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Primary education in England has been criticised in a wide-ranging review.

Children may be starting school too young and face a system "uniquely" obsessed with high-pressure tests, researchers found.

Pupils take more tests and attend larger primary schools in England than in many other countries, reports from the Cambridge-based Primary Review concluded.

And there is little evidence that making children start school younger improves their education.

A report by Kathy Hall, from National University of Ireland in Cork, and Kamil Ozerk, from the University of Oslo, found that tests in England were "high stakes".

But this pressure could undermine the aim of testing pupils to help assess their development and what they need to improve.

"What distinguishes assessment policy in England is the degree to which it is used as a tool to control what is taught, to police how well it is taught, and to encourage parents to use assessment information to select schools for their children," the report said.

"England is unusual in its high incidence of assessment and is exceptional in its emphasis on statutory external standard assessment for children at ages seven and 11."

The researchers compared primary education in the rest of the UK, France, Norway and Japan to isolate "the uniqueness of England's assessment policy".

"None of the other countries in this part of the survey appears to be so preoccupied with national standards," the study said.

Testing in England "begins at a younger age" than in other countries.

The report continued: "In summary, formal assessment in England, compared to our review countries, is pervasive, highly consequential, and taken by officialdom to portray objectively the actual quality of primary education in schools."

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