Some kids will start school already reading and writing. Others will barely know how to hold a pencil. Helen Raine investigates what skills children really need to have when they start school and whether we might be pushing them too hard.

A friend recently described to me an incident that she saw at a playgroup. The group was intended as a chance for parents to help their children learn through play. A father approached the music table with his son.

The child, who was about three, sat down and started enthusiastically hammering out his own erratic rhythm with the drum sticks. But the father was so intent on having him create a beat that eventually the child gave up and just watched as his father played the drums alone.

We coined the man ‘over-achiever dad’ and sure enough, his son was reading fluently before he was three, which seemed impressive at the time. But this boy was also the one who had difficulty joining in with other children. He was sometimes aggressive in his interactions; he couldn’t hop on one foot or kick a ball well. And he might be reading, but what did he really understand about the story?

Those children who can read and write when they start school don’t do any better in the long run than those who can’t

For parents who have children starting school this year, it’s tempting to start pushing the 3Rs (reading, writing and ‘rithmatic). But a large body of research suggests that in fact, those children who can read and write when they start school don’t do any better in the long run than those who can’t. And the hours that parents and educators spend drumming phonetics into very young children mean time lost to one very special activity that is constantly tied to higher academic achievement later in life: play.

An ancient way to learn

It seems that playing is in our DNA. Dr David Whitebread of Cambridge University has studied play in hunter-gatherer societies. He found that play is an adaptation that allowed humans to become powerful learners and problem-solvers. He says: “Neuro-scientific studies have shown that playful activity leads to synaptic growth, particularly in the frontal cortex, the part of the brain responsible for all the uniquely human higher mental functions.”

Psychologist Dr Peter Gray of Boston University agrees, saying: “Children are designed, by natural selection, to play. Wherever children are free to play, they do. Worldwide, and over the course of history, most such play has occurred outdoors with other children. Anthropologists and other observers have regularly reported that children in [hunter-gatherer] cultures play and explore freely, essentially from dawn to dusk, every day, even in their teen years, and by doing so they acquire the skills and attitudes required for successful adulthood.”

In fact, he goes further, arguing that without play, “young people fail to acquire the social and emotional skills necessary for healthy psychological development” and that “hunter-gatherers promoted … the playful side of their human nature and this made possible their egalitarian, non-autocratic, cooperative ways of living”.

So why isn’t school child’s play?

In their book, Crisis in the Kindergarten, authors Miller and Almon discuss how the Germans changed their Kindergartens into centres for cognitive achievement in the 1970s.

But subsequent research comparing 50 play-based classes with 50 early-learning centres revealed that: “By age ten, the children who had played excelled over the others... They were more advanced in reading and mathematics and they were better adjusted socially and emotionally in school. They excelled in creativity and intelligence, oral expression, and industry.” So German kindergartens returned to being play-based and as a consequence, the country has consistently higher achievement later on in school.

The researchers go on: “Japan [is] envied ... for their success in teaching science, math, and technology… Their approach to schooling before second grade …is playful and experiential rather than didactic. Finland’s children, too, go to playful kindergartens, and they enter first grade at age seven. They enjoy a lengthy, playful early childhood. Yet, Finland consistently gets the highest scores on the respected international Pisa exam for 15-year-olds.”

They recognise that poverty is not such as issue in Finland as it might be in some other countries, including Malta. However, they add: “Children of poverty need special attention in preschool and kindergarten [and] …. extra support to reap the full benefits of a play-based, experiential programme”.

Indeed, a UK study of 3,000 children showed that “an extended period of high quality, play-based pre-school education was of particular advantage to children from disadvantaged households”.

Play opens young minds, encourages exploration and human interaction

And recently UK Children’s champion Sir Al Aynsley-Green said that there is “hard evidence on how play should be delivered in early years’ education settings. It is not a soft option. It is not a romantic delusion.

“It opens young minds, encourages exploration and human interaction; it stimulates language development and a love of learning alongside development of literacy and numeracy. Play is all about learning.”

All work and no play

Yet despite this persuasive research, in the US, during a typical day in kindergarten (the equivalent of Maltese Year One), children spend four to six times as long in literacy and maths instruction and taking or preparing for tests (about two to three hours per day) than in free play or choice time.

So, at the same time as being under “great pressure to meet inappropriate developmental expectations”, Almon and Miller note that the youngest primary school children are also being denied the benefit of the stress relief that play provides.

Play in the Maltese system

With over 95% of Maltese children attending kindergarten and compulsory schooling starting at age five, we might expect children to experience lots of play-based learning. This seems true of kindergarten, but things change when children reach Year One.

Childcare centre co-ordinator Marvic Friggieri notes, in a research paper on the transition to school from kindergarten in Malta, that “the environment in kindergarten is child-centred, where children are independent and learn through play”.

However, in primary school, children make a shift from a child-centred approach to a “direct instructional approach to learning where the teacher determines what the children have to do and learn. Thus, children become passive learners”.

And just as in the US, she suggests that they aren’t playing anywhere near enough. She says “primary teachers feel burdened by the formal curriculum imposed on them” and that the move away from a play-based structure might “lead children to encounter difficulties during the transition” and “hinder children’s learning and achievement at school”.

She quotes children as saying things like: “We used to colour a lot for mummy and daddy [in kindergarten]... now we don’t do a lot of crafts... we have a lot of writing.”

Friggieri adds: “I noticed that whereas writing activities were being done daily from the first week of school, there was only one lesson a week dedicated for crafts. This indicated a level of discrepancy between the two settings.” It appeared to affect the children she was studying.

One pupil stated that she would go back to kindergarten if she could. Friggieri says: “This suggests that the transition to First Grade was an unhappy experience and left a negative impact.”

