THE SCOTTISH Liberal Democrats are pressing the case for the starting age of formal schooling to be moved to seven.
The party want “truly play-based education” for P1 and P2 pupils in a longer early years phase of education and has called for the SNP’s national testing of five-year-olds to be scrapped.
Lib Dem leader Willie Rennie is making the case for an overhaul of the school system during a visit to Dunfermline.
Mr Rennie has stressed the longer early years phase of education will still be mandatory but will instead focus on child development, outdoor learning, strengthening social skills and physical and mental health.
The Lib Dems say the SNP’s testing regime for five-year-olds should be abolished – claiming it runs contrary to a play-based education and has been criticised by teachers and independent education experts.
READ MORE: Lib Dems want £30,000 starting salary for teachers
The party first touted changes to early years education in 2018 when Mr Rennie said his party would work with Upstart Scotland to draw up plans to reshape P1 and P2.
Mr Rennie said: “At the forthcoming election, Scottish Liberal Democrats will ask voters to back us to put the education system first.
“Scottish Liberal Democrats will introduce a truly-play based education until age seven to give every child a flying start. By learning together through play children develop the skills needed for trickier tasks and are better prepared to shine in areas like literacy and numeracy.
“The UK is almost unique in Europe in expecting children as young as four or five to begin formal schooling. By the age of nine, pupils in Finland have much higher reading levels than pupils in the UK, having started at the age of seven.”
He added: "In advance of this we would also immediately abolish the national testing of four- and five-year-olds introduced by the SNP and heavily criticised by teachers. Parliament voted to halt them years ago but was ignored.
“The SNP claimed the support of world-leading experts for the controversial policy, only for those same experts to call it a 'perverse misrepresentation' of their work and conclude the tests were 'completely useless'.
“Scottish Liberal Democrats will always be the party of education. It’s time for a historical, radical, and positive change to improve our children’s future. Raising the starting age for formal schooling to seven is an important part of our plans to make Scottish education the best again."
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