I agree with Irene Russell's opinion (In My View, 25 August) that most children who turn four in August are not ready to start school in September. However, please let us all be aware that they are not the only ones in their classes to suffer.
It is my experience, over the past 12 years, that those children who turn five during the first term are ready for the challenge of a new class and a new pace of learning. Too often they find they are just offered the same activities at the same level as during the previous year and are expected to wait for the younger children to 'catch up'.
These oldest ones can then become bored and disillusioned or disruptive very early in their school lives and fail to build satisfactory relationships with their teachers. They can also find themselves being bullied by their less mature peers who cannot keep up with or understand them.
My own children have always been older, more mature and more able than many others in their school classes and this has made them dislike school from the beginning and suffer throughout their primary years. This particular type of 'special need' is never recognised.
Until we can return to the system of more than one intake of children during the first school year, and until more staff can be made available to meet the needs of smaller groups separately within classes, we will continue to have an education system which works for only the 'middle child' in each class. This is not good enough for our children.
* Debbie Chalmers, pre-school and primary drama teacher, Girton, Cambridge
