Despite vehement criticism from experts, parents and practitioners, the Government is pressing ahead with a scheme to standardise pre-school teaching and childcare so that all under-5s are assessed against the same broad range of educational goals.

The Early Years Foundation Stage (EYFS) becomes law in September, in private as well as state-funded nurseries. Ministers could ignore the outcry they have provoked and force parents to go along with the scheme, even though there is strong evidence that it will harm precisely those children whom it is meant to help. Or they could relent, put the children first, and let parents keep the choice in pre-school education that they already enjoy. It would take a major policy reversal, but it is not too late.

This scheme is well intentioned. It is also far more radical than the Government admits: the EYFS aims to give all children a comparable start in life regardless of family background. Dickens and Gladstone would have approved, even if neither would have believed it possible.

Ed Balls, the Minister for Children, Families and Schools, does believe that it is possible, but only through the earliest possible intervention by the State. “Gaps open very early on between children from richer and poorer backgrounds,” as he has said. A four-year-old from an affluent home is likely to have heard three times as many words and vastly more complex sentences than one from a poorer family. That means a larger vocabulary and better speaking, listening and social skills. Hence the exhaustive list of goals (69) to which all children will be expected to aspire by the time they are 5, and the “developmental milestones” (500) they will be expected to pass.

The goals invite mockery. Who honestly expects four-year-old children to “understand what is right, what is wrong and why” or to understand “that there need to be agreed values and codes of behaviour for groups of people ... to work together harmoniously”? But the real problem with the EYFS is not its ambition, but its method.

Ministers insist that the programme involves aspirations rather than targets, to be pursued through play rather than conventional teaching. Yet it is goal-driven, mandatory and requires continuous written assessments by teachers and childminders. This has a profound bearing on the atmosphere and ethos of an early-years classroom, and a growing body of research suggests it may actually limit rather than boost later academic attainment: children pushed to read too young often lose their appetite for learning later on. By contrast, a major comparative survey of ten countries indicates the more genuinely free play that children are allowed at pre-school age, the faster their language skills develop.

Formal schooling already starts a year earlier in England than in most of the rest of Europe, with no obvious effect on standards. The move to impose a national template even earlier in children's lives is hard to rationalise except as a bold piece of social engineering - which itself is likely to fail. Educationally, there are more risks than benefits. Organisationally, it presents childminders with a new administrative challenge so daunting that many have left the profession. Ethically, it limits choice for parents committed to informal educational philosophies such as those of Steiner and Montessori schools. In principle they can now opt out of the EYFS system, but only through a complex application process and only on a trial basis.

No child should be left behind. Equally, no government can tell parents what or whether their toddlers should be learning. The EYFS should be made voluntary, not mandatory, leaving the most important decisions about young children to those who know them best.