Being at home with mum had not helped me to be school ready for lots of reasons. Back then, pre-school groups were not readily available in our community, and as a stay-at-home mum, my mother mostly kept me at home, and we had a small family.
I remember attending a pre-school group, once or twice. I was four years old, and I can still describe the experience in vivid detail, some fifty years later, as it was so traumatising and confusing for me. It did nothing to help me. Neither did starting one school for a year before being moved to another for the next.
Making friends was hard, I was different, the culture and curriculum was ill-matched to my learning style and preferences, and that fuelled the fire of the bullying I experienced throughout primary and secondary. I left as soon as was able, with a meagre handful of qualifications, but with determination to find a world that was a better fit for me.
That’s why I am certain one of our important roles in early years and one of our key moral purposes is to prepare children for all aspects of school. We should be embracing ‘school readiness’ as a mission and goal for all the children we work with. But instead, too many of us are resisting this. We argue the nuances and distinctions of the term ‘school readiness’. We should focus on activity on outcomes and impacts instead.
I have written about this topic for years. I’ve been quoted too: “If school readiness means we support children to develop their key skills in communication, speaking, listening and questioning, social and emotional well-being, and physical development, then count me in. If it is about producing learning robots trained to comply with a rigid and inflexible education system, then I am less keen on the idea.” (cited in, 'The complete companion to teaching and leading practice in the early years'. Jarvis P et al 2016). I still like what I said then, and that was 10 years ago.
Despite us still having a fragile construction of multiple offers and entitlements to juggle, often attached to single-minded policy objectives, we have a great foundation upon which to build. Children rely on us to hold it all together and reconcile its creases that I truly hope will be ironed out one day very soon. We all have to be the glue in our various roles and interactions that help children build the resilience to feel safe and to engage, and to develop and use the skills to communicate and connect with the world around them, of which school is a very big and important part indeed. Everyone needs to know that and understand ‘school readiness’ in its widest sense to avoid any misconceptions and mistakes.
