We asked five people who have reason to know about it – Michael Morpurgo, Cerrie Burnell, Lemn Sissay, Jacqueline Wilson and Laura Dockrill – what makes for the best start in life
Michael Morpurgo, author
A child needs to feel from the very start that she or he is wanted and loved. They should grow up in the soil of affection of care. There is no replacement for that, it is the most important thing. If that isn’t right from the very beginning then everything that follows is playing catch up – trying to make better that which isn’t good.
After that, it’s all about caring for the individual genius of the child – discovering what it is that that person loves to be doing – whether it’s painting something, turning over the pages of a book or on their hands and knees in a sand pit. It doesn’t matter. It’s focusing on what it is they love and giving them the space and time to explore that.
Linked to this is a very strong conviction that the first seven years of school should probably be delayed. The grounding at home is so, so important. To me, the formal learning process should kick in much later, only after all this ground work has been done. When they do go to school it shouldn’t be a huge separation from the atmosphere of home – it should be a continuity of that care and affection.
The whole notion that we should suddenly make scholars out of children and be testing them when they are four or five is completely absurd. Courtesy of recent education ministers, things are now akin to how I was brought up in the 1940s and 1950s when everything depended on passing tests, and if you didn’t do well the presumption was that you weren’t trying hard enough.