When Friggieri asked a First Grade teacher about her views on play-based learning, she replied: “When I was studying to become a teacher we used to do learning through play a lot. However, here we lack resources and the time is very restricted compared with the work that needs to be done.” The current system does not sufficiently support a play-based approach.

A failing system?

So despite clear evidence that the best path is to have high quality, playful early years education with a late start to formal schooling, Malta, the UK and the US continue to put children into a formal school setting at five or younger and they continue to fail to achieve the highest standards of education later on in school life.

In 2013, Malta ranked just 35th out of 43 states in the Progess in International Reading Literacy Study (PIRLS). And worse, in the United Nations Education Index for 2009, Malta came in at a worrying 76th, below counties such as Uzbekistan, Peru and Bolivia (one of the poorest countries in the world). The US was 21st and the UK 31st. Something in the system is failing, and a lack of play might well be the culprit.

So let them play?

Of course, some children are naturals when it comes to reading and writing and parents find them learning without even trying. But for other families, including my own, getting a four-year-old to spell out words in a reading book somehow kills the experience for both parent and child.

My son would spell out a few words and then point blank refuse to continue, while I got frustrated at our lack of progress. Once we started reading the books to enjoy the story again, we both felt much happier. And truly, will it make the slightest jot of difference by the time he’s 11? The evidence suggests quite the contrary. It’s likely that his reading level will be the same but his creative imagination will be much more vital by the time he is 10 or 11 if he starts reading later.

As Christie and Roskos say in their 2006 research paper, “pretence play supports children’s early development of symbolic representational skills, including those of literacy, more powerfully than direct instruction”. And you know what? It’s a whole lot more fun too.

What teachers think your kids should know

Jonathan Borg is an Early Intervention Teacher within the Student Services Department. As a primary school teacher for five years, he saw both ends of the spectrum for children entering kindergarten.

What would you ideally expect a child to know when they start school?

There is no hard and fast rule as to what children should ideally know when they start school, but if basic skills are given the necessary attention at earlier stages (such as ensuring the development of speech in an age-appropriate manner, the child’s ability to share, take turns and being able to wait), it will surely benefit the child’s development.

Now, parents would be over the moon to see that their children have learned their ABC by heart before they actually initiate schooling. However, there are difficulties because letters are taught phonetically (the sound of the letter).

There also exists a difference between government schools, which prioritise working on letters in the Maltese alphabet and Church/independent schools, which start off with teaching the English alphabet phonetically. The letters in both languages will be eventually covered in both sectors.

In terms of skills, children would ideally be able to:

• write own name or parts of it (and be able to recognise it)

• distinguish words that have the same sound and those that don’t (pin, fin, tin)

• blend some letters

• show basic copying skills

• hold and use a safe pair of scissors and a pencil/crayon correctly with a tripod grasp

• colour within a contour

• show fine motor skills (the co-ordination of small muscle movements in body parts such as fingers)

• identify basic shapes

• identify similarities and differences

• count, sequence numbers and understand the value of numbers (know the value of, say, 2 and not simply identify it), be able to work out simple additions such as adding/taking away 1

Socially, we would like children to be able to:

• share things with others

• take turns and wait for their turn

• be independent (especially with regards self-help skills such as un/zipping, un/buttoning)

• show an understanding of others’ feelings,

• assist others when playing or while carrying out a task

• listen to a storytelling session with other children

• maintain a simple conversation with an adult.

What can parents do to prepare their children?

I would say:

• Encourage sharing and turn-taking (and learn to play games that have rules).

• Follow a calm yet scheduled routine when possible, as this will help children with the classroom’s routine.

• Play as much as they can with their children (using play in its different forms, such as pretend play) and encourage children to interact with others. It is also necessary to find time to converse with children.

• Let their children be more independent (in a realistic way and that is adequate for their age).

• Do simple activities using simple things at home to help develop the different areas of mentioned earlier.

Where can parents find out what their kids need to know?

The internet provides tons of practical information regarding children’s development. Talking to professionals who work in the field of education, particularly in the early years can also be helpful.

Do some children arrive without any basic skills?

This actually varies. You might have a year when the majority of the children would have more or less age-appropriate skills and there might be years when it is not so. However, very few children enter school with no basic skills in all areas.

How do you deal with this?

Teachers would have to forget the pupil’s age, go back to the basic skills that were not mastered at an earlier age and intervene as necessary with the aim of mastering the skills in question. Educators, with parents’/guardians’ consent, might refer the child to further professional support.

Do you find that some children do have some basic knowledge but don’t know how to sit and listen at rug time or interact with other children? How do you deal with that?

Perseverance and patience are a must when working with children. Sitting tolerance can be a challenge for teachers especially when children enter Year One. Yet there are ways to overcome such difficulties. Topics that motivate the child in question can be chosen to draw the child’s interest. Short stories can be related to the child in advance (on a one-to-one basis if possible) so that he would be interested when he hears it for the second time during storytelling session. Each child must, however, be handled individually and no strategy works in the same way with everyone.

Do you find that some parents are pushing a lot their children in terms of learning? For example, insisting that their children learn to read before they start school?

You get both extremes. Both extremes are wrong. Some parents can be very anxious about their children’s learning but one needs to strike a balance. However, it is necessary that we help children enjoy their childhood and that they learn through play, exploration and discovery.

I am in total agreement with instilling love for reading books from an early age. Ideally parents should work hand in hand with teachers and review what is being done at school with their children. I believe that driving them too hard can only harm children psychologically.

What could the Department of Education do to help primary school teachers get even better results?

They should address the issue of vast syllabi in the upper primary years, which unfortunately leave very little space for teachers to encourage the children’s creative expression.