower numbers of adults per child, as regimented childcare from the age of four. It might be best for government finances, but not for our children.

We should be allowing all our children to be children for as long as possible, supporting them to work at their own rate and to progress towards the targets of literacy and numeracy. Any gender gap (and it is not as simple as dutiful girls versus overactive boys) evens itself out during childhood. Which is more than can be said for the attainment gap between the children of affluent and deprived families, which widens with every year of schooling, or the gap in qualifications between autumn and summer born children. If you want to meddle even more in our schools, Ms Primarolo, address those points. But please don’t tell our youngest that they must work harder. At their age, they shouldn’t even understand what the word means.

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