How much has the EYFS cost so far?

I know it's easy to complain about the amount of money things cost...nothing good was ever done on the cheap, isn't the early years "worth it" etc.

But given there were two perfectly reasonable publications on the early years (Birth to Three Matters and Curriculum Guidance for Foundation Stage) I do wonder whether a quick tidy-up and update of them wouldn't have been enough. Then all the money, time, energy, meetings in dingy hotel rooms with practitioners and "experts" etc could have been deployed for something better. Like thinking about how we could engage better with the early years workforce and deliver some decent training. It's seductive to concentrate on these big strategies, documents, change processes etc.

Any how much has it cost? This is the response I got from the DFES after a freedom of information request:

The total amount of money spent to date on the development of the Early Years Foundation Stage is £324,038

1. Fees paid out to consultants

The fees paid out to consultants to date for designing and developing content of the Early Years Foundation Stage resource material total £70,600.

2. Costs of developing the design of the proposed framework (artwork, design templates etc) and of developing the computer and internet-based materials (CD-Roms, DVDs, etc)


The total cost of developing the design of the proposed framework, including the computer and internet based materials is £124,972.

It has not been possible to split the cost in the way in which you requested since materials were developed together. The CD-Rom was designed to be web ready and did not, therefore, incur any direct cost.

3. Other costs

The other staff costs associated with developing the Early Years Foundation Stage Framework are estimated to total £128,466.

More on the Early Years Foundation Stage

After many hours spent fiddling on the Early Years Foundation Stage website I am starting to like some aspects of the EYFS, like the fact that there are so many documents and links to stuff all collated together so I don't have to spend hours searching or flicking through huge folders.

I also spent time looking at the research quiestionnaire currently being used on parents of two year olds in nurseries. This is such a horrible piece of work, by NATCEN . I'm told that it was put together by leading academics at Oxford and other universities (and I was told this in the kind of way that means, so don't think someone like YOU has got anything worthwhile to say about it). It asks questions like (these are not exact quotes) "Does your child follow the rules when you play games at home" and "Does your child follow instructions obediently". So whatever the academic pedigree, put together by someone who doesn't spend a lot of time with two year olds. I think I would have felt rather despairing if someone had asked me this when my daughter was two and wondered if I really had got everything wrong.

So in the light of all that ,the principles and poster for the EYFS seemed cheering.

But the section with the grids is horrible, as well as being silly. There is too much of it. It isn't sensible to take the curriculum for reception-aged children and drive it right the way down to babies. All in all, anyway, I think it mainly misses the point that what is needed in early childhood education and care is - better qualified staff - more time for training and development - and better pay. It's terrible that many nursery staff would earn more at their local supermarket. And not surprising that staff turnover is so high, despite the many dedicated people out there doing their very best in often difficult circumstances.

This is what I wrote to the Sure Start magazine on the subject:

I wanted to add a couple of things to your feature "Firm Foundations". The quotations attributed to me don't exactly reflect my views.

I am not completely in favour of the approach taken by the new Early Years Foundation Stage. I think that Parliament made a mistake when it legislated (in the Childcare Act) for six areas of learning running from Reception down through the Foundation Stage. To take one example, this approach means that early years settings are now required to plan for babies to develop their "problem solving, reasoning and numeracy". I think that this gives all the wrong messages. Babies need emotionally responsive, close and loving care when they are at nursery. Not numeracy.

Secondly, though it may seem a minor point, at Kate Greenaway Nursery School and Children's Centre we don't do anything called "Breakfast Club". This morning, working with the early team, I was lucky to enjoy spending time with a couple of babies who came in at the start of the day after an early rise and breakfast at home. They wanted to start playing and enjoying the sand area straight away. Equally, some older children came in at 9am and started off their day with a bowl of Shreddies. "Breakfast Club" makes it sound like we start off the day with one kind of provision, focussed on breakfast. We don't.

I am pleased to see that the guidance sections of the EYFS promote just this type of flexible provision for children. The new poster which comes with the pack gives an excellent and accessible summary of the principles, too. I hope that practitioners will not get bogged down in the pages of grids outlining ages and stages, but will be encouraged by the guidance to keep developing creative, play-based and exciting early years education and childcare.

A few moments from my week

Just a few memorable moments...being interviewed by German TV (don't ask why I put myself up for it, and especially don't ask the better question of why anyone in Germany might give a toss about my views on early years education) - and one of the children just isn't having it. So I am outside, the sun is shining, a lovely scene of a nursery school garden, and this little boy just keeps sprinting up to the camera on his trike. He controls his stop rather well. The camera man is relieved not to see his whole kit go down. He goes off again and skids just in front of me. He wants to get by. The whole interview stops and he gets by. Then he wants to get through again.

It was all done so sweetly, with real playful humour - he knew he was being inconvenient, he knew it was funny, and he knew if he smiled like that he would even charm the camera man. (Though perhaps that charmed look was out of politeness?)

