Editorial

An ill-advised amendment to the Education Act will require many children to start school up to eight weeks before their fifth birthday. That’s not, as a hopeful child might insist, “nearly five”. It’s four. A concurrent amendment means that parents will no longer be allowed to ease their child into school part-time, or stop and start attendance for a while, according to the youngster’s needs, if that seems best. This critical transition is about to become all or nothing. Although these and other controversial amendments are still before a select committee, they carry a familiar whiff of fait accompli.

In opening the classroom door to four-year-olds, the Government is being cavalier, both in terms of raising achievement and the bigger picture: raising children.

“Research evidence overwhelmingly supports a later start to formal education,” wrote University of Cambridge developmental psychologist David Whitebread during a 2013 campaign, backed by 130 experts in early childhood education (ECE), to lift the UK school-entry age from four to seven. He cited University of Otago research that found by age 11, children who had started formal literacy lessons at seven caught up to those who started at five. But the early starters liked reading less, and had poorer comprehension.

Similarly, a recent study at Stanford, using huge data sets from Denmark, found children who started school later enjoyed powerful, lasting benefits. A delay of one year “reduced inattention and hyperactivity by 73% for an average child at age 11”, Professor Thomas Dee reported – and it “virtually eliminated” abnormal results on tests for attentiveness and hyperactivity. Such self-control is a stunningly accurate predictor of success, health and wealth later in life.

Experts whose report fed into these changes included an explicit warning. “The advisory group is adamant that any downward ‘push’ on the school-starting age or from school curriculum frameworks is undesirable. New Zealand children are already in one of the youngest international age brackets for starting school.”

This insidious downward shift – in both age and, inevitably, the skills and learning children hit school with – is a quirk of a new enrolment system that schools will be able to opt into. Rather than have five-year-olds arrive when they’re ready, such schools will admit groups on the first day of each term. Children with birthdays either side of that day would start together.

The promise is streamlined administration, minimal disruption, and children not feeling like “the new kid”.

But many argue the current system ain’t broke. Its great strength is that each child can get personal attention from teachers, and cues from a classroom full of old hands. Further, ECE centres avoid the upheaval of losing all of their older children at once.

Officials estimate one in 10 schools will opt for cohorts initially, after which “uptake could increase sharply”.

Childcare and after-school-care subsidies will be tweaked to cover both the children held back and those starting early, and families of children with special educational needs will be able to negotiate staggered transitions.

To be clear, all families retain the choice to delay – but that will mean waiting a whole term for the next intake.

And here’s the equation: school is (mostly) free. Day care, or having a parent stay home to look after children, comes at a cost.

When sending a four-year-old to school means the rent gets paid on time, questions of readiness start to seem inconsequential. (Those with children in the older half of the cohort will have to cover the cost of holding them back for up to eight weeks.)

Expect confusion. Even now, many parents don’t understand that it’s age six, not five, at which school is compulsory. They may simply go with the crowd at the earliest opportunity.

This could be right for a precocious few – or for those in poorquality ECE or home environments – but only if their ECE centre and school handle the transition well. As the Education Review Office explains in a 2015 report, this hinges on building relationships and valuing children as individuals, and it takes time.

Worryingly, half of the ECE services it visited, and one-third of the schools, were not doing nearly enough to help children cope. Further, “Maori and Pacific children are disproportionately overrepresented in the least supportive services”.

“Every child is vulnerable at transition,” ERO warned.

And even more so at four.

“The advisory group is adamant that any downward ‘push’ on the school-starting age is undesirable.”