The first couple of weeks back at school, and with it, familiar anxieties about whether the latest cohort of Reception-aged children have arrived 'school-ready': The most recent Kindred Squared survey of parents’ and teachers’ understanding of school-readiness – conducted annually – cites instances of children being unable to sit upright, hold a pencil or – everyone’s greatest fear – not being toilet-trained.
Back in my teaching days, this was a rarity, only affecting children with fairly profound needs. But now it seems In every school we visit – and we’re working with over 150 – the Reception teachers are telling us many children can’t jump with two feet together, walk backwards or stand on one leg (all key indicators to show children are developing physically at an expected rate).
Ordinarily, if children had plenty of access to outdoor play by age 4, you’d expect them to be able to clamber up objects, haul themselves to the top of climbing frames, sit cross-legged on the floor with ease, and definitely jump and run.
The survey includes other more concerning data – 24% of parents believed it shouldn’t be a requirement that a child is toilet-trained before arriving at their first Reception class. Seriously? I’m sure you’d think twice about taking your puppy to a stranger’s house if they weren’t toilet trained.
Equally as startling, a third of parents did not think it was a priority that children, aged 4, should be able to play and share with other children.
Despite this, 90% of parents believed their child or children were school-ready, compared to only a third of teachers believing children were turning up with the fundamental capabilities needed for a learning environment.
So what’s going on here?
When asked why children were not arriving at school ready to learn and thrive, half of parents surveyed said it was because parents (maybe other parents) did not think it was their job.
Both parents and teachers were willing to pin the blame on a general increase in the use of phones and tablets, meaning families were spending less time interacting together. Also high on the list of possible reasons was the effect of the cost-of-living crisis, put simply, parents needed more time to earn a living and had less time for parenting. We’ve certainly noticed some parents feel too time-poor to take their child to the park, yet don’t feel comfortable letting them go out to play with friends in the street.
We know that if children arrive at school lagging behind their peers in terms of their physical, social or cognitive development, the impact is not just on their childhood, but on their life chances as adults. The first years of school are particularly critical – those children who start school a year behind their peers developmentally, get further and further behind with each successive year they are in school* (Sutton Trust, 2021).
And of course, there’s a knock-on effect on all the other children in their peer-group, as teachers are spending a disproportionate amount of time getting all children in their class to the basic threshold of social and physical capabilities needed to thrive.
So how to turn this around?
One obvious, cheap and accessible solution, of course, is to make sure all children have access to free play. We also need to make sure all parents are made aware – as part of a support package – of the importance of plenty of fresh air and time outside. We need Councils to ensure streets are safe to play in, local parks are easily accessible and play spaces are comfortable and welcoming both for children and for parents and carers.
Alongside some kind of formal support and guidance for parents of pre-school age children, especially younger parents, we would advocate a prescription of free-play within school time, as well as funded opportunities to access outdoor play outside of school.
The quickest and simplest way to ensure our unsteady, physically-challenged Reception kids build up their proprioception and physical capabilities is to give them time, space and quantities of stuff to play with outdoors.
As we’ve proven over the years of running the OPAL programme in schools, given access to loose-parts, challenge and risk, children very quickly develop social skills, independence of thought, creativity, problem-solving, resilience and curiosity. They will also build those physical literacy skills so desperately needed.
As a child you can create, try, fail, get stuck, solve, commit to memory, build bonds, break bonds, repair, negotiate, move on – all within the space of a ten-minute made-up game.
We also have to guard against educational professionals making play and outdoors time less of a priority, especially if they feel pressured to focus solely on improving academic attainment. One small-scale research project**, gauging the attitudes of Early Years professionals on the subject of school readiness, pointed at the tension they feel between getting children to meet the EYFS goals, and allowing them to just play:
'I often feel like the wicked witch … they just look so small … and you just push … especially my little one who just gets so worked up about doing it or getting it wrong … it just breaks your heart … I do wish they could do play for a lot longer … but because of the restrictions that we are under you can't … because we've got things to meet as well unfortunately.’
It’s a short step from this state of mind to a culture where schools, particularly secondary schools, regard play as a luxury or a privilege, which can be restricted or even rescinded. Even if we regard children's success through the narrow lens of academic attainment, we know that being ‘ready-to-learn’ is entirely contingent on children’s social and physical capabilities. Independence of thought, creativity, problem-solving, resilience and curiosity, as well as the core strength to sit on a chair - all come from access to free play.
And, of course, we should never lose sight of our obligation to a child’s holistic development.
In Finland, children don't start schooling until age 7. Under seven, at the state Kindergartens, the focus is very much on play, wellbeing and happiness. Despite starting their ‘formal’ education two years later than UK children, Finnish children are no less academically successful – rating within a few places of the UK in OECD rankings. But given the Finns’ concern for wellbeing as well as academic prowess it is, perhaps, no coincidence that Finland consistently ranks well above the UK as the happiest nation in the world.
The larger lesson, perhaps, is that the austerity imposed a decade ago is now costing us in the here-and-now. Making sure children are ‘school-ready’ numbered among this government’s six milestones for this parliament – and, at least on this count, they’ve made some positive steps, re-introducing breakfast clubs and, in at least a limited way, reviving Sure Start. But we shouldn't, and probably can't, rely on state intervention to turn this around - we all need to contribute to build more communities around play streets, access to parks and helping all schools to have fantastic playtimes.
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*A Fair Start? Equalising access to early education (Sutton Trust, 2021), online The Sutton Trust
** Identifying tensions between school-readiness policy and teacher beliefs (Kay 2023), online, British Educational Research Association
