Two Scottish political parties are locked in a battle over who can make the most headlines out of what are essentially versions of the same pledge: to raise the school starting age.
The Greens and the Liberal Democrats would both like to see an extended kindergarten or play-based stage before formal schooling starts, and argue that the school starting age should be raised to 7.
Both parties say they looked to Finland for inspiration when settling on a policy that the Lib Dems say would “give every child a flying start”. The Greens say it would go a long way to closing the attainment gap between rich and poor.
In Finland, children don’t start school until age 7 and, in international comparisons - as has been well documented - its education system tends to do well. However, singling out one aspect of another country’s education system and suggesting that, by importing it, we can experience some of their success is fraught with difficulty.
Many years ago, Pasi Sahlberg - a well-known Finnish educator who is now one of the Scottish government’s international advisers - was addressing the Scottish Educational Research Association conference, where he made that point by outlining the myriad ways that Finns are wacky and unique. He reeled off a number of bizarre events hosted in that country - including the Air Guitar World Championships, now one of the most famous idiosyncratically Finnish traditions of all - to try to get across the futility of assuming that what works for them will work elsewhere.
However, that’s not to say you can’t take inspiration from elsewhere and figure out how it might work in your context. What would be crucial if an extended preschool phase were to go ahead is the quality of the offer: staff would need to be well paid and well trained - and there would need to be plenty of them.
In the early years, as we define it just now in Scotland, there is a massive expansion under way, with all three- and four-year-olds - and some two-year-olds - to be entitled to the same length of time in nursery as older children spend in school. This expansion, which, as a result of Covid, has been delayed until this August, is generally considered to be a very good thing, assuming the staffing and resources are in place to make it work.
However, the Growing up in Scotland Survey warned, in research it did into whether the expansion would help close the attainment gap, that if the expansion of free hours resulted in a dip in the quality of nursery provision, extra time in the early years “may well have more detrimental effects”.
In Finland, they don’t just start formal schooling at age 7, they also have more teaching staff per child. In the UK, according to the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development, the child-teaching staff ratio in early childhood education is more than 20 children per teacher but, in Finland, there are fewer than 10 children per teacher.
The OECD’s Education at a Glance 2019 report stated: “The ratio of children to teaching staff is an important indicator of the resources devoted to education. Child-staff ratios and group size are often the most commonly used regulations to improve ECEC [early childhood education and care] quality.”
Of course, in the weeks before an election, political parties are not just looking for what might work - they are looking for what might grab the public’s attention. Making a commitment to cut class sizes in the early years of primary would free up more teachers to take the play-based approach that is already common in many Scottish classrooms.
But that is a somewhat more nuanced message and not going to get you as many headlines as a promise to delay the school starting age - even if you do have to share the limelight with another party.
Emma Seith is a reporter at Tes Scotland. She tweets @Emma_Seith
This article originally appeared in the 2 April 2021 issue under the headline “Raising school starting age may pack a political punch but is it the best approach?”
