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Children should not have to start school until they are six to prevent early ‘adultification’, an academic has claimed. Going against conventional wisdom that their intellect should be fed and stimulated early on, education expert Dr Richard House says that over-emphasis on the three Rs – reading writing and arithmetic – can actually cause long [...]

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Pupils should not be subjected to full classroom tuition until the age of six to off-set the effects of premature “adultification”, it was claimed.   Dr Richard House, a senior lecturer at Roehampton University’s Research Centre for Therapeutic Education, said gifted pupils from relatively affluent backgrounds suffered the most from being pushed “too far, too [...]

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David Cameron is planning to stem the tide of child yobbery blighting Britain – by giving families £100 vouchers for parenting classes. Mothers and fathers will be able to collect the free vouchers at some branches of Boots from tomorrow, entitling them to up to ten two-hour sessions on how to bring up their children. [...]

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Dr Elizabeth Sidwell, the Schools Commissioner, said growing numbers of infants were unable to cope with lessons because of a lack of support in the home. She called for the creation of a “five-a-day” guide to give parents step-by-step advice on how to raise their sons and daughters. Families should be told to get their children [...]

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Local authorities have been accused of undermining standards in nurseries by employing fewer teachers and more nursery nurses. Parents, headteachers and teachers have joined forces to highlight the issue. They say in the six years to 2011 the number of teachers in nurseries has fallen by 12%, to 1,500. Cosla, the umbrella body representing Scottish [...]

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A school bus driver has been fired after leaving a pre-school student stranded on her bus for four hours on Wednesday afternoon. Four-year-old Karlita Saabedra was found alone on a Consolidated Bus Transit school bus on Staten Island after another driver heard her terrified screams at around 5.40pm. She had fallen asleep during the ride [...]

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A four-year-old girl was turned down for a place at her local primary school because she lived just one foot outside the catchment area, her outraged mother has claimed. Maggie Scott had applied for a school less than half a mile from her Birmingham home, but was instead offered a place at a primary more [...]

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Most four year olds are content with banging on a drum and would struggle to get a note out of a recorder. But child prodigy Mimi Zou has astounded her piano teacher with her progress and will tonight give her first solo performance at the Royal Albert Hall. Mimi, who has only been learning the [...]

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A boy of three was found with bags of cannabis stuffed in his pocket at nursery. Teachers were stunned when the drug-filled bag fell out of the youngster’s pocket as he played with toys. The boy, who cannot be named for legal reasons, then happily showed off two more of the bags. When asked about the drugs, [...]

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Nurseries have been told to provide camp beds so staff can sleep over at work to ensure a service for working parents during the Olympics. Managers warned that whole nurseries will be forced to shut if Tube delays make childcare staff late for work. June O’Sullivan, chief executive of the London Early Years Foundation, is [...]

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Five-year-olds must undergo tests of basic skills to ensure they are fit enough for school, a leading academic has said. Doctors should begin testing balance, motor skills and vision amid fears that up to half of all British schoolchildren are unfit for school due to their sedentary lifestyles, according to Sally Goddard Blythe. The director [...]

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Four and five-year-olds should be given simple checks on their balance, motor skills, vision and hearing as part of standard school entry procedures, it was claimed. Sally Goddard Blythe, director of the Institute for Neuro-Physiological Psychology in Chester, said the tests were needed because large numbers of children were not ready for school after leading [...]

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Health visitors and nursery teachers should intervene earlier when families are struggling with young children, the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence has said in draft guidance. Plans should be drawn up to ensure children under five are ready for school by helping them learn to socialise with other children, take instructions from a teacher [...]

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The warning, from academics involved in an EC-funded project to make nurseries healthier, comes amid growing fears that too many children are overweight or obese when they start school. The “ToyBox” survey found that obesity among European pre-schoolers is at record levels. Nearly 40 per cent of pre-school girls in Spain are now classified as overweight or [...]

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Nowadays she’s famous for her ladylike dresses, but Victoria Beckham will forever remain scantily clad in a provocative tattoo on her husband’s forearm. But the racy etching has landed the supermarket Sainsbury’s in hot water after it made an unexpected appearance on promotional posters of David Beckham – which the supermarket sent to 47,000 schools and [...]

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Three-quarters of London pupils get first primary place By Katherine Sellgren BBC News education reporter Parents are finding out where their children have been allocated a primary place More than three-quarters of families in London have a place at their first choice of primary school for the autumn, despite a rise in applications. Figures from [...]

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More children rejected from first-choice primary school Rising numbers of infants face missing out on preferred primary schools this year amid a desperate shortage of reception places, it emerged today. Fewer children have got into their first choice primary school this year, figure show. Photo: ALAMY By Graeme Paton, Education Editor6:44PM BST 18 Apr 201219 Comments [...]

