“We start school too early in the UK!”

Cossy, I will accept that i have a ridiculous and outdated view. Still keeping it ! 😊

And impractible 👍

My children were gagging to start school at 4 especially the youngest one who really thought she was missing out She was always the youngest in her class as her birthday is end of August …All have good careers
I too started school at 4 years old as an only child I loved being at there

Mamie, you said that your grandmother, your mother, you and your daughter worked full time. So, I am wondering, who was the mother or caregiver of your mother, yourself and your daughter during the full-time parental absence?

(Praise to all of you for a good work ethic, sincerely.)

Macaydia

I would cry if i had to leave my baby with someone else. I just didnt feel right about it, ever.

Not everyone feels like that though.

Barbadosbelle

If the UK school day gets any shorter it might as well just give up

Wow! Is that a “Does the hot weather make you grumpy? comment.

UK schools do more days than either the US or France. I CBA to look up all the other countries, but many have 4 day weeks, or finish at 2pm. Teaching in France I had a 2 hour lunch break.
France has 8 weeks and US has even longer summer recess, sometimes as long as 12 weeks. Some teachers there worry about the impact of such a long break has on what the children recall.

Macaydia

Mamie, you said that your grandmother, your mother, you and your daughter worked full time. So, I am wondering, who was the mother or caregiver of your mother, yourself and your daughter during the full-time parental absence?

(Praise to all of you for a good work ethic, sincerely.)

This work pattern was common in many families at the bottom of the money ladder in times past. my great grandmother, widowed at 36, pregnant with 4 living children had no alternative to working, together with her 12 year old son, to support the family. Her parents long dead. My grandmother was a WW1 widow with 2 small children an elderly mother and invalid sister to support. She managed. My mother manage. My father was in the military, always on the move far from family, almost always worked pre-school did take some of the strain but teaching and school age children are compatible. I worked part and then full time, without help from the time my youngest was 4.

Total hours on site per year for primary school children by country:

​United States: ~1,260 hours (7 hours a day × 180 days)
​Australia: ~1,235 hours (6.5 hours a day × 190 days)
​United Kingdom: ~1,235 hours (6.5 hours a day × 190 days)
​Chile: ~1,215 hours (6.4 hours a day × 190 days)
​Colombia: ~1,200 hours (6 hours a day × 200 days)
​Canada: ~1,170 hours (6.5 hours a day × 180 days)
​France: ~1,140 hours (7.5 hours a day, but only 152 days a year)
​Netherlands: ~1,140 hours (6 hours a day × 190 days)
​Ireland: ~1,073 hours (5.8 hours a day × 183 days)
​Japan: ~1,050 hours (5.5 hours a day × 190 days)
​Spain: ~1,025 hours (5.8 hours a day × 175 days)
​Germany: ~940 hours (5 hours a day × 188 days)
​South Korea: ~940 hours (5 hours a day × 188 days)
​Finland: ~935 hours (5 hours a day × 187 days)
​Poland: ~875 hours (4.7 hours a day × 186 days)

Teaching/learning hours break down differently though as some countrieshavea lot of "infill", longer breaks, more assemblies etc:

​Australia: 1,000+ hours
​Colombia: 1,000 hours
​United States: ~990 hours
​Chile: 978 hours
​Netherlands: 940 hours
​Canada: 917 hours
​Ireland: 915 hours
​France: 860 hours
​OECD Global Average: 805 hours
​United Kingdom: ~750 hours
​Japan: 750 hours
​Spain: 742 hours
​Germany: 700 hours
​Finland: 650 hours
​South Korea: 650 hours
​Poland: 540 hours

https://www.hepi.ac.uk/events/launch-of-oecds-flagship-report-education-at-a-glance-2025-hosted-by-hepi-on-tuesday-9-september-2025/?hl=en-GB

There is no correlation between more hours and better results. Finland and South Korea have 35% less teaching time than the US yet, on international PISA exams (obviously taken latef on at about 15) they outperform US (and Australia).

OECD data sees that peak performance sits around 24 to 27 hours of total lesson time per week. Classroom hours past that threshold leads to diminishing returns, student burnout, and fatigue.

I know this thread was really about starting school again 4 or 5 or 6 but I think the length of the school day is too much.
It was one of the reasons why we started to home-educate. Rural school. First on the bus and last off...
A very long day at age 4.

Macaydia

Cossy, I will accept that i have a ridiculous and outdated view. Still keeping it ! 😊

Fair enough, sorry it trigger a nerve in me as some of us simply don’t have the luxury of choice

I think maybe the title of this thread would be better titled, “UK start formal learning and testing too early” perhaps?

GrannyGravy13

Maybe those in charge of education should realise that one size does not fit all when it comes to learning.

The curriculum stifles creativity, handcuffs teachers, and for the clever children bores them silly.

Children learn trough role play, building bricks, painting, story time all of which is prevalent in pre-schools/nurseries, Reception and Yr 1 classes.

It is Yr 2 when they are expected to knuckle down and the playing gives way to a more formal approach to learning.

That’s not strictly true. My daughter is a year 1 teacher. Phonics are used and there are expected levels to reach and teachers are judged accordingly.

Cossy yes which is why I used predominately not entirely in my post.

GrannyGravy13

Cossy yes which is why I used predominately not entirely in my post.

👍

Macaydia

Mamie, you said that your grandmother, your mother, you and your daughter worked full time. So, I am wondering, who was the mother or caregiver of your mother, yourself and your daughter during the full-time parental absence?

(Praise to all of you for a good work ethic, sincerely.)

