A Failure of Basic Functions, By Mrs. Brittany Miller (London)
The recent Guardian article from January 22, 2026, highlighting that roughly one in four children starting reception class in England (about 26% in 2025) arrive without being fully toilet trained — and with higher rates in regions like the north-east (36%) — paints a stark picture. Teachers report spending an average of 1.4 hours daily on changing or assisting these children, contributing to around 2.4 hours of lost teaching time per day when combined with other basic skill deficits. This isn't isolated: 28% struggle to eat or drink independently, 25% lack other foundational life skills (excluding those tied to disabilities or special needs), and 28% treat physical books like touchscreens, trying to swipe or tap pages. Overall, 37% of reception starters are deemed not "school ready," up from 33% the prior year.
This trend, documented in surveys by groups like Kindred Squared and echoed by unions such as NAHT and ASCL, signals more than logistical headaches for overburdened teachers. It points to a deeper cultural erosion — one where even the most elementary markers of independence and caregiving are slipping away.
Toilet training has historically been one of the earliest, clearest handoffs from home to the wider world. By age 4 or 5, most children in stable societies master it not merely as hygiene but as self-mastery: recognizing bodily signals, communicating needs, managing discomfort, and taking responsibility for a basic human function. When a quarter (or more) of children reach statutory school age still reliant on nappies or heavy adult intervention, it suggests a breakdown in the chain of expectations and routines that families once transmitted almost instinctively.
Several factors converge here. Excessive screen time, for both children and parents, emerges as a major culprit in staff surveys, with over half pointing to it as a key driver. Devices displace face-to-face interaction, delay language development, blunt attention spans, and reduce opportunities for the mundane but vital repetitions of daily caregiving that build independence. Rising living costs and stretched parental time play roles too: exhausted or time-poor caregivers may delay or avoid the messy, consistent work of potty training. Some reports hint at shifting attitudes, where certain parents view such basics as the school's domain rather than the home's. Add 15 years of declining local support services, and the result is a generation arriving at school gates less equipped for the structured environment ahead.
The implications ripple outward. Schools divert precious time and resources from curriculum to remediation, widening gaps for disadvantaged children who already face steeper climbs. Teachers express frustration at becoming de facto carers rather than educators. And society loses something subtler: the quiet confidence that comes from mastering one's body before tackling letters and numbers. A child who cannot reliably use a toilet is, in a literal sense, not fully autonomous, still tethered to adult intervention in ways that undermine the psychological shift toward independence that school demands.
This is what sinking into the mud of history looks like — not dramatic collapse, but gradual atrophy of the small disciplines and parental responsibilities that underpin civilisation. Toilet training is mundane, even comical to discuss, yet it is a civilisational baseline: the point at which a human stops being entirely dependent and begins participating in social order through self-regulation. When that baseline erodes, it reveals a culture no longer transmitting the fundamentals with the same rigour or expectation. The state can fund family hubs, issue guidance, or set targets (as the current government is attempting), but these are downstream fixes. The real upstream issue is cultural: a willingness to prioritise convenience, screens, or exhaustion over the patient, unglamorous work of raising capable humans.
If we cannot reliably hand off children who know how to use a toilet, dress themselves, feed without mess, and distinguish a book from a tablet, we are not merely failing at "school readiness." We are failing at readiness for adulthood itself.
