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Pushy parents and teachers who “hothouse” the under-5s risk causing damage to the children’s long-term development, a leading education expert said yesterday.

Lilian Katz, Professor of Education at the University of Illinois, told a conference at Oxford University that four-year-olds drilled in reading and writing went on to perform worse academically than those engaged in imaginative learning. Despite scoring higher in tests at the age of 5, they were outstripped four years later by children whose first year at school was interactive and stimulating.

Professor Katz added that children who were not taught how to interact by the age of 6 were at risk of becoming unpopular loners for the rest of their lives.

The findings suggest that the Government’s structured approach to early-years learning could be storing up problems for children. They also raise serious questions about the Conservatives’ plan for all children to be able to read by the age of 6.

In many countries formal teaching does not start until children are 6 or 7 and have refined their social and manual skills. Children start learning to read and write at 6 in the United States, France and Germany, and at 7 in Finland and Sweden.

Professor Katz said that in many schools the curriculum rewarded passivity and was “boring children to tears”. Much academic teaching required children to learn by rote and regurgitate pieces of information out of context, she said. Teaching in reception class should instead allow children to develop their intellects by exploring their environments and asking questions.

“The curriculum should allow for mind-absorbing activities and experiences that support children’s natural nosiness,” she said.

“In too many classes of young children, the activities are mindless. Disruptive behaviour may be caused by the lack of interest in the curriculum.

“Research suggests the benefits of formal academic instruction for four and five-year-olds seem to be promising when they are tested early, but considerably less so in the long term. When these children are followed over a period of three or more years, those who had early experience in more intellectually engaging curricula were more likely to do well in school than their peers, who had early exposure to academic instruction.” She advocates teaching children through first-hand experience and play, in mixed-age classes. This can include puppet shows, drawing or running a pretend shop in the classroom.

“Current evidence suggests that we all pay later if we neglect these problems in the early years,” she said.

Kathy Sylva, Professor of Educational Psychology at the University of Oxford and a government adviser on education, said that children now started school younger so four-year-olds had to cope with a curriculum designed for children a year older: “The difference between them is vast. International experts are surprised that we have such young children doing academic learning.”

Beverley Hughes, the Children’s Minister, said that formal, structured learning did not begin until children were aged 5.

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