Meeting of the Parliament 13 June 2024
As colleagues have done, I congratulate Fulton MacGregor on securing the debate, and I thank Upstart Scotland, Give Them Time and everyone else who has long campaigned in this space.
The Scottish Greens were proud to propose a kindergarten stage in our manifesto for the most recent election to this Parliament. Specifically, we proposed a kindergarten stage between the ages of three and six, and formal primary school starting at seven, which would bring Scotland into line with Finland and a number of other high-performing nations that Roz McCall mentioned a moment ago.
I recognise that other members would prefer a kindergarten for ages three to five and school starting at six. It is important to tease out that detail but, at this stage, the priority is on the agreement in principle to move forward with the conversation, because a consensus is emerging.
Why should we raise the starting age for formal primary school? We should start by recognising that the status quo in Scotland and across the UK is not correct just because that is how it has always been—as Fulton MacGregor mentioned—since the Victorian era. We are an international outlier in putting four-and-a-half-year-olds into formal schooling.
I will start by addressing one of the myths about the proposals. Those of us who advocate for a kindergarten stage are not proposing that we delay a child’s education. We believe that that education would be better if we delayed the start of formal primary school and established a kindergarten stage.
A couple of years ago, I commissioned Dr Kylie Bradfield and Professor Mark Priestley to summarise the evidence for and against kindergarten and raising the primary school starting age. The arguments for the status quo—the very early school starting age in the UK—were rarely based on educational benefits.
Two primary benefits are usually cited for what we currently have. The first is child protection because, for many vulnerable children, school is the safest place for them to be. However, kindergarten would of course be an equally safe place.
The second benefit is an economic argument that children who start school earlier generally enter the workforce earlier and, therefore, work for longer before they retire. However, I think that that is a bit of a soulless argument, because we are more than units of labour.
When young people start school at a later age, there is clear evidence of better educational attainment throughout their time in school. In fact, Ashlesha Datar’s 2006 study found a bigger, long-term educational attainment benefit for vulnerable and at-risk children who started later rather than earlier. Another significant advantage is that a number of studies have found mental health benefits—by the time that they reach their late teens—for young people who start formal schooling at a later rather than younger age and have the kindergarten experience first.
Much of that comes back to the simple concept of joy. Children should enjoy learning and enjoy their time at nursery, kindergarten and school. Play-based learning at a kindergarten stage means that, for many children, their first experience of education is a joyful one—not the jarring one that a number of us experienced as we moved from nursery into a more formal primary school setting.
That is why the Scottish Greens manifesto proposes that three-to-six kindergarten stage. We want children to be happy and to enjoy learning. We want education policy to be evidence based. I absolutely agree with Roz McCall that we need to look globally at the substantial evidence base that is out there.
In closing, I pay credit, as Martin Whitfield did, to the teachers in schools who are already delivering play-based learning, particularly in primary 1 but, in many cases, up to primary 3. Practice has already shifted in our schools, but our system is holding us back from fully realising the benefits of that.
I urge the Scottish Government to take that conversation forward with the experts—the unions that represent teachers and early years staff, councils and, of course, parents and carers. Much like exam reform at the other end of the formal school experience, it is time to leave behind the Victorian-era constraints that we still have on our education system, and move to a kindergarten stage where we can give children the joyful first experience of education that they deserve. [Applause.]