CW: Mention of Addiction, Self-Harm & Su*cide

I need to talk about “School Readiness” in Early Years Education and why I think it’s an enormous problem.

Not just a problem for children within Early Years and Preschool Kinder settings, but also for children as they enter their first years of the traditional school systems.

And I most certainly see it as a problem for Neurodivergent children.

As an Early Years educator of 12 years here in Australia, across that time I’ve seen an ever-growing push towards educational demands being more and more focused on preparing children for the conventional school setting.

At present, this involves the recent introduction of 3 Year Old Kinder with children of this age being eligible for Kinder settings for anything between 5 and 15 hours per week, sharing in the spaces and learning programs of children aged 4 to 5.

I’ll readily concede that there’s a lot of benefit to be gained from children learning and playing as a group of mixed ages.

Truly, the interactions and experiences that children can have across a broad mix of ages is both amazing and beautiful, but mostly when it’s led by those children themselves. And, sadly, more and more as children approach school age, that philosophy of learning that’s led by the child is lost.

The problem I have with introducing children to more structured learning environments at an earlier age is the same that I have with the educational system at large – it doesn’t allow for individuality to flourish, most certainly within the school years.

In the year before starting school when children are aged 4 to 5, there’s such an all consuming emphasis placed upon making them “school ready”, but what does this really mean?

Does it mean fostering a joy for learning itself?

Does it mean teaching children to think critically?

Does it mean teaching children to think empathetically?

The answer to all three is no. Not once they reach the school setting where greater numbers dictate a demand to conform - both socially and academically.

These more emotional aspects to guiding children might be more ingrained within those kinder years, but as time goes on within the school system, much less so, beginning with that first year.

And I truly find that heartbreaking.

“School Ready” often means being “Routine Ready”.

“School Ready” often means being “Rule Ready”.

“School Ready” often means being “Group Ready”.

“School Ready” means teaching children to be “Subservient”.

As it is, the leap from Preschool settings and play-based learning is an enormous one. It’s also not an easy one. And I say that from personal experience as an Autistic whose Neurodivergence was never recognised within the educational system.

I say that now as an adult Autistic who still struggles with the adult world and its demands, struggles that I’ve had to learn to accommodate for myself when the system at large has so many holes within the flimsy nets it does offer. Holes that I and others like myself often fall through.

What’s different for me now, as an adult, is that I’ve been able to find compromises where I’m able to do what I can, when I can, to function self-sufficiently. But for me, that requires rest, that requires affording myself time to reset and recharge if overwhelmed.

I very much remember my school years as being a time where that choice was not one that I had. And it absolutely took a toll upon me. It always has.

The problem I have with conventional school systems, and the creep of those structures into earlier settings, is that with many more children being recognised as Neurodivergent when struggling with school – given the broader understandings of Neurodivergence – rather than rethink what could and should be changed within school settings themselves to accommodate children to their individual needs, we’re leaning into the other direction of instead introducing those rigid structures to children at an earlier age.

And we’re leaning in hard.

And it absolutely WILL be to the detriment of children.

And the problems here are twofold...

School Readiness does NOT equal Life Readiness

The notion itself of children being “School Ready” is essentially grounded in making children “Job Ready” as part of the education system. Because it certainly isn’t about making children “Life Ready” and there’s a big difference between the two.

If there was really any interest in the latter we wouldn’t even need to debate the worth of teaching sex education, critical thinking, consent, history – true history and not just colonialist narratives, gender identity, climate science, compassion, and all the other aspects of what would hopefully make for teaching children how to be better adults.

School, as it is now, is for the most part about teaching children how to respond accordingly to demands all to meet a criteria that’s governed by a society that we already know is greatly flawed.

The irony of this is that schools as an institution were initially created to actually spare children the burden of forced labour and to grant them an opportunity to flourish individually.

It says a lot about the society we have that such an institution should now be so deeply engrained with conditioning only to prepare children for a role that they’ve supposedly been spared.

School Readiness teaches COMPLIANCE

“School Readiness” being a focus for children at ever more younger ages is something I believe to be incredibly dangerous to Neurodivergent children.

As stated earlier, the fact that there’s not even a rethink of why school itself can be challenging is something that I find problematic.

What I find to be even more problematic – as well as reckless and negligent – is to instead make an effort of conditioning younger children to the upcoming school structures as a means of “acclimatising” them.

It’s often once children are past the age of 5 and seen to struggle with the conventional school environment that they might be recognised as needing additional support and diagnosis of being Neurodivergent.

If children have been taught from as young as the age of three to stifle their discomfort to meet the needs of Educators and the expectations those teachers are beholden to, those children will not consider their own needs.

They will absolutely learn only to hide their struggles more so once they reach the school setting if at the age of three they’ve already been taught to conform to the expectations of others that don’t come naturally to them.

Those children not only run the risk of not having their Neurodivergence recognised, and more importantly respected, they also run the risk of carrying the burden in later years that comes with hiding their Neurodivergence.

They will learn only to mask their struggles.

They will learn only to hide their pain.

They will learn only to ignore their own needs to “fit in”.

Until one day, when older, they can’t.

There’s a reason why the rates of suicide, addiction and self-harm are high among Neurodivergents.

But they don’t need to be. Not with support.

And that support should start as early as possible.

And that support should be accommodations, not conditioning.

“School Readiness” isn’t the answer, not when Neurodivergent adults already face hardship in the society we already have with its lack of support.

“School Readiness” doesn’t make the path to assistance easier for Neurodivergent adults…

It only makes that path harder and so much longer, from the age of three, at that.

And I dearly wish we weren't doing that.