Why British Children May Start School at Two

Not good.
I wonder though, how many kids there are in the UK today in full time private day nurseries?
You only have to look at your local yellow pages to see the number of nurseries to answer this question.

Typically they open at 8am and close at 6pm , 5 days per week and there is no maximum to the time the child can spend there.

It's quite usual to get "Lifers" (i.e Babies from 12 mths to 3 years) that are in all day every day.

Totally agree that kids need to spend as much time with their families and communities as possible but look in any middle class suburb and there will be multiple nurseries already doing what the govt proposes.

We need to look at the economic pressures on the middle classes that causes 2 parents to have to work rather than look after their kids.

Day care is circa £50 per day in the UK....if the Govt provided for free (i.e from the taxpayer) this might be the best use of the money as it may allow more flexible parenting in the above alternative scenario.

monkofmimir
actuall this is not the case at all for home education in the uk all is needed is to show that your child is recieving an education, virtually no home educating families follow the national curriculum.

They must have changed that at some point then?

monkofmimir
The damage school does is very real, it teaches most kids to hate learning, feel inadiquate and stupid and fails to teach them critical thinking.

Is it really? Does it? What evidence are you basing this on or is this just a personal belief? Where you home schooled yourself? I'm not knocking it, it is certainly a viable option for Primary aged children but I would seriously question it's efficacy for Secondary age in the run up to GCSE. That said, Homeschooling a kid hampers their social development - when do they get to mix and play with other kids?

monkofmimir
that combined with an abysmal nation curriculum and poorly trained teachers is the indocrination people are talking about. obiously not every child ends up like this but alot do especially those who are already vulnerable.

The National Curriculum isn't "abysmal" - the UK is in the top 10 (6th) of the worlds education league tables.

Poorly trained teachers? That's a bit harsh, isn't it? Casting aspersions against a whole group of people because you might have a few bad apples? And what exactly makes a Parent better qualified than one of these teachers to take a Chemistry class, or Mathematics, or PE, or Religious Studies?

reply to post by stumason



home education has never had to follow the cirriculum in the uk although the classification of education has been made broader and broader over time.

Like I said there is a strong home education community in the uk and most home educated kids regularly socialize with each other, they can also socialize with neigbourhood children, children in the family and they often go to after school type activities like learning martial arts or other group learning activities like that.

personally I went through a mixture of home education and school, I have also worked with schools and seen some of these problems first hand as well as having family members go from school to home education and seen a massive improvement in behaviour and a new eagerness to learn.

secondary education is harder and prahaps its not for everyone but if the parent is willing to put the effort in and learn themselves anything they don't know it can be done.

The national cirriculum avoids controversy in history and effective teaching methods in mathematics. and in general is poorly planned and because of class sizes is set up in such a way that the bright kids are left bored and the slower kids are left behind.

I'm not saying that bad teachers are bad people, there certainly are some out there who really try to do a good job but the training they're given is poor especially when it comes to things like speciall needs, but also on their ability to control a classroom full of kids.

most parents are a better option because they know their kids and their strength and weaknesses and can spend an unlimited time giving one to one tuition on any subject the child is struggling with where as in a class of 30 this is impossible.

reply to post by monkofmimir


Ok, fair enough - they are still assessed though in comparison to their peers who are doing the NC and if they are deemed to be behind, they can be ordered to attend school.

On the point of kids in school being unchallenged - not sure what schools you're thinking of, but where I live they split them up according to ability and always have. At my Secondary school, Maths and Science especially were split into 7 different tiers so there was never a case where anyone gets bored because of others ability.

You seem to be casting quite a wide net when it comes to badmouthing Schools based on not much more than personal, anecdotal evidence, when that could have simply been the case of a bad school rather than indicative of the system at large. Ironic, really, considering you're espousing Home schooling as being able to teach "critical thinking" yet you fail to display any...

I, on the other hand, was schooled formally and in many different schools (my Dad was Army). I came out of school with way above-average grades and subsequent testing puts me in the 98th percentile. I would regard my education as a mix, however, because my parents (my Dad especially) took the time to teach me at home, take me to museums, out to Battlefields and ruins in the UK and Europe etc. This surely has to be the best method - State provided education mixed with Parental involvement?

Fact of the matter is, for the most part, Human history was always "home schooled" - and we did abysmally. Only those with money could do it properly (like today) and even then, Human society took centuries to evolve. The advances made in society and technology since compulsory education with proper schooling eclipses anything that came before it, not least the literacy rate and being able to count - skills we take for granted now but before compulsory schooling came into affect were the domain of the few.

