If you’re a parent of a preschool-aged child one of the first things you’ll do when you start thinking about their schooling is start hunting for information about the best age for them to start.Thanks to the wild variation in minimum school starting ages from state to state, you’re likely to come away even more bemused by the complexity of the issue than before you flipped open your laptop.
In South Australia, the cut-off is the seemingly arbitrary May 5. And Tasmanian kids have to be five years old by January 1 of the year they begin school. “Maybe it was less of a problem when there was less research about the impact of school starting age. But now we have that research and we know that it’s absolutely important and absolutely in the best interests of our children.”
“When we compared their developmental data there was a clear trend: outcomes improved with each additional month of age,” said researcher Dr Mark Hanley. According to the same NSW University study, one quarter of NSW children are being “held back” a year to start school when they’re six or close to six because of concerns that they’ll be significantly younger than their cohorts if they start on time or early.
So why don’t we simply iron out the bumps, level the playing field and agree on an age and stick to it nationwide? For the same reason that anything to do with standardising education gets thrown into the too-hard basket.
Should be the year they turn 5 & extra tutoring to be done, for kids struggling. If the government pumped more tax payers money into education, and not in their own pockets on their pension after being in parliament of only 7 years maybe we would have a better education system
So holding kids back a while gives them better outcomes? What about really smart kids who should go to school earlier and will get bored if they don’t?
Agree