Starting school should not be like hopping onto a conveyor belt as soon as you can hop, and getting off as early as you can. Staring school, part of being educated, is a journey that needs special preparation, care, and a wonderful time where one can make the most of the opportunities.

Each year, the issue of school readiness is discussed at length amongst many parents, teachers in preschool and school, educators, policy makers, researchers and academics turns.

In most recent years, we have heard many (mostly in the academic areas) demanding that schools become more ready for children, rework their curriculum and improve their skills in adapting to the varied needs of children, wherever they may be on the spectrum of development, experience or age.

The phrase I often hear ....."lets make schools more ready for children rather than try to make children ready for school" has some merit. In fact, most of the consultancies work these days is working directly with schools across Australia to introduce and implement the Australian Developmental Curriculum.  A highly specialised curriculum that uses the mix of explicit instruction alongside active investigation and exploration, through planned and scaffolded play based learning experiences.

There are a number of other play based curricula around Australia including Regio Amelia, Steiner and Montessori.

Over the past 6 years in Victoria, many hundreds of schools, particularly in the early years, have been adapting to the needs of young children and attempting to create what I termed many years ago, the Seamless Curriculum. A more consistent teaching and learning set of strategies between the preschool year and the first years of school.

Despite these wonderful changes, which I believe have helped considerably to ease the transition of children into school and provided a greater level of appropriate teaching strategies for young children, there continues to be a need for governments and educators to consider deeply the notion of when to send a child to school.

I am constantly amazed at some researchers who, in studying some aspects of repeating a child in school once they are in school, then extrapolate their research findings into a conclusion about providing more time for children before they actually start school. They lump these two issues, repeating a year in school and starting school later than the actual chronological age allows together as if they are somehow the same.

The stark differences and associated issues with this dangerous and misleading supposed research fails to recognise some major factors in the whole area of sending a child to school.

Here are just some of the associated issues that need to be factored in:

1. Some studies that purport that children who had an additional year at school, or who are a year older, once they were already in school do not achieve any more significantly better than students who didn't repeat. We respond with this: "Education and the 13 years of schooling that a child has should not be limited and narrowed into measuring simply a score they receive in VCE. The actual quality of the journey is absolutely one of the most important factors. Thirteen years is a long time of the lifespan to be in a place that one learns to "cope" in, rather than thrive and flourish.

2. Research that sets out deliberately to discourage parents from considering the possible benefits of providing an additional consolidation year of skills, maturity and life as a child is misleading and misses the point that an education is about the "whole" child and part of the whole child is that of being a young child who requires time to develop, play, create, wonder and enjoy in a relatively stress free environment in their early years of life. We all know that today's system of education is highly stressful, has a crowded and pushed down curriculum, high standards of academia, even in Prep, (we seem to have forgotten that prep used to mean preparation before grade 1) and is emotionally, physically and mentally demanding even for the most ready child.

3. In Australia we continue to have not only a completely fragmented starting age between all states and territories, (which in itself is confusing and difficult for many families), we continue to have one of the youngest starting ages to school than most places across the world. Why anyone would wish to send a young child into a rigorous and crowded curriculum if they were not ready seems bewildering!

4. In recent times, for a range of academic pretensions and political influences, the notion of a child actually developing, moving through significant biological maturation stages of the lifespan has taken a back seat to the more popularist movement of the moment, a socio cultural perspective that seems to defy scientific evidence about the fact that despite the influences of environment, culture and family, we actually do as a species, just like all animals have unique developmental and maturational influences as well. This distraction away from considering maturity as an important element of coping skills, adapting to new situations and the basic abilities to function, think, speak, emote and control oneself perpetuate incorrectly, the notion that anyone can be ready for school as long as the school is ready for them!! If we followed this illogic far enough, we could be starting children at school at 2 years of age.

5. The realities related to school readiness are based on the following beliefs.

• a. A biological reality that maturity itself is an important factor in moving a child from a specialised, small and specifically trained early childhood program into a generalist, non specialised primary school setting.
• b. That given the young age of entry allowed in this country, many children are being short changed a child hood and missing out on the valuable and necessary components of early childhood, rich play based curriculum appropriate for young children with time to grow, mature and experience the world without the additional pressures and stresses for the academic.
• c. Many children will benefit in relation to their general well being, self esteem, attitudes toward school and belief about themselves as a leaner if they move into school without the question mark, without just coping or not just coping, but being able to have a solid and rich childhood of play as a foundation for moving into school with more life experience, maturity and early learning.

Our consultancy is committed to ensuring that parents are empowered and free to consider carefully when they believe their children are ready for school. We believe that preschool teachers are most usually the experts and have great knowledge of the children they teach. We also believe parents should always seek a second opinion which in Victoria is free of charge through the role of the preschool field officer.

We do not blindly always recommend children have an additional year. We listen carefully to the parents and family situation. We listen carefully to the preschool teacher and we observe and assess the child in relation to aspects of their maturity.

We often say that life and education is not a conveyor belt and it is not about who gets on first and who gets off first. It is certainly about avoiding anyone falling off along the way or having to run to keep up.

We do however; believe strongly that when and if there is a question mark over a child's readiness for school, that parents are provided with the option of providing their child with another high quality early childhood year before commencing school.

This is where in some states and territories it becomes problematic.

Some countries provide children with government funded early childhood programs with high quality and highly educated teachers for 2-3 years before commencing school at age 6 or 7 years.  Currently, our governments, both federal and state do not do this.

Interestingly, the countries that start children in school at age 6 and start formalised reading instruction at age 7 perform more highly than Australia and the USA and the UK.

Australia needs to carefully consider a national starting age and we, as many other educators recommend the cut off should be December 31. It is currently April 30 in Victoria.

Whilst some will say, if you move it, there will be a new cohort who become the youngest our response is simple. "Our issue about readiness is not as simple as just the chronological age. There will always be someone the youngest and someone the oldest in the class. Our point is to look at the whole child and their readiness not their chronological age."

It is about ensuring that all children as a little older therefore, providing them with more time to mature, enjoy their childhood and ensuring that they have the benefits of a play based specialist early childhood program in the years before they start school.

Every prep teacher in the world that I have ever met for the past 30 years knows the child who just needed more time and life experience before entering the rigours and expectations of school.

We hope that our own research as well as the compilation of a literature review from studies across the world will assist in ensuring that the issue of a national starting age and raising the starting age will remain firmly on the federal governments agenda.

In the mean time, we continue to encourage parents to seek professional supports and opinions and not be fooled by studies that are actually not about delaying the start of school at all. They are misleading and narrow and based predominantly upon a score at the end and totally ignore the quality of the journey itself.

We want children to be happy, to have a high sense of self worth and enjoyment.

Life and education is not a race to be won, but a journey of discovery, mastery, exploration and fulfilment. Let's ensure it starts with a strong foundation and an unhurried and more patient world that allows us to wait, to think and to prepare with time.

Our term 2 enewsletter which has just been emailed out to over 2000 subscribers has more about the issues of school readiness. Feel free to subscribe.

 Kathy Walker