Out of the many studies that have been done into comparing the two, neither really comes out as a clear winner and in some where the homeschoolers have scored better, this is admitted in the studies that they probably would have done just as well in school owing to the dedication of the parents. This is what it all boils down to - if you're going to homeschool, you have to ready and able to do the job - if you're not, then you will harm your children s education.

reply to post by Jukiodone



One of the saddest things I've ever heard is related to what you're saying here about the nurseries.

A friend of mine works in one, and it's not uncommon for them to have babies to look after. One couple in particular who had twins, started dropping them off at nursery from the age of about 11 months. 6 days a week, from 8am until 6pm.

And these poor babies soon came to latch onto the nursery staff as their parents, so they'd get very distressed when these strangers (their parents) came in to take them away.

They were also very traumatised because the nursery staff kept changing, so they'd attach to one or two particular members of staff, but then if those staff left, the poor kids were practically subject to a bereavement.

Horrendous. I don't know why people have children if they only want to spend maybe what, an hour a day with them?

reply to post by Painterz


My eldest daughter went to a childminders from 6 months to around 18 months, then on to a nursery. This is because her mother and I split up not long after she was born and her mother needed to go out to work.

For two days a week, she would be in there from around 8 until around 6, other days not so much or at all, depending on my shifts. It never did her any harm, although it did do extreme damage to my bank account!

She was always very happy to see me, not like you described at all - but then, like I said, on my days off I'd have her for a few days solidly until I went back to work.

It all very much depends on your own circumstances as to whether nursery is a bad idea or not and also the quality of said nursery has a lot to do with it. I wouldn't be so quick as to generalise so much. She has grown up to be a very mature, well rounded and intelligent girl (she is now 10). On the flip side, to add balance, my partners son (same age) didn't do any of that, spent all his time at home with Mum until he went to school and is an ill disciplined, grumpy (albeit clever) little git.

I know the CEO of (at the time) the largest corp in Kanuckistan was asked if he had any regrets about quiting school at grade three and he said:
"Yes, I should have quit sooner"

Education is a devolved matter. I think this proposal must be England only, not the whole of the UK.

Mixed feelings on the subject. Our youngest boy (aged 3) attends nursery at a state primary school in Edinburgh. The nursery being on the same premises as the school ensures a straightforward progression from one to the other, all the classmates move on together, the children are "well kennt" by the time they get to the primary school part of the building ("well kennt" is a Scottish term, from German ... means "well known" !!). He seems to be flourishing, tbh, he's getting quite vocal and assertive, must get that from me. They took the class to the Scottish Parliament a few weeks ago, a class of three years olds in high visibility jackets getting taken around the Parliament ! I think that's great.

If we were rich I would've preferred my gf to stay at home and look after both the boys until age 5. That's what she would've wanted too. We'd also like a home in the country with an Aga and a deux chevaux-vapeur parked up. But we're not rich. We're not poor but we're not rich. So it's a balancing act, trying to weigh up the advantages with the disadvantages. Bottom line is paying the bills and we can't afford not for my gf to work. So she works in the Civil Service part time to help pay the bills. We spend as much of our time as we can with the boys but we gotta pay the bills too.

You know, you have some good information in your post, and I'm grateful for it. I'm from the U.S., and I have admittedly no idea who these people are. However, your mind is obviously made up and your bias discredits you. The facts are the facts, but the spin makes them useless. Besides this next little tidbit blew your whole point...

stumason
reply to post by winofiend

 

Yeah, home schooling rocks, it allows you to form an opinion with no supporting facts at all...

Pot/kettle/black

All I see in this woman's "bold" new stance, and frankly your own perspective is one more round of societally vilifying the poor, instead of actually trying to fix the problem. It's gratifying to finger shake everyone else down so you can feel intellectually superior, but that's pretty much all that you did. I suspect that mixing facts with gross assumptions and rhetoric may work for you a lot, but I'm not buying it.

Maybe there is a serious problem with kids from poor families not being prepared for school, but there are plenty of studies that support that that gap has more to do with lack of access to resources that the wealthier (and often) better educated may know about, or simply be able to afford than "bad parenting" from the lower economic bracket. Also, there is quite a bit of truth to the assertion that the struggle for survival for many parents means that they do not have many emotional, or time resources left for their kids because they are too busy just trying to feed them. I find it highly assumptive that you claim most of those kids come from parents who don't work at all. Proof please.

I think that the truth to this may be far more complex than "Poor people are bad parents, and the state will do a better job". In the U.S. at least once these kids enter a completely state run system they are less educated, have more emotional problems, and even stand a much higher percentage chance of dying than if they were left with their families. There may be a few reasons for that, but the state has proved it is not qualified to raise kids (certainly not that young), and that those "screaming about indoctrination" have the beginnings of a point as well.

For those passing judgement

Einstein didn't even begin talk until he was 3yrs old!

