Children Should Start School at 7, Say Experts

Primary school education for children should not be started before ages six or seven, according to a panel of UK education experts.

The experts say that starting formal education early could "profoundly damage" children. In the U.K. children are generally given primary education by four or five years of age. The government proposes to even test the tiny tots from the beginning of the school year.

A formal request issued by teachers, academics and authors stressed the need to push the children's age for primary education. However, this has not gone down too well with the Education Secretary Michael Gove who said that the group was 'misguided.'

"The continued focus on an early start to formal learning is likely to cause profound damage to the self-image and learning dispositions of a generation of children," the letter read, according to the Daily Mail.

The Education Secretary's office came down heavily on the group supporting late schooling for children. "These people represent the powerful and badly misguided lobby who are responsible for the devaluation of exams and the culture of low expectations in state schools," he said.

Former Children's Commissioner and also a supporter of late education for children said that the countries that provided late schooling to children showed better results. "If you look at a country like Finland, children don't start formal, full-scale education until they are seven. These extra few years, in my view, provide a crucial opportunity, when supported by well trained, well paid and highly educated staff, for children to be children," he said.

The support group also includes Lord Layard, director of the Well-Being Programme at the London School of Economics, Dr David Whitebread, senior lecturer in psychology of education at Cambridge University, and Catherine Prisk, director of Play England.