Why aren’t more four year-olds ‘school ready’?

Young children need the skills, experience and time of a caregiver to learn key skills (Pic: Walkergate Nursery School on flickr)

Young children in Britain are being failed. But they’re not being failed by lazy parents, and they’re not being failed by overworked early years workers struggling with increasing workload.

They’re being failed by a brutal mix of poverty, local authority cutbacks and crises in early years education.

The issue of “school readiness” feels like flavour of the month. It’s an ill-defined term used to describe if a child is socially, emotionally and cognitively developed enough to begin school when they are four years old.

Examples of school readiness skills include holding a pen, developing meaningful relationships with others and the ability to listen to instructions.

But no one is getting real answers on how to help children struggling with these. Instead, we’re getting salacious headlines that focus on children’s toileting abilities.

In January, Blaenau Gwent council in South Wales said its new education policy means that school workers would no longer change children who had wet or soiled themselves. The council said it expected parents to come to school to do this. Anyone that would let a child sit in their own faeces or urine should be nowhere near a classroom. It’s unhygienic, upsetting and undignified.

But the council can only get away with such a cruel measure because of the way that school readiness has become politicised. We are told that parents are to blame for handing their children electronic devices.

The debate about young children’s development has also intensified since the Covid pandemic.

The truth is, child developmental outcomes aren’t the result of parenting skills or individual fortitude. They are directly related to household income and wider social and environmental factors.

Around 30 percent of children don’t meet school readiness skills. But that number jumps to 53 percent for children who are eligible for free school meals. It’s not a coincidence that the poorest children are those most likely to struggle when they first walk through the school gates.

Poverty isn’t just about struggling to pay rent or relying on foodbanks. Poverty means children are carved out from important social, leisure and educational opportunities.

All of this is happening alongside huge cuts to the types of social or governmental support for struggling families. One of the first acts of the Tory and Lib Dem coalition government in 2010 was to axe the Sure Start centres. They acted as a “one stop shop” for families with young children. These have been replaced by “children’s centres” or “family hubs”. But they are a hollowed out relic of the former system, often without proper resources, permanent workers or a physical premises.

And there are now 40 percent fewer health visitors than there were a decade ago—these are the professionals that typically assess young children and support families.

The answer also lies in the way society is organised. Western capitalist economies such as Britain are structured so both parents need to work, and outsource some of the childcare to the private sector.

A developmental milestone like potty training is only reached by a child if the skills, experience and time of a caregiver can facilitate it. Is it really surprising that some children are falling through the gaps when care is provided on the basis of profit, rather than as a social right?

School readiness is often couched in the language of how it will impact adult job prospects or educational attainment. It overlooks the fact that parents might have taught their children all kinds of skills that are not addressed in the school readiness criteria.

All children, regardless of their eventual academic performance or earning bracket, deserve a decent standard of living. They all deserve a chance not just to learn, but opportunities to play and socialise too.

The real crime is not that children aren’t “ready for school” in their Reception year. It’s that these young people—and their parents—are so disregarded by society that their basic needs are systematically not being met.

This is obscured by the debate about school readiness. But it is a reality that socialists should insist of focusing on.