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Children as young as  three and four should have their absences from school recorded if the government’s crackdown on truancy is to be effective, its most senior adviser on behaviour said today. Charlie Taylor, the Government’s behaviour “tsar” warned that it was often “too late” to solve attendance problems if they were not tackled until [...]

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A four-year-old girl from Hampshire has been accepted into Mensa with an IQ just one point below Albert Einstein and Stephen Hawking. Heidi Hankins from Winchester has a 159 IQ. She taught herself to read and was able to count to 40 at two years old. British Mensa chief executive John Stevenage said Heidi’s parents [...]

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A four-year-old girl has been accepted into Mensa after achieving a score of 159 on an IQ test. Heidi Hankins was spotted as being of a “genius level” of intelligence after she taught herself to read, add and subtract and was able to count to 40 at the age of two. Her father, Matthew Hankins, [...]

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Heidi Hankins sat an IQ test after staff at her nursery said she was so intelligent they were struggling to find activities to challenge her. The average score for an adult is 100 and a “gifted” individual 130 but the exceptional youngster impressed examiners with a staggering 159. Heidi – who can already add, subtract, [...]

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The warning, from academics involved in an EC-funded project to make nurseries healthier, comes amid growing fears that too many children are overweight or obese when they start school. The “ToyBox” survey found that obesity among European pre-schoolers is at record levels.   » Inline Ad Purchase:  Intext Link

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Schools are struggling to cope with the number of children who are not toilet trained, teachers warned today. Inexperienced support staff are being forced to change nappies and take children to the lavatory, according to members of the Association of Teachers and Lecturers. They say it leaves fewer staff in classrooms as about four children [...]

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A three-year-old girl suddenly collapsed and died in a hospital lift – moments after dancing around like a ballerina, an inquest heard. Whitney Caves had been imitating her favourite character Angelina Ballerina at Pinderfields Hospital in Wakefield, West Yorkshire, where she was visiting her cousin on October 22 last year. The ‘chatty and bubbly’ youngster [...]

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The “lion’s share” of children who were sent to state-subsidised nurseries at a young age had lower test scores in later life than those who stayed at home, the study claims. Boys were worst affected, with noticeably levels of aggression and hyperactivity higher among those sent to nursery. The study blames a sharp reduction in [...]

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The “lion’s share” of children who were sent to state-subsidised nurseries at a young age had lower test scores in later life than those who stayed at home, the study claims. Boys were worst affected, with noticeably levels of aggression and hyperactivity higher among those sent to nursery. The study blames a sharp reduction in [...]

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Toddlers will be assessed by nurseries and childminders to see if they can use basic words, respond to familiar sounds and interact properly with friends, it is revealed today. Ministers are proposing that all parents in England will be given a written summary of their child’s progress in key areas before their third birthday. It [...]

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Childcare qualifications often don’t insist on basic numeracy or literacy skills while pupils with the poorest academic records are pushed towards working with children as an alternative to hairdressing. And some nurseries are taking on staff without any qualifications at all, according to the Nutbrown Review’s interim findings which were published last week. Anne Longfield, [...]

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Spending time in a loving family environment can help boost children’s vocabulary and make them more emotionally secure, it found. While the experience of being in a more formal setting such as a nursery can help prepare children for starting school, even this was not a major advantage in the long term, the study concludes. [...]

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Parents eager to get their children into the best kindergartens are going to ever greater lengths, and often cracking under pressure in the process, according to top therapists. Some psychologists say the stress is so crushing and the competition for spots in Manhattan’s best institutions so cutthroat that parents are willing to move elsewhere. ‘Parenting [...]

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I always wonder how much a pre-schooler can take in of another, very complicated language. The Lingo Show is another flagship moment for CBeebies (following the controversial Rastamouse and the heartthrob Mr Bloom – you’ve got to hand it to it, it’s a far less risk-averse channel than BBC1): in its opening episode, Chop Chop, [...]

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Poor safety at about 1,000 nurseries and childminders in England may put children at risk, figures suggest. A further 14,600 providers of care to the under-fives were judged only ‘satisfactory’ for safety at their most recent Ofsted inspection. Ofsted said safety issues ranged from relatively minor to serious failures to vet staff or keep premises [...]

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Scotland will have the best package of free nursery education in the UK, Alex Salmond, the First Minister, has announced. Under the plans, three- and four-years olds will be guaranteed more than 600 hours of free nursery care. This compares to the 570 hours currently given to parents in England – 15 free hours a [...]