So someone's early academic ability doesn't really have consequences on that persons overall potential.

reply to post by stumason


actually they only asses home educated children who used to be in school or who's parents volunterily sign up to a council register so alot of home educated arn't assesed.

yes home education has been practiced throughout human history but I disagree that it was a failure. Historically home education was teaching you children the family trade. Teaching reading, writing and history wern't taught because there was little oppertunity for the parents to learn these skills themselves and because in those cultures they wernt considered useful. Now there are many oppertunities for a parent to learn or improve these skills especially through the internet.

As for the money issue these day many home educators are quite poor. Personally I think we should switch to a voucher system so that home educator as well as public and private school families can get the same level of support to educate their children.

It sounds like you dad realized that school alone was not enough to give you a rounded education and took an effort to teach you, unfortunatly to many parents these days think that educating their own children isn't their own job.

At the end of the day though home education isn't for every family and it certainly has its flaws. There is certainly a place for schools I'm not suggesting we shut them all down but the current school system is very dated and flawed. Those flaws only seem to be getting worse with time and more school doesn't make those problems go away.

reply to post by redhorse


Actually, no, I wasn't vilifying the poor (as I am one!) - just pointing out that those schools that are complaining of kids turning up lacking the basic skills needed are, without exception, all located in deprived area's. Yes, you are right to an extent that it isn't being "poor" that is the problem, but the lack of resources to assist the education which the wealthier have. You cannot deny though that there is a great many people out there, usually in deprived area's, who are quite happy to sit the kid in front of the TV all day instead of engaging with them. I know this from personal experience - my own sisters both fall into this bracket and do exactly that, as do their single mum friends.

That said, you don't need to spend a fortune on fancy gadgets or what have you to assist learning - my own Dad was bankrupt and/or poor for much of the 80/90's when I was at school but still took the time with me. I remember when I was 3 he bought a subscription to an Encyclopaedia - meant for teenagers - for me. Also, like I said, when we lived on the continent, we visited the Battlefields, Roman ruins and in the UK we did all the London Museums at least once, which as I understand it are free to enter.

monkofmimir
actually they only asses home educated children who used to be in school or who's parents volunterily sign up to a council register so alot of home educated arn't assesed.

The Government website says that Council's can make "informal requests" to assess the Children. It doesn't specify that they have to be voluntarily signed up..

monkofmimir
yes home education has been practiced throughout human history but I disagree that it was a failure. Historically home education was teaching you children the family trade. Teaching reading, writing and history wern't taught because there was little oppertunity for the parents to learn these skills themselves and because in those cultures they wernt considered useful. Now there are many oppertunities for a parent to learn or improve these skills especially through the internet.

Well, actually, for much for the Middle Age's it was forbidden for any but the Nobility or Clergy to even learn how to read etc as it was considered too "dangerous".

You don't need the internet to teach kids these things. We taught our two eldest how to read/count by sitting with them with books, these strange papery things with words in them you don't see much of these days, and playing games with them

monkofmimir
As for the money issue these day many home educators are quite poor. Personally I think we should switch to a voucher system so that home educator as well as public and private school families can get the same level of support to educate their children.

I would still argue that those who homeschool are the one's who can afford too, I didn't say rich though. I can't afford for my partner to not work (and to be honest I wouldn't trust her to educate the kids anyway...).. I've watched programmes about homeschoolers before and, without fail, every one of them had a parent who earned enough to allow the other to not work, or they had a farm/land on which they could grow food (these people incidentally also lived freegan/hippy lifestyles too)

monkofmimir
It sounds like you dad realized that school alone was not enough to give you a rounded education and took an effort to teach you, unfortunatly to many parents these days think that educating their own children isn't their own job.

Indeed and therein lies the problem - far too many parents are simply bone idle. What my dad did 20 years ago was the norm - these day's it isn't. I don't buy that is the fault of not having a parent at home (ie - both having to work), which some like to say, as my Mum left when I was 9 and he carried on despite being a Full time squaddie. I try to copy his style and compliment what the kids learn at school with my own knowledge (I even correct what they "learn"), which is what everyone should be doing.

monkofmimir
At the end of the day though home education isn't for every family and it certainly has its flaws. There is certainly a place for schools I'm not suggesting we shut them all down but the current school system is very dated and flawed. Those flaws only seem to be getting worse with time and more school doesn't make those problems go away.

Indeed and ironically it is what the Government is trying to do. They are trying to get rid of the old 19th century style of schooling, freeing up control of schools to parents and doing away with holidays that were designed to work around harvest times when kids used to help on farms etc, but it is the Teaching Unions who are holding back reform.

reply to post by stumason

You do not have to teach the National Curriculum if you are Home Schooling in the UK. You can teach anything you like. I was hearing from an Inspector of a very successfuly young man who was doing nothing but Art at the moment and a lot of reading.

