Horrifically rage-against-the-next-generation bait that’s just a nothingburger, yes, four year olds will slide their hand on pages, that’s normal.
Not sure why but the UK has been big on this thing lately, but it’s always without any significant evidence of ‘worsening’ beyond vibes.
If you actually look at the numbers, the 2020 annual report suggest 46% of kids weren’t school ready, while this year’s suggests that’s 37%, a huge decline. 87% of staff in 2020 said they had at least one non-toiled trained student, so it’s not some magical new issue. Any ‘increases’ I can see over the past 5 years are completely within range of error and not statistically significant.
And this is primary school, so we’re looking at students from age four.
Is there improvement to be made? Sure. But let’s not pretend there wasn’t always improvement to be made, or that today’s parents are somehow magically more awful than before.
I appreciate the effort in putting the stats in a proper historical context.
americans when nothing is happening “this is exactly like a burger”
That is funny. But as a non-USAian, I do think the analogy of a “nothing burger” is surprisingly apt.
The bread bun is bait claims and vague implication on top, and rage comments below, with no actual content to back it up. We can all imagine the disappointment and dissatisfaction of eating a nothing burger, I think that emotional response significantly matches the response of feeling your time was wasted by a story that has no meaningful content.
Father, I cannot click the book.
Son I cannot program the VCR
How old are the children in the “reception class”? I was expecting ~7 since that’s approximately when I started school, but a quick online search returned 4 years old. That makes the headline a lot less horrifying.
The UK generally requires that a child must be enrolled in full-time education when they’re five years old, but schools will have prescribed dates for beginning school depending on when the child was born. So, for example, kids turning five between March and August are required to start school on the school commencement date that year, but those who turn five between September and February might have a later start date and additional help to get them caught up with the rest of the class.
But where I grew up, before laws changed, they required all children to begin in the September before they turned five years old, regardless of what month during the year their birthday fell. So you’d sometimes get kids who literally only turned four years old a day before school commencement began in the same class as almost-five-year olds, and they needed a lot more attention than the older kids because they were basically still like 3 year olds. It was a mess and seems like the above article is basically what they were trying to avoid when they changed the laws in the first place
what does it mean to be unable to eat and drink “independently”?
like are we talking they won’t eat unless someone is doing airplane noises and coaxing the pudding filled spoon into “the hangar”?
In this context (school readiness) it generally means that the child is able to hold a knife and fork correctly, can use said utensils to cut their own food with needing an adult to do it for them, and can drink from an open-top cup or glass without spilling.
