The Government's wrong-headed obsession with early years education

By Marjorie Smith

What is it with the Ministerial team at the Department of Education and Science's obsession with formal early-years education? It appears that there now flying in the face of susstantial evidence out forward by a prestigious review.

Children should not start formal learning until they are six, a review of primary education in England says. Instead the kind of play-based learning featured in nurseries and reception classes should go on for another year, the Cambridge Primary Review says.

There is no evidence that an early introduction to formal learning has any benefit, the review says, but there are suggestions it can do some harm.

Yet, Ministers in their infinite wisdom say a starting age of six would be completely counter-productive. Vernon Croker England's schools minister states "A school starting age of six would be completely counter-productive - we want to make sure children are playing and learning from an early age and to give parents the choice for their child to start in the September following their fourth birthday." Yet they stick to their position and still want to start formal learning at 5.

How is it that in nearly all of the rest of the EU, children don't start formal learning until they are 6 or even 7 in some countries and yet have a far better outcome at 16, 18 or 21 than the UK does.

Leave the children alone to learn through play and let them buil up their own self-confidence and let them assimilate into learning in groups and adjust to social inter-action before introducing them to formal structured learning.

Or are most of the continent and the evidence produced in the review wrong?