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What can five-year-olds be expected to learn?
By BBC
The world of a five-year-old is about to get a whole
lot more demanding thanks to the introduction of a new national curriculum.
From understanding algorithms, writing and debugging
simple computer programmes, to reading aloud in class, England's young children
are being put under starters' orders.
In maths, those in Year One will have to skip with
ease around numbers to 100, not to mention their two, five and 10 times tables.
But how much can a five-year-old realistically learn?
As every teacher will tell you, children's development
in the five to seven age group, known as Key Stage 1, is elastic.
Parents are constantly reassured that youngsters progress
at different rates and at different speeds. And with a bit of careful
nurturing, teachers try to ensure today's late bloomer can still be tomorrow's
Cambridge graduate.
But critics fear that making things tougher, earlier, could
be a counterproductive move, as children who do not progress so fast may feel
that they are failing.
Primary education specialist John Coe says the notion
that learning more earlier nets better results is not supported by academic
research.
He says: "There is a unanimity of view among
professionals and academics that this is beginning to exceed the personal and
developmental capacity of children who are five and six years old."
'Ready-cooked
kids'
The veteran head teacher, and spokesman for the National
Association for Primary Education, adds: "Young children learn through
their own direct experience, through things in which they are involved, that
happen to them in a multi-sensory way - their touch, their sight, their sense
of smell.
"Experience is the great teacher of the
young."
It is only as they mature, he says, that they are able
- with the help of skilled educators - to cement learning experiences into
ideas that they can hold in their minds.
Primary education expert Jean Gross says:
"There's an assumption that children come to school ready-cooked at five,
that they have developed the basics but for a large proportion of children in
this country that's just not the case."
A former director of the Primary National Strategies,
which guided learning in schools for almost a decade, she says: "Children
need continued work in schools to develop the skills of speaking and writing,
managing their feelings and developing their social skills and getting on with
others.
"It's much more important for children to be
learning these skills than to be absorbing facts or reading aloud in class.
"It's going to be really difficult with
summer-born children and those with special educational needs who are going to
be pushed too soon with inappropriate learning."
Are we there yet?
Dr Terry Wrigley, a key co-ordinator of an academics'
open letter of opposition to the proposals sent to Michael Gove earlier in the
year, describes the plans as "a Pied Piper curriculum - the children have
disappeared".
"Many five-year-olds will struggle to name 3D
shapes or 'instantly' subtract seven from 16," he says.
"It is unrealistic to expect children to
calculate 5/7 + 1/7 = 6/7 by the age of seven. Can we expect most
five-year-olds to spell Tuesday and Wednesday correctly, or six-year-olds to
spell 'national' or 'merriment'?"
"Young children are becoming very skilled at
using technology but how many 5-7-year-olds will be able to learn how to
'create and debug simple programs'?"