At a Policy Exchange meeting last month, education and childcare minister Liz Truss announced plans for a shake-up in nursery care. Nurseries that take children as young as 12 months, she said, 'have a job of educating. It is not just looking after children.' Some articles stemming from her speech have suggested that these proposals could include children being taught to read and write from two years of age.
The minister's argument for starting education as early as possible is based on the concept of 'critical periods' for development and research, which has shown that English pupils at the age of 15 or 16 lag several points behind students in East Asia on the average PISA maths score, and that the lag is already evident at five years of age.
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