Ledbury Portal Community Forum

In recent decades our education system has often been kicked about in the arena of party politics as the Conservative and Labour parties have taken it from one extreme to another.
Its latest extreme with our children being formally educated in the 3Rs years before other children around the world and tested more often than children in any other country in the world does nothing to improve the quality of their learning.
Many regard these twin issues (early learning and testing) as parent/consumer power. As one of the most overworked nations on Earth parents want their children at school as soon as possible, to free both parents to be wage earners. The tests on the children are supposed to be tests on the school, so the parents can evaluate and choose the correct school for their children to attend.
Standards of education are not that spectacular in this country and behind that of other similar nations. Education experts have pointed out for years that teaching our children formally at such a young age damages many children - it can actually put them off reading and creates a culture of failure.
It has long been known that children aged four to five are not mentally ready to code and decode language (write and read) and their hands are not ready to properly manipulate the tools of writing (pens and keyboards). We expect our children to run before they walk, to read and write before they have mastered the language orally. It's a recipe for failure and as Universities and employers tell us every year, the standard of school leavers is not good enough.
Children are the recipients of education - they are the consumers not their parents. However, it is not children who vote for political parties it is their parents, and there lies the folly. Political parties are vote hunters and both our main parties will do nothing to upset these core voters, even, apparently, if it means damaging our children's education.
Democracy not only fails our children, it is mentally abusing them.
The C19th saw great strides by intellectuals to take children away from oppresive work places, despite the protests of parents who wanted an income from their children. The state eventually saved them. Now the intellectuals are speaking again - the educational experts who have the data, the research and the intelligence to see that once again we as a nation are abusing children.
The parents don't like it, but who is going to be brave enough to take them on in the C21st?