This short 12-minute documentary by award-winning filmmaker, Saskia Anley-McCallum, explores Scotland’s cultural values behind one of the youngest school starting ages in the world, getting to grips with the countrywide failure to turn the play-based principles of CfE’s Early Level (ages 3 – 7) into practise over the last decade. Watch: nowwearesix.org
Scotland is an outlier regarding starting school age, with only 12% of the nations worldwide starting school before age 6. All but two are former members of the British Empire. Inspired by AA Milne’s poem Now We Are Six is about identity and the search for satisfaction in that identity.
Airing on Friday 24th June after school drop off, as some 164,000 Primary 1- 3 pupils across Scotland take their seats for the last day of the academic year and many of the 90,000 ELC nursery children’s parents will be looking at the tiniest ones in uniform, thinking: ‘That’ll be my child in August.’
Uniquely, Edinburgh Steiner School has long run a curriculum that has embraced a delayed start to formal learning. Children here start their school career aged 6 or 7, in line with 1,200 Steiner Waldorf schools worldwide. Before then, they learn in an environment that is simple and unhurried without the notions of ‘achievement’, ‘success’, or ‘failure’. Specialist teachers follow the internationally-recognized principles of the Steiner Waldorf curriculum, where this crucial education in the first six years is integrated and holistic throughout. Providing an important alternative to mainstream independent education in the city, it has long been an ambition of the school that access to a Steiner education should not depend solely on the ability to pay fees. In this endeavor, it has been a partner provider of Early Learning and Childcare (ELC) since 1991 and is registered with the UK Government’s Tax-Free Childcare Scheme, as well as offering bursaries to Kindergarten children not in receipt of ELC funding, and the fee structure for Playgroup supports parents in increasing children’s early years education beyond the 600 Hours (roughly 16 hours a week during term time) with no extra charge for the 5th morning. The cost of Kindergarten’s 5-mornings reflects the same support. Our experienced Early Years practitioners proactively inform and support parents in their application to defer.
