Children should begin formal schooling a year later, at six, to avoid being “alienated” permanently from education, according to the leaders of one of the biggest reviews of English primary schooling in a generation.

The Cambridge Primary Review reports on Friday after six years of work and 31 interim reports. The Review’s editor, Robin Alexander of Cambridge and Warwick universities, challenged ministers with a call for a “a lighter hand on the tiller from central government”, which should “step back” from its self-appointed role since 1997 of telling teachers how to teach. Professor Alexander was speaking on Thursday at a press conference ahead of the review’s launch.