Raise school starting age

I have been a Primary School teacher for over 25 years usually teaching Kindergarten, Year 1 and Year 2 classes.

More than 10 years ago the NSW Department of Education decided to lower the starting age for school children from 4 years 9 months to 4 years 6 months.

This was done at the time to allow a very very small number of advanced children to enter school earlier, rather than wait till the next year.

This change has been a monumental failure.

The reasons are many.

Many parents took the opportunity to dump their immature children into the school system early so the parents could go back to work or resume their social life sooner.

A vast majority of these children would not have been ready for school at 4 years 9 months but were allowed into the system even earlier.

Almost every experienced, caring, nurturing teacher would prefer the school starting age be pushed back to 5 years of age.

Ask any teacher and they will tell you the pressure on children at school is continually increasing and yet children are far less able to cope with the higher unrealistic expectations placed upon them at an earlier age.

I have been personally telling parents for years that it cannot possibly do any child any harm to wait another year to start school but it can do harm for them to start too early.

Children who start early spend their entire school life competing with children up to 18 months older, more mature, more experienced at life, more ready.

Parents who start their children early don't realise the long-term effect on children who strive to do their best but will be judged as E or F on the new Federal School Report Cards.

I accept that some children do well enough starting school early but they would have done at least as well and been happier in doing so had they started school a year later.

Boys are particularly disadvantaged being slower to mature.

They are less capable of attentive listening at an early age.

This proposed change shows just how out of touch the previous and present federal ministers for education are.

Stephen Laming Horsfield Bay