Early schooling proposal flawed for boys

January 24, 2017

Starting boys at school before they turn five will not do them any favours according to the co-authors of a new book on raising boys.

Richard Aston is CEO of Big Buddy and co-author of Our Boys - Raising strong, happy boys from boyhood to manhood - published by Allen & Unwin in June last year. He says the Ministry of Education's proposal to allow schools to bring in 'cohort entry', where children start school on the first day of the term closest to their birthday, is flawed.

"Under this system, boys could start school six weeks early. This goes against all international good practice. In fact, 20 out of 34 European countries start their children at school at six and if anything, that's the direction we should be heading in - particularly for boys."

Richard Aston and co-author Ruth Kerr say that generally, boys' development lags behind girls and they learn differently.

'Developmentally, boys' brains are six to twelve months behind girls'. You see it in their fine motor skills at this age - it's harder for them to hold pencils or use scissors, for example. They are still developing their gross motor skills and will be jumping out of their skins - itching to move their developing bodies. They need physical activity - not more desk or mat time."

Worryingly, boys also experience language delays and are twice as likely as girls to develop literacy and behaviour problems.

"That's a real concern," says Ruth Kerr. "Statistics show female students outperform their male peers across all three standards - reading, writing and maths - and overall, girls perform better in all school qualifications except Scholarship, where boys catch up. Boys kill themselves and others at much higher rates than girls and are much more likely to be imprisoned as teens and adults."

"Something's going very wrong for our boys and we believe part of that picture is early schooling,' says Richard Aston. "They are being taped down way too young - it stifles the imagination and as Albert Einstein so rightly pointed out: 'Imagination is more important than knowledge'.

The authors say we are entering an age of automation, where in the next 20 years robots will likely take over 50% of the jobs we currently have. What will be needed in future employment are 'C' skills - communication, collaboration, curiosity, cooperation, creativity, cultural awareness - skills that are largely learned through play.

Let them play longer, say Richard Aston and Ruth Kerr.

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