People who do not Home School need to realise that this is a VERY successful method of education.

There are private schools in the UK that do NOT teach the national curriculum and the children NEVER take a single exam and yet universities are falling over themselves to get these children.

'Don't let your schooling get in the way of your Education'. - Albert Einstein

I must say I had a very ANTI home school opinion until I was forced into the position of having to educate at home. I thought people who thought they could educate their children at home were foolish. Then, I was astonished to discover that they were quite enlightened. The education inspector also agreed and said it was the 'best kept secret in the country' that Home School is the Best School, if your parents were willing to put the serious hard work in and effort that was required to make it a success. It is NOT the lazy option by any means.


Have you had the misfortune to watch the 'englightening' programme, 'Educating Yorkshire'. Enough to make you weep!

As to children being enrolled in 'the system' at 2 years old, this will only be good for the minority of children who have total half wits for parents. There are some real 'disappointments' out there who cannot take care of themselves never mind children.

stumason
reply to post by redhorse

 

The Government website says that Council's can make "informal requests" to assess the Children. It doesn't specify that they have to be voluntarily signed up..

that is true they can make such requests but there is no automatic referal to the council when a kid begins home education so unless the parent chooses to notify them or they are leaving school (schools are legally required to notify them) the council has no knowledge of the home educated child.

At a guess I would say half if not more of home educated kids arnt known to their council.

reply to post by monkofmimir

I believe you might be right on that figure of about half of HE children not being known to the council.

Personally, I found the information from the council very useful and the Inspectors very helpful and encouraging, but I understand this is not everyone's experience.

But, are we sure that we want every child at school at 2 years old?

I have a friend who has decided to HE her children because of how horrible and difficult her friends' children became when they started school. The parents were in constant fear of their children being sick because of threats from the school and the loss of freedom to go wherever you want when you want, ie on holiday, on trips and visits, even to funerals and such like due to officialdom and the school threats of fines!

However, I wholeheartedly agree that there may well be a minority of children who need to be away from their 'idiot' parents who are incapable of looking after themselves never mind educating their children.

A former girlfriend of one of my sons had such a family. The unmarried parents were unemployed and were having children to up their benefits. They played on computer games all day and ignored their children who at 5 years old were still all wearing nappies, could not write or read, never mind know what a book was.

From such parents children may well need 'protecting'.

reply to post by monkofmimir


Ah, I didn't realise it was so laizze faire! interesting..

Like I said before, I am not against home schooling, especially for Primary age - nothing they do in Primary school can't be done at home. Secondary education I would prefer it be done by professionals at a good local school, however. I am lucky in that I live in a good area that is flush with excellent schools, I realise some may not be so fortunate.

Elliot
But, are we sure that we want every child at school at 2 years old?

I think the general consensus amongst most people and Government is "No". This Government seems to be quite family friendly and is also trying to liberalise the education system, with the Teachers with their Unions are resisting for some unknown reason (vested interests.....).

Elliot
I have a friend who has decided to HE her children because of how horrible and difficult her friends' children became when they started school. The parents were in constant fear of their children being sick because of threats from the school and the loss of freedom to go wherever you want when you want, ie on holiday, on trips and visits, even to funerals and such like due to officialdom and the school threats of fines!

One has to wonder how much of that is actually true or how much you're not being told. I have 3 kids, all go to school and kids get sick. Not once have I ever been queried about their sickness. I did once get the Educational Officer querying about the amount of lateness my Daughter had, but once I explained that (at the time) I was reliant on Public transport to cover the 7 mile trip through rush hour traffic, they backed off, happy with the explanation.

As for Holiday, they can be a bit funny about it but I just ignore them. Because one of our kids goes to one school and the other to another, they have inset days separately, so booking a holiday is a pain.

In May, before Half term, we were going down to Devon on the Friday before the Holiday and my daughters school didn't have the Friday off, where as my stepsons did - we requested leave, which they refused, which I ignored.

Nothing happened - You cannot be fined for it either and certainly not by the school. Those punishments are reserved for repeat, serial absconders who's parents end up getting pulled in front of a judge because they cannot demonstrate they made reasonable efforts to either educate or get their child to education.

Elliot
However, I wholeheartedly agree that there may well be a minority of children who need to be away from their 'idiot' parents who are incapable of looking after themselves never mind educating their children.

A former girlfriend of one of my sons had such a family. The unmarried parents were unemployed and were having children to up their benefits. They played on computer games all day and ignored their children who at 5 years old were still all wearing nappies, could not write or read, never mind know what a book was.

Personally, I think people should get a license to have kids. The world is populated enough and you should have to take some lessons and pass a test to prove you're capable. There are too many horror stories these days - not a week goes by without someone being convicted of killing their kid, much less not educate them properly.