The iPIPS (international Performance Indicators in Primary Schools) project, upon which this book is based, has been able to provide deeper insights into some of the key issues within and across different contexts whilst highlighting new and some ongoing issues. Despite all the work there remain unanswered or new puzzling issues which are also explored.

We need to know how to improve the education at that stage and, more broadly, we need greater clarity about when children should be taught to read and be introduced to formal arithmetic, in other words, when they should start school. The book will suggest some answers but it will raise important questions and dilemmas for which we do not, as yet, have answers.