My grandmother worked because my grandfather was disabled in the first world war. My mother worked full time because my father's health was ruined in Burma in the second world war. My mother was surrounded by aunts in her childhood, my grandmother looked after my sister and me. Our children had childminders and then nursery school. We both worked full time (although teaching gave me the holidays) and always shared parenting. My granddaughters were full time in nursery from a few months old and you could not wish for two more well adjusted, hardworking girls.
It is not what you do, it is how well you do it.

Thanks for taking the time to find all that data NotSpaghetti.
We didn’t have a school bus, or any local bus when mine were in primary. I walked our children what I now know to be nearly 4 miles (3.7) each way before school started and at the end of the day because there wasn’t a primary school nearer.
I suppose I could have home-educated, I was a teacher after all, but there weren’t the same resources when my children were young.

Good nursery education is all about learning through play and well trained educators extending that learning through play going on. About setting up a variety of play opportunities that give access to a variety of learning opportunities. So many young children have a wonderful time at nursery and enjoy joining a reception class which is part of early years and allows for more learning through play until they reach year 1 which is a transition year to a more formal KS1 curriculum. What we need is excellent early years practitioners everywhere to guide our young children and then we would be ok in the uk

What we need is excellent early years practitioners everywhere to guide our young children and then we would be ok in the uk.

There are lots of excellent early years practitioners already in the UK, doing exactly what you describe pigsmayfly

The snag is, that according to those excellent early years practitioners and backed up by the knowledge from all those countries whose education systems we are encouraged to believe are *so much better,*you need a higher staff/pupil ratio than 2: 30 (1 teacher and 1 teaching assistant per 30 children) to get the most out of the variety of play opportunities that give access to a variety of learning opportunities that are in place in most EYFS classrooms.

I’m waiting for a government who puts money into that before they, or parents beat UK teachers with the could do better if you copy other countries e.g. Italy or Finland etc stick.

AuntieE

Some children are ready to start school at five, I was, and have always been thankful we were living in Scotland then, and not in Denmark. I would have been bored out of my mind if I had had to stay day in and day out at home until I was seven.

Some children are ready to start school at six, and some not until they are seven.

What we should consider in all countries is assessing children at age five, six and seven and letting them start school when they are ready.

And NO: teachers teach, parents and grandparents SHOULD NOT.

There is nothing worse when teaching either a kindergarten class or Primary 1 then discovering that a third of the class can already read, some well, others very badly because adults with no knowledge of how to teach have attempted to teach the alphabet or primary reading skills.

And while you are trying kindly to teach children the ministry-preferred method, instead of their parents' no method at all teaching, you also have another fifteen or sixteen children who start school with none of the skills it is the school's purpose to teach them.

Well....how do you stop a child learning to read by itself? I could read when I went to school, so could my children, they worked the basics out by themselves
Is it right to hold children back if they're working it out on their own?
Said son thankfully didn't start school until statutory age, because of where his birthday was, he wouldn't have been ready has he been born 3 months earlier and started shortly after his birthday
I'd never prevent any child teaching herself to read, it's the key to so much knowledge and enjoyment
I also have memories of my son rightly correcting me when I misdescribed a shape while we were out, no mummy, it's a sector...and it was

If a child is reading before they are 5 and they are comfortable with it, then they were not taught by a parent and grandparent they taught themselves.

Born in wartime when books were few and far between, my mother sat me on her lap and read the same half a dozen books to me many times. it did not take me long to connect word spoken with word written and then recognise the same words in different contexts, to noticing similarities between words I knew and words i didn't. By the time I started school. I was a fluent reader.

DH was the same - except that his mother was a reception class teacher - This is also how my children learnt.

When DS had a half day at school the term before he started I simply gave him the book he was reading at home to take in to school and told the teacher that is what it was. I never spoke to the teacher again on the subject, nor did I ask DS whether the teacher had asked him to read it, but when he started school, after a few days, the teacher told me he was in the top ability group with the children who had started the previous term.

Children working out the basics really only happens with input from others, whether direct teaching, or from being read to frequently and making the connection between the symbols on the page and the words they are hearing , or being with siblings and following what they do.
Even turning the pages in a book is a learning experience.

Funnily enough my bed time reading by an American author contains this quote,
My granny . . . started teaching me my letters when I was three years old. It wasn’t long before I was reading. She said I took to it like a duck to water.
When she enrolled me in kindergarten, I was so far ahead of the other kids that they put me in first grade.

So even the US isn’t against pre-school learning.

All of us who sang nursery rhymes or counting songs or even just the simple 1,2, 3 and jump were teaching our children.

All adults who spend time listening to and chatting with children are teaching them.

And why not?

Cossy

Macaydia

Cossy, I will accept that i have a ridiculous and outdated view. Still keeping it ! 😊

Fair enough, sorry it trigger a nerve in me as some of us simply don’t have the luxury of choice

Cossy, i have been thinking about your "fair enough" comment and how you said that not all of us had the luxury of a choice or a high-earning husband in our early maternal years. I have been thinking about this for a couple of days.

I just wanted you (and anyone) to know that I did not have the privilege of an employer or a husband during my first born's early years. We lived by the roadside with a burlap tarp to cover us. She drank my milk to survive and I was able to spend 5p per day as nourishment for months which usually meant one small piece of candy. I would go to the shops and pick up discarded fags at the door step for a few puffs. I would beg for others to let me have a 5 minute shower once a week. No, some of us don't have the luxury and I did not. But we are all fine now. Love saw us through these difficult times. Love and perseverance saw us through. She is forty years old now and a successful business owner. I would give my right arm to keep her going. A caregiver would not.