According to a 2024 report by the charity Kindred2, which was based on a poll of 1,000 primary school staff in the UK, problems are increasing with school-readiness among the cohort of students entering Reception (which is what they call the first year of primary school, for kids around the age of 4 or 5).
Nearly half (46%) of pupils are unable to sit still, 38% struggle to play or share with others, more than a third (37%) cannot dress themselves, 29% cannot eat or drink independently and more than a quarter (28%) are using books incorrectly, swiping or tapping as though they were using a tablet, according to the survey.
The numbers give some indication of how much extra work teachers are having to do, and they are surprising. I’m not sure what it even means that a kid age 4-5 can’t eat or drink “independently.” But it’s that last statistic that got me. Over a quarter of these kids don’t even know what a book is? That’s scary. Apparently it’s also where the biggest gap in the survey showed up between what parents’ expectations were and the reality of where most kids were at, as over half of all parents thought children should be able to use books correctly upon entering the program. This gives some indication of how under the radar the problem is.
Alex Good 
I don’t think parents read to their kids at bed time anymore, at least not from proper books, tablets are king now. I remember my mum always had a book and read me a story at bedtime, showed me the pages and pictures. Reading was magic stuff and I learned quickly how to do it for myself. Everything is tech now.
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Yeah from what I’ve heard I think you’re right. And this follows the kids into school at all levels. They bond with screens at an early age and stick with them. I was just amazed at the thought that so many kids don’t know what a book is anymore. They don’t know how a book works.
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Sounds like the parents are expecting to not have to do ANYTHING in raising their kids, sigh.
When do the state run birthing creches come into production? Isn’t that the next step according to golden age science fiction writers?
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Hey don’t knock it. I came from creche 89757976945-A and it’s considered to have been a very good batch.
But yes, parents have checked out. Those with money outsource while those without don’t have the time, the skills, or the inclination to do much. A lot of these kids sound like they’re in a bad way. They’re being raised by their screens and I feel sorry for them.
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Let’s be nice to parents, though. It’s a different world for them, too. I mean, I could look at kids getting ready to go to school and frown at them for going straight to the car instead of the sidewalk, but that would be pretty silly in today’s world.
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Oh I sympathize with parents too. Single parents or both parents working. The time isn’t there. And a lot of parents really don’t have the skills or personality for it either. But I shudder to think what some of these kids are going to grow up to be.
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Time gets a lot of press, but as I’m sure you know it’s just one of a million problems parents face. Here’s one of my favorite illustrations. You know education loves the latest fad. My wife and I, unfortunately, had to live through one of those. In this case, the idea was (and I honestly don’t know or care why) that textbooks were unnecessary or actually harmful. In our case, this was coupled with yet another fad in the teaching of mathematics. So what we wound up with is trying to help our son with homework for which there was no teaching materials, using a system that was totally unknown to us. Absolute insanity. (It did not go well.) The system, the whole mighty system, is like this in a lot of ways, undermining parents at every turn. And you’re certainly right that, ultimately, it’s the kids who pay the price.
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About ten years ago I talked to a professor who didn’t have any texts in the course they were teaching. It was something called “self-directed learning.” Didn’t sound promising to me.
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And all of it tracks back to tech. But the really scary part of it for a social species like us is that 38% who “struggle to play or share with others.” (Assuming that’s a significant upswing; be nice to have something to compare it to.) Oh, well, one of my thoughts is that when the robots take over they’ll send us back to the land for our own good.
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I’ve read a couple of good essays lately, one of them in the Atlantic I think, talking about how we’re entering an anti-social age (the product, largely, of “social media”). We now have “parasocial” relationships to substitute for the real thing.
The thing is, relating to others is work, and is often very stressful. So I understand people opting out. Being sent back to the land by our Pol Pot-style robot overlords would be a hard reboot though.
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Oh, yeah, Culture First people like me are well aware. It’s very scary. Some kind of reboot is necessary, which is why I believe what I believe.
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I believe in necessary change too. The big danger with hitting the reset button is (1) resets never go the way you plan/hope, and (2) it’s a lot easier to do the tear-down then it is to built things up again.
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