ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the creation of the laws and policies concerned with children starting school. The 1944 Education Act requires that children commence full-time education in the term following their fifth birthday, but many local authorities now admit children at the beginning of the school year following their fourth birthday. The specific policy of annual admission has been justified educationally as helping to compensate for the disadvantages experienced by summer born children under termly entry arrangements. The upper limit of compulsory education has shifted several times since Forster introduced thirteen and Sandon increased it to fourteen. The appropriateness of drawing such a strong organisational dividing line between nursery and primary sectors is of course open to debate; whether primary school teaching might be improved by more generous staffing ratios and greater emphasis on play and imagination, and equally whether nursery teaching might benefit from a more explicit curriculum or even some structured teaching.
