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Older or younger? How to decide the best age for your child to start school

Stephanie Leath, a pre-kindergarten teacher at the Oakmont KinderCare center. (Getty Images)
Stephanie Leath, a pre-kindergarten teacher at the Oakmont KinderCare center. (Getty Images)

Presley Tudico is not yet five but he’s already entrenched in Canada’s education system.

His academic journey began when he was 18 months old after his parents enrolled him in an early childhood education centre (ECE) in Toronto.

“We wanted him to have stimulated interaction with other children,” his mother Nikki Lamb Tudico said. “Uptown Yonge Preschool had a balance of learning through play, fun exploration, crafts, music, and French.”

The Tudicos’ objective wasn’t heavy academics. Still, they enjoyed listening to their toddler’s expanding vocabulary and were happy when Presley was introduced to reading and writing. Senior kindergarten this September should be a piece of cake for him. “He’s ready to dive in,” said Lamb Tudico, president of Lamb Creative Group, a communications and marketing collective in Toronto.

In Canada, children must be enrolled in school by the age of six.

Publicly-funded kindergarten is available for kids as young as three (and will celebrate their fourth birthday during the school year).

However, attendance at junior and senior kindergarten is not mandatory. According to Canada’s Council of Ministers of Education, more than 40 per cent of four-year-olds are enrolled in junior kindergarten.

Presley’s parents deftly navigated school enrolment but for some Canadian families the age decision is perplexing: does starting school sooner, say, at four instead of five or six, lead to more learning in the long run? Does it make a difference if your child is the youngest or oldest in the class? Does pre-school help? For every expert who says to enrol earlier there is another who says older is best.

A June 2015 study published in the Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry concluded that the youngest children in class were rated by teachers as “having more language deficits, behaviour problems, and poorer academic progress at the end of the school year.”

Asked for her thoughts, Oriane Landry, an assistant professor in the department of Psychology Neuroscience & Behaviour at McMaster University, cites Fraser Mustard, an early childhood development advocate. He contended that children should begin a formal educational placement, such as an Early Childhood Education program (ECE), beginning at age two.

Why so early? Because he estimates that two-thirds of families are not equipped to provide the optimal learning environment for their children.

Landry, who researches cognitive development in children noted that quality childcare centres offer children valuable and varied learning and social opportunities, which make the transition to formal schooling smooth. “But a childcare centre, like a school, is only as good as its staffing and resources,” she said. 

Now consider the findings of a 2010 report on the long-running U.S. Head Start program, which, since 1965, provided ECE, health and nutrition services for low-income children and families. Even with ECE, the report noted that, by the end of Grade 1: “No significant impacts were found for math skills, pre-writing, children’s promotion or teacher report of children’s school accomplishments.” 

How do you choose?

“I’m not a parent myself but I can imagine that it’s a really tough decision especially with the seemingly conflicting evidence,” said Justin Smith, an economics professor atWilfrid Laurier University in Waterloo, who has researched school entry policy on short- and long-term achievement. “On the one hand there are studies like my own that say the oldest kids in the class perform better so that might make a parent think, ‘For sure, let’s wait’.

“At the same time there’s another strain of evidence by a Nobel Prize-winning economist saying you actually have to get kids in school as early as possible” (University of Chicago professor James J. Heckman’s research has shown how the economy benefits via investment in early childhood development).

Smith added, “I don’t think anyone is in the position to answer whether there is an optimal age.”

Elizabeth Dhuey, a University of Toronto economics professor, agrees. “There’s not much research on optimal age but we have some research showing older is better.” Dhuey has studied academic results in 18 developed countries, and compared the grades of older students to younger ones in the same class.

She said, “There are two different sides of the puzzle. We know that getting high-quality, early childhood education is important – with play learning, standing in a line, trying to learn to be quiet – but that starting school too early with the curriculum in the traditional sense, is not good.”

Canadian children are, in fact, wrangling with crayons, glue sticks, scissors, and storytime, at a comparatively young age. The 2014 study, “It’s Time for Preschool” by the Atkinson Centre at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education (OISE) reported that 58 per cent of 2 to 4-year-olds across Canada regularly attended preschool between 2011 and 2014.

Dr. Emis Akbari, the study’s co-author and a postdoctoral fellow at Atkinson, wrote: “Studies show children who attend preschool have a better vocabulary, have improved impulse control and are more accepting of cultural diversity.”

For some parents the decision to enrol early in ECE followed by kindergarten is purely economic; both are working, and there’s no one to take care of the little one, said Wilfrid Laurier economist Smith. Some parents enrol their children in kindergarten as early as possible to avoid an additional year of daycare fees.

When the OISE-Atkinson preschool report was published in November 2014, seven out of the 13 provinces and territories were offering full-day kindergarten for five-year-olds, with Newfoundland readying for 2016 enrolments. Ontario and the Northwest Territories were extending full-day programming for five-year-olds, and Saskatchewan, Manitoba and Alberta had expanded access to three- and four-years-olds in at-risk circumstances. 

Presley's mom has heard arguments for and against early enrolment in ECE and kindergarten and doesn’t see a right or wrong age but leans towards trusting a child’s resiliency in starting younger.

She wants her son to enjoy himself while learning, no matter how old he is: “We need to remember we are talking about children. The more we make learning fun for them, the more engaged they will be in the process going forward.”