Parenting 

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Education: the early years

Decisions you make about your child's early education will be vital in determining his or her path through life

State primary schools
Church schools
Special schools
Independent primary schools
Montessori schools
Steiner schools

There can be few more important stages in your child's development than the period during which he or she receives an education. These critical years will, to a large extent, affect his or her career prospects and earnings potential. Clearly, it is essential that you make the most informed choices you can.

Pre-school provision
Although occasionally dismissed as little more than playing with paint, the early stages of schooling are probably the most important; a time for laying the foundations upon which your child's future learning will depend. The Early Years Development Plan, introduced in May 1998, guarantees all four-year-olds weekday part-time nursery places, free of charge.

Pre-school provision for the under-fours takes the form of state, voluntary and private nurseries, supplemented by childminders and playgroups. This rather patchy arrangement provides around a million pre-school places, which are, unfortunately, distributed unevenly across the UK.

State primary schools
Local education authorities (LEAs) are legally required to offer school places to every five-year-old child within their catchment area. Depending on the policy of your local education authority, your child may not start precisely on his or her fifth birthday. Your child might, in fact, start in the September of the school year in which he or she will reach the age of five. This means that children who will become five in, for example, January 2003 may actually start school in September 2002, when they will be only four years of age.

Primary education is usually split between an infant school, for children aged five to seven, and a junior school, which educates children up to the age of eleven. A handful of local education authorities maintain a three-tier system, with schooling split across a variety of age ranges and divided into First, Middle and Secondary tiers.

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