Is your child school-ready?
Published
The number of children who begin their school life ‘school ready’ has declined significantly in just 12 months, according to the 2025 annual School Readiness Survey from Early Years charity Kindred Squared.
According to primary school staff, 37 per cent of children starting Reception were not school ready, up from 33 per cent in 2024. Teaching staff reported that helping pupils who are not toilet-trained is taking up an average of 1.4 hours of each school day: the equivalent of an entire school day per week.
Teachers also reported that:
• Growing numbers of children are struggling with life skills, including toilet-training, emotional regulation and basic language skills.
• More than a quarter of children starting Reception are not toilet trained. Nearly a quarter (22 per cent of parents) believe it does not matter if a child is trained by school entry.
• More than 1 in 4 (28 per cent) of children are reported by primary school staff to be unable to eat and drink independently and 25 per cent struggle with basic language skills.
• Nearly a third (32 per cent) of children are reported to become overly upset when away from parents.
• School readiness inequalities are widening, with sharper declines reported in the North East, West Midlands, North West and London.
• Despite this, 88 per cent of parents say their child is ready for school, highlighting a gap between parental confidence and classroom experience.
All this is impacting badly on teachers and other staff members. Teachers describe a stop-start cycle where lessons are constantly interrupted because a child has an accident or requires a nappy change. This makes it difficult to establish essential classroom routines.
Some staff members report that the entire first half-term is essentially written off for learning because so much time must be dedicated to basic care, including toileting and teaching children how to use the facilities. School readiness pressures are contributing to workforce strain, with more than half (55 per cent) of staff reporting increased stress. Others complain of lower morale and, perhaps understandably, staff turnover has increased.
What emerges is a stark divide between how parents and teachers view the situation. While teachers report a decline in readiness, 88 per cent of parents believe their child is ready for school. And there is evidence that parents may be lowering their own expectations of what ‘school readiness’ means.
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