The results of a recent survey published by global children’s charity Theirworld say more than a third of UK primary school professionals think that most children are not developmentally ready to start school on their first day.
Just over 40% of the UK teachers surveyed believe pupils are lagging behind because developmental delays in pre-school-aged children are not being identified early enough. The same proportion blame the pandemic for the fact that so many children in the UK do not appear to be developmentally ready for school”. They also say the problem is getting worse each year.
Perhaps the most frustrating aspect of these findings is that that they are not new. In 2004 a study commissioned by the Department of Education in Northern Ireland found that 48% of a sample of 5 - 6 year olds in a mainstream schools had not developed the full range of motor skills needed to support learning and that there was a correlation between less mature motor skills and lower educational performance. 35% of 8 – 9 year old children in the same sample showed a similar profile[i].
While socio-economic and environmental factors undoubtedly play a part in children learning basic skills including speech, neuromotor maturity is one feature that is persistently overlooked by the system. It is also one which can be ameliorated through a combination of physical intervention programmes and better education for parents on what children need to support physical development in the early years.
One unpublished report based on a survey of children’s neuromotor skills in Scotland found a higher incidence of immature neuromotor skills in children who received free school meals. Two physical intervention programmes were introduced into school as a daily activity for one academic year. At the end of the year, children from the economically disadvantaged groups who had participated in the physical programmes had reached “a level playing field” with their peers in terms of the physical skills needed to support learning.
Despite these and other findings[ii], which have indicated firstly, use of simple screening measures can help to identify children at risk of under-achieving and secondly, physical intervention programme can help to close the gap, there has been a failure by successive governments to act on these findings.
The tendency has been to introduce piecemeal initiatives targeted at specific aspects of behaviour (symptom) instead of implementing nationwide screening of children prior to school entry to identify children at risk and offering effective physical remedial programmes designed to help develop the range of skills needed to support all aspects of learning.
[i] NEELB 2004. An evaluation of the pilot INPP movement programme in primary schools in the North Eastern Education Library Board (NEELB), Northern Ireland. Final Report. Compiled by Brainbox Research Ltd, Leeds.
[ii] Goddard Blythe SA, Duncombe R, Preedy P & Gorely T. 2021. Neuromotor readiness for school: The primitive reflex status of young children at the start and end of their first year at school in the United Kingdom. Education 50/5: 3.13.
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