England and a few other countries start formal education at age 4 or 5. That's harmful and misguided

(Image: Andrzej Krauze)

AT WHAT age should children start formal schooling? England is one of a few countries to say the answer is as young as 4 years old.

A long-running debate on this question has been reignited by a letter, signed by about 130 early childhood education experts. It called for an extension of informal, play-based preschool provision and for the start of formal schooling in England to be delayed until the age of 7, from the current effective start at age 4.

This would bring it in line with the overwhelming evidence showing that starting school later is best, and the practice in many countries, such as Sweden and Finland. These countries have better academic achievement and child well-being, despite children not starting school until age 7.


The fear is that the English system – which was introduced in 1870 in order to get women back into work, rather than on the basis of any educational benefit to children – is now causing profound damage. A similar story applies in the rest of the UK, and there is pressure for greater formality in preschools in other countries, such as the US.

The fear is that the English system, introduced in 1870, is now causing profound damage

Why a renewed call for change now? The UK minister for education, Michael Gove, and his team are continuing to advocate earlier formal teaching of literacy and numeracy and earlier formal assessment of children. The head of the UK’s Office for Standards in Education, Children’s Services and Skills (Ofsted) has also suggested that schools could take children aged 2. The learning style for this proposal wasn’t spelled out, but critics quickly warned against formal methods.

If we consider the contribution of play to children’s development as learners, and the harm caused by starting formal learning at 4 to 5 years old, the evidence for a later start is very persuasive.

This evidence comes from anthropological, psychological, neuroscientific and educational studies. For example, research on children’s play in extant hunter-gatherer societies, and evolutionary psychology studies of other mammalian young, have identified play as an adaptation that enabled early humans to become powerful learners and problem-solvers.

Neuroscientific studies have supported this view of play as a central mechanism in learning. The 2009 book The Playful Brain: Venturing to the limits of neuroscience, for example, reviewed many studies showing that playful activity leads to the growth of more connections between neurons, particularly in the frontal lobe – the part of the brain responsible for uniquely human higher mental functions.

Experimental psychology has consistently demonstrated the superior learning and motivation arising from playful, as opposed to instructional, approaches to early education.

Yet another study, in 2002, demonstrated that, by the end of their sixth year in school, children in the US whose preschool learning had been academically directed achieved significantly lower marks compared with those who had attended play-based programmes.

Developmental psychologists have identified two mental processes that underpin this relationship between play and learning. First, much of children’s play involves pretending that one thing represents another, for example that a cardboard box is a space ship. This ability is thought to be unique to humans and underpins language, drawing and other ways in which we convey meaning.

James Christie at Arizona State University and Kathleen Roskos at John Carroll University in Ohio have reviewed evidence that such an approach to language learning, as opposed to formal instruction, offers the most powerful support for the early development of phonological and literacy skills.

Second, through all kinds of physical, constructional and social play, children become more aware of, and more in control of, their physical and mental activity. This allows them to gradually rely less on adult support and become more “self-regulating”, both intellectually and emotionally. A growing number of empirical studies suggest that encouraging play early on enhances this ability, and that educational interventions supporting it are the most powerful predictors of children’s development as learners.

There is another important strand of evidence. In 2004, a study of 3000 children, funded by the UK Department of Education, showed that an extended period of play-based preschool education made a significant difference to learning and well-being through the primary school years.

In New Zealand, several key investigations compared children who started formal literacy lessons at age 5 with those who started age 7. They showed that early formal learning doesn’t improve reading development, and may even be damaging. By the age of 11, there was no difference in reading ability level between the two groups. However, those who started aged 5 developed less positive attitudes to reading and showed poorer text comprehension than those who had started later.

Further research exploring the relative reading achievement of 15-year-olds, across 55 countries, found no significant evidence that an early start brings later benefits.

There is an equally substantial body of research concerning the worrying increase in stress and mental health problems among children whose childhood education is being “schoolified”. It suggests strong links with loss of playful experiences and increased achievement pressures.

Taken together, all these strands of evidence raise important and serious questions about the trajectory of early education policy in England.

In the interests of children’s academic achievements and their emotional well-being, the UK government should take this evidence seriously.

This article appeared in print under the headline “Too much, too young”