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Is Early Schooling too<br />
Academic for Children?<br />
PARENTS often hear the words "I don‘t<br />
want to go to school! " or "I want to play<br />
with my toys instead" during their child‘s<br />
first few years of school, but do we here<br />
in England push children into education<br />
too soon potentially causing long term<br />
academic harm? I had a chat with a few<br />
parents and a Nursery teacher to see what<br />
their thoughts were.<br />
Children need to be taken into school as<br />
early as possible in order to start<br />
interacting with other children and to get<br />
a heads up on any valuable life skills.<br />
Reading to her children at home is a<br />
normal activity for Lianne Matthews of<br />
Hertfordshire, but she strongly feels that<br />
her children are too young to be dealing<br />
with the stress of trying to academically<br />
learn, and that fun is more important than<br />
homework at their young age. The<br />
importance of school for Lianne is that of<br />
socialising and learning the skills that the<br />
children can use in later life, rather than<br />
an academic lesson for things such as<br />
English or Maths.<br />
Dr Richard House, a co-founder of the<br />
Open Eye and Early Childhood Action<br />
movements, argues that there is sufficient<br />
proof that starting school earlier does<br />
more bad than good for our children. He claims that<br />
children should follow the Early Years Foundation<br />
Stage; this is a statutory framework that sets the<br />
standard in which all early year care providers must<br />
provide in order to ensure that children learn and<br />
develop well, whilst also being prepared for school.<br />
The three prime areas that the EYFS looks at are:<br />
communication and language, physical, social and<br />
emotional development. The EYFS is extremely<br />
play based and aims to prepare a child for school<br />
rather than helping them to get a heads up. Once<br />
children have been given this opportunity they will<br />
be ready to tackle the academic schooling that faces<br />
them.<br />
What harm can starting school early do? Those were<br />
the words of Nursery teacher, Claire Punter. In her<br />
own words "I personally don‘t see any problem with<br />
a child becoming academically developed at a<br />
younger age. Surely the sooner you start the better?<br />
"The children that Claire teaches and looks after<br />
learn via playing games, whilst also using academic<br />
methods and were described by her and other mums<br />
at the nursery as "bright and on-the-ball". Wouldn‘t<br />
we all like our children to be described as that?<br />
Hannah Aldwinckle