A school or nursery is a great place for your child to start to learn important life skills and gain a good education but it doesn’t and shouldn’t stop there. From the moment a child is born they start to learn and in the early days much of this is from their parents or carers.

If you can spend a little time every day or a couple of times a week with your child you can add to their understanding of educational topics that they may be expected to learn in school. Reading and writing is a basic skill that unfortunately many children do not receive the support and encouragement that they should. Buying fun activity books to do at home are brilliant for improving a child’s learning ability whilst keeping it light hearted and fun. You may be surprised to see how many children really enjoy doing these activities and also to have the opportunity spend time with their parents or carers one to one.

Year upon year the exams that children have to do at school seem to be getting harder. I heard a comment the other day that stated that the level of maths in the UK for a child at the age of 10 is similar to that of a child in china with an age of 6, implying that the UK needs to work harder if we want to catch up. I do believe that having a good education will help people in later life, but I also believe that children need time to be children and that there should not be a huge amount of pressure put on them to perform exceptionally in exams.

The age for choosing GCSE subjects has been lowered meaning that many students are having to make important life decisions under the age of 14! Surely this is too young for anyone to have to decide what they want to do further on in life?