26th September 2013 9:00
By Blue Tutors
A prestigious group of educationalists has published an open letter in the Daily Telegraph expressing deep concerns over the schooling of young children in the UK. The authors, including academics, psychologists and teachers, have said that formal school lessons should not begin until pupils reach six or seven. Before students reach that age, there should be a much greater emphasis on learning through play. The authors wrote that early schooling and testing at young ages was causing “profound damage”.
The letter cited countries such as Finland where formal education does not begin until ages six-seven, where students go on to receive better results later on than UK students, and also have a higher level of general wellbeing. The letter was written by 127 educationalists, including a senior lecturer in Psychology at Cambridge University, members of the Well-Being Programme at the LSE, and the director of Play England. The group, known as the Save Childhood Movement, stated that extra years for “children to be children”, when supported by well-paid and well-education staff, was crucial to children’s cognitive development. Director Wendy Ellyatt noted that whilst 90% of the world’s countries start formal education at six or seven, England was lagging behind in the erroneous belief that starting school early leads to better results.
The Department for Education has dismissed the concerns brought by the group, and has issued a statement saying that the authors of the letter were ‘misguided’. They hit out at the group by responding that the authors of the letter were in fact responsible for the devaluation of exams and the ‘culture of low expectations’ in state schools. The timing of this letter is particularly controversial for the government, who are due to debate whether to bring in new formal assessments of children as soon as they begin school.