Giving children a good start or letting them down

Before children start formal schooling, they have developed a range of skills, understanding and knowledge at a speed that will never again be repeated in their whole lives. Children are natural and successful learners. Researchers describe this capacity to learn as "flood-readiness".

They learn their mother tongue naturally and use it to draw attention to their needs, communicate and negotiate. They observe, imitate, and learn to interact with the important people in their lives. They learn the skills of moving and coordinating their movement as their body grows. They explore their environment and learn to adapt to it. They learn attitudes, concepts and skills that help them understand and be understood.

So kindergartens and schools that build on this readiness for learning and work on the day-to-day engagement of children and adults in shared, enjoyable and well-planned learning experiences, contribute to children becoming skilled participants in the intellectual and social lives of their society.

But if young children are presented with learning environments and situations that do not satisfy their hunger then their learning becomes less enthusiastic, and they may lose the desire to learn. Children who have been motivated and determined become disaffected. While before they made sense of things, they now become confused and disoriented. Children who posed questions continuously become uncommunicative.

In the majority of cases this happens because children find themselves in a system which is exam oriented, based on fault finding, and demands conformity. Our education system denudes children of their powers as learners and makes them feel as though their needs and their interests no longer have a place. Some children override the system and manage in spite of it. For others, learning to learn gives way to learning to be taught. There are then those for whom the transition from home to school was a transition from success as a learner to failure. These are often the intuitive learners who cannot conform and are labelled as worthless, useless and hopeless.

In a kindergarten class, the practitioners working with this age group are expected to plan for the whole class, organise children's day, produce a daily programme of activities against a set timetable; in short tell children what, when and how to spend the day. Should this initial formality in learning prove difficult for the children, some of whom may not have the requisite motor or social skills, their future development may be inhibited by an early sense of failure.

This way of doing things is killing the natural process of learning and the joy of discovery for children.

The national debate on quality education for our children is gaining momentum. Now is the time to widen the focus to include the pre-school years.

Our children should have opportunities to experience much of their learning through well planned and challenging play activities that provide opportunities for interacting, listening, talking, cooperating, negotiating, creating, watching, imitating, gaining confidence and building language and mathematical skills.

The practitioner is there to inspire, encourage, sustain and to provide opportunity for all children to interact with a challenging environment and to learn in the company of others, whether children or adults.

Thus the curriculum that we need is not a pre-set one determined solely by adults but a continual learning growth between the child and the adult. Anyone who has the privilege of working with very young children can give innumerable examples of such learning.

This calls for a change in our image of children, in class practices, in assessment methods, in our understanding of how children learn.

It is important to stress that I am here referring to assessment as a tool for learning. There may be other assessments specifically to diagnose learning needs or to better understand abnormal behaviour, or to determine progress.

Assessment for learning respects children and lies at the heart of the learning process particularly for little ones. The practitioner notices, recognises and responds to the learning that is taking place, documents it, shares it with colleagues, the children and parents and plans on extending that learning by creating the environment that encourages inquisitiveness, persistence, collaboration and the acquisition of the related knowledge and skills.

It gives value to the physical environments that provide learning opportunities. It promotes peer sharing and parent participation. It acknowledges and respects children's multi intelligences.

We should now be asking what competencies, skills and values we want our children to have by the time they start formal education and what school environments we need in order to enable this to happen.

No easy task at all. But our children deserve it and they can no longer wait!

Ms Azzopardi is principal of St Clare College.