Is your child ready for school?

Your pre-schooler might know their alphabet and be able to count to 20, but are they ready for school?

As parents decide whether to enrol their children for 2010, debate continues to rage about the best time to enrol children in formal schooling, a problem complicated by the variation in starting ages in each different state and territory.

While some states have rolling enrolments, most require a child to be at least 4 years and 5 months at January 1st to enrol, while all six-year-olds must be enrolled.

30 years ago, most children were simply sent to school when they met minimum age requirements.

But since psychologist Steve Biddulph published his seminal parenting manual Raising Boys in 1997, the trend has been to hold children, especially boys, back from school until they are at least five. Biddulph claims that boys' fine motor development (useful for holding a pencil, for example) is slower than girls and therefore they should start a year later than girls the same age. He also believes slower developing girls should be held back a year.

It's advice that rings true for Daniela McCormack, who did send her four year old on the advice of his pre-school teachers. Her son Ben was a March baby.

"Ben has never had any academic problems at school - he has often been amongst the highest achievers in his class. Socially, however, he has found it very difficult.

Once at school he found it difficult to make friends, and preferred to spend time with his older brother's peer group. It wasn't until his brother moved to High School and Ben was in Year 3 that he started to make his own friends. Watching him with his peers throughout Primary school, Ben's immaturity was really noticeable.

When Ben started High School he was twelve and the youngest student in Year 7. Our area has a tradition of starting children at school at an older rather than younger age.

Ben found it quite daunting. He has just started the HSC, and I don't feel he is mature enough to be making life decisions. Indeed, he is putting very little effort into choosing a career path or studying. Many of his friends, who are up to two years older and in the same grade as Ben, are really committed to schoolwork. I think that extra year or so makes a huge difference at 16, 17 or 18."

Yet new research by the University of Sydney challenges this idea.  The study, by Associate Professor Andrew Martin from the University's Faculty of Education and Social Work, assessed 3,684 students at seven high schools. It showed that there were only short-term benefits in holding kids back from school.

"What research shows is that the older kids in an age group in the early years of primary school, for example the delayed entry kids, they do perform academically better in the early years," Dr Martin said, hence why holding back was thought to be a good idea.

"However, the high quality research generally shows that by about year three to year four, those differences wash out. "In high school, which is where my study picked things up, in fact those advantages had been reversed."

He found that in many cases, the youngest students in the year group, by high school, were performing better on measures of motivation and literacy and numeracy.

Professor Martin said the policy implications suggest that in most cases on-time entry is appropriate for students.

He also believes the trend to hold children back presents a challenge for teachers, particularly in the first few years of school, who have to adapt lessons and curriculum for classes where the age range can span two years within any given grade level.

"Although some early primary teachers might find older children easier to teach, the reality is that many students are still being sent on-time - and so a very wide age range becomes entrenched and potentially more difficult to manage and get right."

He does acknowledge that delaying school entry is a reasonable consideration for some children, but believes the concerns should be formally addressed.

"The decision to delay should be based on a formal assessment by a paediatrician, psychologist or GP and not on the say-so of a neighbour or preschool teacher."

However, school starting age has an impact on behaviour out of school as well within. As Ms McCormack explains, "As Ben is by far the youngest member of his peer group it has led to some risky adolescent behaviour. For example, all his friends have their P plates so they are mobile. He has instead taken to the odd spot of hitch hiking."

"When all his friends go off to celebrate the end of the HSC, starting Uni, or schoolies week Ben will still be too young to enter licensed premises. I don't mind him missing out on drinking alcohol, but the thing is he won't, he'll just participate illegally."

Such concerns are far from the mind of parents of four and five-year-olds, and whose decisions to delay school entry for their child are based on concerns over developmental or social readiness.

Melanie Maxwell has noticed a trend in her Sydney suburb to hold 'borderline' kids back. Her daughter, Shola could have started school in NSW this year aged 4yrs 8 months, but Ms Maxwell chose to delay her daughter's entry until 2010.

"Socially she was ready but I think academically it was obvious that she would have struggled with the basic literature and maths especially because her speech was delayed. She is now much more developed in those areas."

With no one 'checklist' to follow, Ms Maxwell sought advice from Shola's pre-school teachers.

"The advice for Shola last year was 'not ready'. We were cutting it too fine with the cut off dates and they thought she would benefit more from being held back. This year of course her teachers are very confident that she is ready for big school. Their confidence makes me feel at ease, even though they may not be qualified to make that decision, their experience with the age group is good enough for me."

Some names have been changed in this story.

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