As I clutched the piece of paper that had arrived through the post, I couldn’t help but feel a little bit sick.
It was August 2023 and I’d been sent a school readiness checklist, which featured an illustrated road with 12 steps along its path – such as using a knife and fork and buttoning a shirt – leading to a school gate.
The aim? To tick off each thing your child could do to get one step closer to being ready for school, until they reached all 12 before September.
Yet, it was already August and my son couldn’t even do the first one.
While many parents were more worried about getting the right school shoes, I was worried how I was going to help my child with buttons, cutlery and holding his pencil the right way, because I had a document saying my child needed to do these things to be ‘ready’.
I felt like I’d failed him.
Of course, knowing how to get your child ready for school is a good thing. As parents, we should teach our children essential life skills. Mastering these makes their lives (and teachers’ lives) so much easier.
But now, there’s a more formal, more detailed, government-backed list of 29 ‘school-readiness’ skills – including using the toilet, drawing, practising sharing and ‘talking happily’ to others – which is similar to the school readiness checklist I was sent, but which further demonstrates how our educational system seems to be made with only neurotypical children in mind.
Other must-have skills on the government-backed checklist, like talking about their feelings, are also a lot harder for my son – who is autistic – than other children.
And yet: Children like my son are far more than what they can’t do; and a roadmap like this alone can’t possibly help us decide if a child is ready for school.
I could not be a prouder mum of my son, who is now six.
At age three, he taught himself to read. At five, he started to teach himself Spanish and Greek with the help of Alexa.
Yet, when starting school (he’s now just about to go into Year Two), despite being able to read and count into the hundreds, his additional needs meant that he’d have ‘failed’ everything on the government-backed school readiness checklist.
One of the things my son struggled with was interoception (understanding body cues and sensations) – and this meant he ‘failed’ the ‘going to the toilet completely independently’ step on his original checklist.
After a year of attempting potty training (and spending hundreds of pounds on expert advice), we were almost there – but were crossing our fingers in the first half term of Reception until he got more confident.
He also ‘failed’ the steps of eating with a knife and fork, opening packages confidently and using buttons and zips.
We’d seen a physiotherapist privately to help him hold cutlery and navigate buttoning and zipping, but he still found these fine motor skills really hard to practice.
And whilst his friends would be drawing pictures and using scissors with ease, we were still very much in the scribble stage, despite practising every day.
That’s not to mention his speech delay, which meant he ‘failed’ the ‘speaking and literacy’ step – he’d had £10,000 of private speech therapy over several years and, while he had made so much progress, still struggled to articulate his feelings or explain exactly what he needed help with.
And yet he was more than capable of starting school reception aged four, because he’d already been attending school nursery since he was three years old, and keeping up with all the academic side of school – and he enjoyed it.
The school readiness guidelines don’t recognise that a child’s development is not always linear. A checklist can’t possibly tell us if a child is ready for school.
But even if it could, there’s no Plan B.
That’s the biggest problem with the school readiness checklist. It isn’t just that it ignores neurodivergent children or doesn’t consider the individual child; it’s that it simply leaves you with a list of what your child can’t do.
The new guidelines do have some useful tips, but these are links to articles. Whilst they may make interesting reading, they also don’t cover the range of different reasons a child might need help in these areas. You’re reminded to talk to your local health visitor, children’s centre of family hub-but these aren’t always accessible either.
For every parent like me who knows their child is ready for school despite a checklist, there’s another parent who knows their child isn’t ready, but there’s nothing they can do.
Fast forward to now, and my son is starting Year Two still not having mastered every step on the school readiness check – yet he’s still doing amazingly in his own way.
He had an excellent report, passed the Year One phonics test with flying colours and most importantly had a full house at his birthday party a few months ago.
I want anyone worried about their child starting school this week to know that the checklist doesn’t define your child.
Unfortunately, the school readiness check is just another sign that the school system still has so far to go until it can truly call itself inclusive.
But the advice I’d give anyone at the start of their journey with a child who has additional needs is to not focus on the milestones, the checklists and the criteria.
Because if you do, you’ll always be focused on what they can’t do – instead of what they can.
Do you have a story you’d like to share? Get in touch by emailing jess.austin@metro.co.uk.
Share your views in the comments below.
