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Primary Education

Second expert calls for school starting age to be raised to six

The school starting age should be raised to six to help eradicate illiteracy, an education expert said yesterday.

The number of pupils with reading difficulties would decline significantly if formal schooling started two years later, according to Professor Greg Brooks of Sheffield University.

He is the second leading academic in less than a month to call for the school starting age to be raised.



Professor Robin Alexander, who led a six-year independent inquiry into primary education, concluded in October that England's starting age is among the lowest in Europe.

Pupils must legally start at five but the vast majority now begin at four. Professor Alexander said this was a relic of the Victorian age.

Naming and shaming of schools must stop

Today's key stage 2 league table results contain no surprises. As usual, they are unsurprisingly unfair. This year's tables show that results from local authorities with affluent populations are far higher than those from authorities experiencing high levels of social deprivation. Hackney, in London, and Nottingham are at the bottom and Sefton is at the top. As usual, schools in these authorities will be unfairly described as failing despite overwhelming research evidence that shows the impact of social deprivation on pupil achievement is on average three times greater than any other type of discrimination. Highly committed teachers in the toughest areas think they just can't win.

Ed Balls's absurd remit to his expert group on assessment last year compounded this sense of unfairness when it said that test results had "to allow the public to hold national and local government, governing bodies to account for the performance of schools."

Coupled with media criticism of those schools doing their best in tough circumstances, all schools now have to face invidious comparisons between this year's and last year's results. The decline by just 100 of the number of primary schools reaching the magic floor targets out of 30,000 schools will inevitably fuel assertions that there has been a crash in standards.

Every year teachers ask themselves why their schools have to go through this charade. This year, the schools secretary himself says he has listened and Balls is proposing a new school report card. But that too is doomed to failure, with the government – and indeed the Conservatives – determined to continue with the principle that test results describe a school's success or failure.

Irrespective of the fact that Balls is determined to reduce the complexity of the life of schools to a single letter or grade within the school report card, it is almost impossible for the press and media to ignore the continuing availability of test result information.

There is only one answer to the annual traditional hunt for "the worst school in the country". Governments now and in the future have to drop their deeply ingrained habit of naming and shaming schools as their principal method of school improvement. Parties' election manifestos should contain the commitment that they will initiate a fundamental, independent review of the way schools are evaluated with the criteria that success should be celebrated and any weaknesses targeted with guidance and support. Currently, our high-stakes test results and inspection-driven system are damaging not encouraging improvement, particularly for the very children who most need the best education.

Sats boycott - live blog

Thousands of pupils at primary schools across England will get out of taking their Sats today as their headteachers stage a boycott of the national tests. But will the protest be as big as the unions have predicted? Tell us what's going on in your area as we follow the action live.

How many children have escaped Sats tests today? Photograph: Graham Turner