As the mother of six boys I am concerned that such statistics could put even more pressure on early years practitioners and parents to cajole young children to 'try a bit harder' to satisfy the statistics at the end of their reception year.
Key Stage One staff may put pressure on reception staff to 'ensure the children are ready' to cope with the laborious literacy and numeracy hours (do five-year-olds really want to sit in a squashed huddle on a carpet at their teacher's feet when they could be playing or chatting?). The number of 'hoops' children have to go through for communication, language and literacy and mathematical development in the Foundation Stage curriculum is phenomenal and, I suspect, due to 'top down' pressure from SATS at the end of KS1.
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