Abstract:

Background and Aims:
According to the Public Education Act, a child becomes ready for school in the year in which he/she turns 6 years of age by 31 August 2011 (Act CXC of 2011). In many countries of the European Union, pre-school precedes school and is the transition between kindergarten and school (www.european-agency.org). In Hungary, this practice is not implemented, and school enrolment can be changed at the request of the parent, depending on school readiness, if it is judged that the child has not reached school readiness. The acquisition of basic cultural techniques requires a combination of skills. Success in school is inconceivable without the adequate development of cognitive, linguistic, social and emotional skills. Recent research has shown that the development of higher order cognitive skills - the so-called executive functions - is crucial for school performance (Blair-Raver 2014). The aim of our research is to show whether children have the skills that are essential for school success at the beginning of their schooling. Our research was preceded by a teacher questionnaire to find out what methods teachers use to develop executive functions. In our presentation, we will present the results of this survey.

Methods:
In our study, we measured the grammatical and phonological awareness, literacy and executive skills development of children in grade 1 (N=90) using the Lőrik-Májercsik - testing some basic reading and writing skills in children starting school ( Lőrik&Májercsik 2015) and the parent/teacher version of the CHEXI executive skills questionnaire(Józsa&Józs2020).

Conclusions:
We expect the assessment to identify problems that may hinder school success at the beginning of school entry, and to help plan the learning process with the help of the individual ability profile. The Executive Skills Questionnaire can be used to predict behavioural symptoms that may hinder the learning of reading, writing and arithmetic. By adapting the classroom environment, setting behavioural goals.

Keywords:

Starting school, grammatical awareness, phonological awareness, executive functions.