School readiness 32

The school readiness model of relationship emphasises the role of ECE in equipping young children with knowledge and skills deemed useful for primary schooling. It involves the identification of characteristics that individual children should display if they are to be considered ‘ready for school’. The research consensus today is that school readiness includes development in five distinct but interconnected areas: (1) child health and physical development, (2) social and emotional development, (3) approaches to learning (e.g. enthusiasm, curiosity, persistence), (4) language and communicative skills, and (5) cognitive development and general knowledge (e.g. cognitive and problem-solving skills, such as learning to observe and to note similarities and differences) (UNESCO, 2006). While it provides a benchmark for early childhood educators, the school readiness model can involve certain risks, such as privileging literacy and numeracy skills over others, placing excessive responsibility on children and their families for school success, and failing to recognize children’s individual differences (Kaga, 2008). OECD (2006) calls this model a ‘pre-primary approach to early education’, characterised by a focus on knowledge and skills useful for school as well as sequential and discipline-based learning processes brought down from primary education. It observes that the approach is prominent in France, the Netherlands and English speaking countries (apart from New Zealand), that it tends to favour literacy activity, teacher-initiated, large group activities and the adoption of learning standards against which to measure individual children’s progress at a given time.

Several arguments are made for the school readiness model of relationship. Firstly, there is considerable attention to economic and labour market rationales, which regard literacy, numeracy and mastering of high technology as key to success in subsequent education and in the job market. This urges ECE services to be mainly concerned with early acquisitions of related skills as their main purpose and with the production of ‘the flexible workforce of the future’ (Moss, 2008: 225). Secondly, in contexts where populations have diverse language and cultural backgrounds and levels of inequality are high, a teaching or instructional approach, with strong focus on acquisition of basic language skills and general knowledge of the host country, may be regarded as more effective and necessary in facilitating all children to have a fair and equal start in life (OECD, 2006: 135). Thirdly, given its emphasis on school readiness skills, the model appeals to education ministries, which are generally keen to see all children enter primary school prepared to read and write and able to conform to classroom procedures and routines. Fourthly, the school readiness approach – in its most conservative

forms – is attractively simple to policymakers, in theory as well as in implementation. It is seen to require the application of certain types of human technology (e.g. developing preschool curricula, training preschool educators, setting new goals and modes of performance assessment, introducing incentives and sanctions) to steer ECE towards greater conformity to the demands of primary education, expressed in certain predefined norms and standards (Moss, 2013: 73-4).

The incorporation of ECE into primary education facilitates transition from one to the other. At the same time, it is argued that the school readiness model has certain associated problems. Children are likely to find themselves in over-formalised, school-like situations from their early ages, and are ‘denied the experience of an appropriate pedagogy where they can follow their own learning paths and learn self-regulation at their own pace’ (Bennett, 2007: 40). Research in France, the UK and US demonstrates that children from poor and second language backgrounds tend to do poorly in formal, instructional classrooms compared to children from literate and supportive families, and that they require an environment that can provide more individualised attention and support for their successful learning (Barnett and Boocock 1998; Barnett et al., 2004; Blatchford et al., 2002; National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, 2000; Piketty and Valdenaire, 2006). Emphasis on early mastery of the official language of instruction used in primary school may prevent children from socializing and building basic learning skills in their mother tongue. Research suggests that narrowing of ECE content does not correspond to the psychological and developmental needs of children, and there is wide agreement that young children learn best through meaningful interaction with caring adults, their peers and with real materials and experiences rather than the teaching of isolated skills (Bodrova, 2008; Elkind, 2007; Marcon, 2002).

Critiques of the school readiness model of relationship raise concerns about its potential effect of undermining children’s potential and creativity and the utilitarian view of ECE. Moss (2013) argues that readying children to enter school and achieve predetermined outcomes ‘ignores the potential with which children are born, indeed threatens to waste it, and applies a reductionist, fragmented and narrow approach, which is more about taming, controlling and predicting rather than creating learning based on movement, experimentation and meaning making’ (2013: 45). Within the frame of school readiness, Vandenbroeck, De Stercke and Gobeyn (2013) state that the meaning and value of ECE does not reside primarily in early childhood itself and is therefore defined by what comes next – that ECE is regarded only as a transitional period for the ‘real education’ that occurs in primary education. Similarly, Moss (2013) writes:

ECE is, in this formulation, the lowest rung on the educational ladder, the first step of a linear process of educational progression consisting of a sequence of predefined goals, each needing to be achieved before moving on to the next. Primary or

elementary education becomes the frame of reference for ECE, especially the nearer children move to compulsory school age, just as ‘secondary’ or ‘high’ school becomes the frame of reference for the upper years of primary education, and university or college becomes the frame of reference for the upper years of secondary school. Not just standards and expectations, but pedagogical ideas and practices cascade down the system, from top to bottom (Moss, 2013: 9).

It can therefore be said that the school readiness model of relationship favours ‘schoolification’ of ECE services. Bennett (2013) says that in countries with split early childhood systems, where ‘care’ services typically for younger children and ‘education’ services for older children are divided, the schoolification of the latter was, and perhaps remains, the most difficult issue to resolve. However, signs or tendencies of schoolification are being reported from countries that have integrated early childhood systems, such as Sweden (Skolverket, 2004 and 2008), New Zealand (Carr, 2013), and Norway (Haug, 2013). In the school readiness formulation, the image of compulsory school education is one that takes the average child as natural, the norm, the standards, the one that fits the system, with less expectation for dealing with diversity (Vandenbroeck et al., 2013). The concern for equity and social justice has historically underpinned and continues to underpin school readiness. However, the school readiness paradigm appears to have a contrary effect of increasing inequality and excluding precisely children it wishes to include (Vandenbroeck et al., 2013: 174).