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A three-year-old toddler scaled a seven-foot-high spiked metal fence in an incredible bid for freedom. Ashton Addison wanted to escape from his nursery and find his mother. So he climbed over a small fence, scurried across the garden at Drakies Nursery in Inverness, and somehow managed to climb up the seven-foot fence, over the spikes, [...]

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Children at risk of descending into a life of crime and aggression can and should be identified at the age of two, according to the Government’s ‘discipline expert’. Those children likely to ‘go off the rails’ should be sent to specialist behavioral institutions at the age of five to stop their bad behaviour escalating, said [...]

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A startup called SnappSchool is compiling a weekly rundown of the Kindergarten to 6th-grade math curriculum — for parents.The idea is that if parents understand more about what and how their children are learning, they can better support their children’s education.Each digest contains a “quick refresher” about the topic, links to further resources and exercises, [...]

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A blogger for the Huffington Post has caused ripples online recently by writing that her seven-year-old son has come out as gay. “Amelia” had previously explained on her blog that her son had developed a crush on the character Blaine from the TV series Glee, but now it seems that since learning what the word [...]

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No less an authority than former “Whopremo” Russell T Davies – who cut his TV teeth on Children’s Ward and whose latest project is CBBC action romp Aliens Vs Wizards – recently lamented the decline of kids’ TV. “I’m amazed people don’t recognise the genius of children’s writers,” he said. “For example, Andrew Davenport, the [...]

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This is a tale of two sisters. The elder sister, who is now nine, went to nursery at six months (before she could even sit up unaided) and announced, thoughtfully, aged two years and two months: “I want to go to the Mosque and pray to Allah” – which came as a surprise to me, [...]

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A group of academics and authors has written to the Telegraph to criticise the “schoolification” of early childhood, suggesting instead there should be more focus on imagination, play and physical development. One of the signatories, Sue Palmer, who wrote Toxic Childhood, explains that there is a “pressing down” of a “mechanical target-driven” model of education [...]

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AN extra 500 Londoners have backed the Evening Standard’s Get London Running campaign by signing up to enter the capital’s Sport Relief Mile – with even a two-year-old promising to join in. Following the surge of support in the past few days, there are now more than 3,500 involved in the event to help raise [...]

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It costs £1.9bn a year and has been heralded as the best way of transforming children’s chances and driving up standards in schools. But a new report from the National Audit Office has cast doubt over whether the Government’s drive to provide free nursery places for three and four-year-olds does anything to improve results when [...]

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Free nursery places for pre-school children may not have a lasting impact on their education, the government’s spending watchdog has suggested. A report by the National Audit Office (NAO) found it was not clear whether government moves to fund nursery education for three- and four-year-olds was leading to longer-term benefits. While children’s development at age [...]

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Labour’s multi-billion pound investment in free nursery education has failed to raise school standards, a damning auditors’ report revealed yesterday. Free sessions for all three and four-year-olds – costing up to £1.9billion-a-year – have failed to translate into improved exam results at age seven. The scheme was specifically intended to boost children’s development throughout primary [...]

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Mothers and fathers risk undermining their children’s natural development with evening and weekend lessons in the three-Rs – in addition to more than 40 hours of school work and extra curricular activities, it is claimed. Alexia Bracewell, the head of fee-paying Longacre School in Guildford, Surrey, told how parents of three-year-olds regularly approached teachers to [...]

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As a toddler, my son Henry used to sleep in a nightie, after I gave up on trying to wrestle him into pyjamas. Later, he took to calling himself Stephanie, Jean, Olive or, most frequently, Miss Argentina. His favourite game was wearing his elder sisters’ sequin party dresses while running his imaginary boutique ‘Slinx’ or [...]

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A television series about crime-busting Rastafarian mice on the BBC was the most complained about children’s programme last year, it has been revealed. Rastamouse attracted more than 200 complaints because of the way it ‘stereotyped black people’ and because of the ‘patois’ language used by the Jamaican mouse characters. The CBeebies show, which has run [...]

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New guidelines on nutrition for preschool children, aimed at reducing obesity, have been published. The advice includes information on what food young children should eat, recipes and help for fussy eaters. The guidelines, from the School Food Trust, follows a report which said that some young children were being given food better suited to adults. [...]

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More than a fifth of children are now overweight or obese by the time they start school, according to official figures. Studies indicate that children who are fat at five are highly likely to continue being overweight into adolscence, and possibly beyond. Consequently, the School Food Trust has launched a new guide telling nursery staff [...]

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Fish fingers, chicken nuggets, chips and cheesy pasta will no longer have a place on the menus of the nation’s nurseries under new nutrition guidelines. Lamb curry, mixed bean and root vegetable stew, lasagne, risotto, pilchards and tuna are the distinctly cordon bleu creations being recommended for toddlers. The new voluntary guidelines have been backed [...]

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