What does “school-ready” mean? As a grandparent, my perspective is that modern society has become increasingly confused about this concept.

There is a set of life skills that creates a more orderly environment within a Reception class if the majority of children possess it. For example, to be able to manage their own toileting in most situations, to be able to dress themselves in easy slip-on clothes and shoes, to be able to wait a reasonable amount of time for a turn in cooperation with other children and a supervising adult, to sit and listen to a story for five to 10 minutes, to be able to understand and enjoy a collective song with actions and to be able to make themselves understood to a non-family adult. This was the type of “common sense” construction of school readiness that permeated UK culture when my own children (now in their early thirties) were under five, and it was generally understood between teachers and parents.

However, as time has gone by, and subsequent governments have instigated formal assessment processes for under-7s, including the phonics check at 5 and the proposed Reception baseline assessment, an uncertainty about the specifics of “school readiness” has begun to grow among parents.

In addition, England’s teachers are employed under a system of “performance management”, where their professional advancement depends upon a statistical calculation of pupil progress against government expectations. The high-stakes nature of this situation has given rise to some dysfunctional ideas, such as nursery phonics training for young children who are still in the final stages of learning to speak clearly, and the introduction of formal calculation concepts for those who are still learning to count.

If the politicians and civil servants who create education policy were more aware of the intricate, organic human development process in which physical, social, emotional and intellectual factors continually transact, we would not have stumbled into this situation. It would also be logical for initial teacher training to routinely include at least a basic education in the biopsychological process of human development, but at the moment, this is unfortunately not the case. As such, many of the targets nationally set for young children are essentially arbitrary and frequently too advanced. As long as this situation cannot be authoritatively challenged by a critical mass of developmentally informed teachers, circular arguments about the nature and purpose of “school readiness” will continue to proliferate.

Socioeconomic divide

The other important issue that arises around school readiness in the UK is particular to families who live in socioeconomically deprived conditions. Ongoing poverty and its associated insecurity frequently trigger a complex, interrelated and circular set of stressors within a household [1]. Currently, more than half of children in some areas of the UK are estimated to be growing up in poverty.

In socioeconomically deprived households, parents are likely to be dealing with a range of insoluble problems relating to food poverty and insecure housing, which typically lead to frequent arguments about money. Such ongoing difficulties render adults in poor households more vulnerable to depression and anxiety, which, in turn, leads to less prolific linguistic interaction with their young children.

Parents who are chronically depressed and anxious due to immense difficulties with everyday expenses, such as food shopping or paying the rent on time, are less likely to have sufficient emotional reserves to chatter, play and read with their young children. As a result, children who come from deprived households tend on average to have less developed linguistic skills than their more socioeconomically advantaged peers. This has a significant effect on “school readiness” both in the practical and academic sense; a process that Jensen refers to as ”cognitive lag”.

Children raised in poverty face daily overwhelming challenges that affluent children never have to confront, and their brains have adapted to suboptimal conditions in ways that undermine good school performance.

Socioeconomically deprived families are, therefore, doubly disadvantaged, given that their children are plunged into a high-stakes, stress-fuelled education environment from a foundation of impoverished experiences that negatively impact upon physical and emotional health and linguistic competence.

Added to this, the stress exerted upon teachers by statistically driven performance management creates a perfect storm, increasing the likelihood that socioeconomically deprived pupils will be seen as an inherent professional hazard when it comes to “ticking the boxes”. As such, there are few chances for emotional respite in the school environment for deprived children; conversely, the prevailing culture of contemporary education raises the likelihood that they will meet a wider range of stressors than their more affluent peers.

‘Lucky or unlucky?’

Chief Ofsted inspector Amanda Spielman has recently proposed that the reason that “we now have a situation where, aged 4, some children have less than a third of the English vocabulary of their peers” is because children are either “lucky” or “unlucky” in the skills and knowledge to which they are introduced at home.

It will cost £10 million to instigate the proposed baseline test, and many millions more to maintain. Significant public funds are also spent on the administration of the phonics test, and on maintaining a national database of a range of information about children that has recently been deemed questionable under the new General Data Protection Regulation.

It would be far more logical and humane to mobilise public funds to address the ravages that poverty heaps upon a high proportion of the nation’s children. Greater alleviation of family poverty and the provision of graduate-led children’s centres would enhance poor families’ chances of creating a secure environment for their young children. In Ms Spielman’s terms, such policy adjustments would create more “lucky” children who arrive at school with more personal independence and the commensurate skills to communicate more effectively with peers and adults. And, beyond a clear moral imperative, surely such policy adjustments would make economic sense when considering the optimum preparation for the future British workforce.

Dr Pam Jarvis is a reader in childhood, youth and education at Leeds Trinity University

[1] Steele, H., Bate, J. Steele Shanta, M., Dube, R., Danskin, K., Knafo, H., Nikitiades, A. Bonuck, K., Meissner, P. and Murphy. A. (2016) Adverse Childhood Experiences, Poverty, and Parenting Stress. Canadian Journal of Behavioural Science / Revue canadienne des sciences du comportement  Vol. 48:1, pp.32-38.