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Thousands of Merseyside’s poorest children are starting school without vital skills such as using the toilet and recognising their own name.

The shock news comes in a special Ofsted report which found many of Merseyside’s poorest children are not ready to learn when they start school.

Figures from the Department of Education show a massive 3,376 children in the region receiving free school meals failed to develop the skills expected of them when they start school.

Some of the skills children lack by the time they join the reception year include:

Being able to sit still and listen

Being potty trained and able to go to the toilet

Being able to talk in sentences

Understanding the word ‘no’ and the borders it sets for behaviour

Recognising their own name

In Liverpool, 980 children (65% of those on free school meals) had not developed to the basic standard expected.

In Wirral the figure was 601 children, 76% of those on free school meals.

Meanwhile 403 children on free school meals in Sefton (71%) did not meet the target, 341 (62%) in St Helens and 391 (59%) in Knowsley.

Lewisham in London had the smallest percentage of children on free school meals failing to meet the criteria at 43%.

While teachers agree more needs to be done to teach children the skills they need to learn at school, there is some disagreement among experts about how this should be done.

Susan Poole, who has run Monkton Nursery in Mossley Hill for 34 years, employs qualified teachers to help children progress.

But Janette Cook-Hannah, headteacher of Holy Family Catholic Primary School in Cronton, Knowsley, said care needs to be taken to ensure pre-school education does nor result in children effectively starting school as toddlers.

She said: “Often, early years is seen in some way as just preparation for school and not a crucial stage of development in its own right, and this is extremely concerning.”

She added: “Formal learning, if children are not ready, is damaging for our children. For the first time in their lives some of our children experience failure, a failure from which some may never recover.

“They become alienated from learning and start to believe it is something that isn’t for them.

“We need to provide a curriculum that supports the development of the crucial skills that children need in order to be active learners.

“Maybe then, we can start to reduce the gap in attainment between the highest-performing children and the lowest.”

Councils across Merseyside say they are working hard to improve the skills of pre-school children.

Last month children’s centres in Kirkby, which are run by Knowsley council, became the first in the country to be rated as outstanding under a new Ofsted inspection system.

The Pride, The Eden, The Ark and Northwood were praised in their first assessment by the education inspectorate since it introduced tougher criteria around children's centres.

Ofsted said that children who had used services at the centres were better prepared for starting school than their peers.

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