Me - I managed to stumble my words and then chatting to the journalist I wondered if the old East German nurseries had perhaps been very institutionalised places that weren't that good for children. She replied that they were the most wonderful places. She still remembered her nursery worker, who had looked after her for around 6 years. She had the fondest memories. Now, she told me sadly, the old East German centres are being closed down. I followed up saying it was a busy day and we were all pretty stretched...to be told it all looked very calm and seemed very well-staffed. Perhaps even over-staffed.

Wished I'd stayed clear of the chit-chat.

Next morning, feeling rather groggy for being at work at 7.30am, had to go to the corner shop and get some full-fat milk for the children. I think that there is some kind of health kick going on in the world of school milk because we keep getting semi-skimmed - which is not suitable for young children at nursery. Accosted by a neighbour complaining about parents parking on the housing estate. Explained that I had asked parents not to. Problem re-stated. Response re-stated. We parted with reasonable cheerfulness after all, and it was certainly better than the relations with the neighbours in the early days - like getting a cup of tea slung out of the window and over me when the children were being "too noisy" in the garden, or "the worst day of my life" when two neighbours turned up for a community open evening obviously drunk, and aksed why they couldn't have the children's garden for their own garden. After all, they would rather like somewhere to sit out in the sun.

Since then, relations have improved and I do like working in the middle of a housing estate after all, for moments like being stopped on my way to the tube to be told by an elderly neighbour how much she liked watching the children play and how beautiful all the new plants were.

Don't cry...

“It’s hard for a child being in the nursery, it’s we, we, we, all the time, not you. It must be very difficult for a child to fit in being an I and not a we.”

A nursery nurse said this - I wish I could hear her - to two researchers from the Tavistock Centre in the 1980s, Lynne Barnett and Alastair Bain. I guess she meant all that "we put our things here", "we're all friends in nursery", "we walk sensibly", "we eat nicely" that goes on.

And whilst most nurseries are kind places, or at least places where kindness is meant, and try to focus on children's social development and personal development, not many that I've seen are very good at allowing children to "be" emotionally. Cries are smothered at birth with "it's alright" or "don't cry" or "mummy will be back soon" (soon often really meaning 8, 9, 10 or even more hours).

The workshop I was leading last week looked at how practitioners could help children to express and accept their emotions - starting from the point that we, the adults, need to accept them and enable expression. By which I don't mean the let-it-all-out approach of therapy culture, with no consideration for other people. But I do mean that children should be given space to cry, when they are sad; to enjoy the high emotions of being a toddler, and giggle at lunch or skip to the door when they want to go out without being shooshed or told to do "nice walking". And rather than get busy with labels for little children who get angry about things, or don't focus their attention on one thing for long, or who like to be constantly on the go, we should allow these as the typical signs of being 2 years old.

And shouldn't there be room for intimacy, cuddles, sitting on laps and all the other things that sometimes seem to be frowned on in nurseries. What sort of emotionally barren places will nurseries become if this is brought to an end through a seeming concern for child protection (and I even noticed that recently an aeroplane could not take off because a mother had allowed her child to sit on another passenger's lap - see the story here )?

Some good controversies came up in the workshop. Should children get attached to a special member of staff (a key person) - if that makes them feel sad when that person is away? I would say - yes. Rather a child with a special relationship feeling sad, than an emotionally flat child.

We talked a lot about steering behaviour in ways that still respected the child's feelings - the "I know you're angry, but biting isn't allowed" approach which does work really well in my experience. Acknowledging children feeling angry, getting cross with their friends, wanting things badly. Leaving a little space and time for children to argue and perhaps resolve disputes (on their own, or with help) rather than always charging in and doing it for them.

In the end - more than a little part of me also wants to celebrate the directness of toddlers and little children. Biting, pushing, scratching and grabbing - none of them very nice, of course, but what's the cost when we "grow out" of all that or turn it into words, not actions? Is it really so much worse to bite, than to gossip and say cruel things about the people we don't like?

About inclusion...

Spent a fascinating day on Thursday with early years staff from an inner London borough at their conference on Inclusion. I can hardly remember, now, the "old days" when early years conferences were usually held in smelly old halls and you brought your own lunch or got something dreadful from the canteen. The new order is big shiny hotels (though this one, big and shiny, was also rather smelly I think because it had long corridors, no windows, and probably the carpet gets drenched with whatever the guests and room service drop, and that's then laid over with various poisonous cleaning fluids). A couple of other things I noticed. Eat all you can buffet lunch, this guy says to his friend "you can't have the spicy chicken, the beef and the lasagne." But he could. The usual hotel conference freebies were swept into bags and handbags, too - handfuls of biros, a little bowl of mints, whatever was there.

The conference began with Richard Rieser from Disability Equality in Education. I've heard Richard a few times; he's passionate and persuasive. And since I've worked with children with pretty much all levels of disability now in mainstream early years settings, I am persuaded that no child should be excluded from her or his local nursery. A bit of belief, open-ness, adaptability, refusal to get downhearted is mainly what it takes to include any child. Interestingly, I've never known a parent to complain about having children with disabilities included, either - when they see it in action, and done well, parents (in my experience) have been very much in favour.

But I did start to get that conference feeling, that I was in a church being preached at, not a place of analysis and discussion. First of all Richard Rieser hardly drew breath at all, ran over, no questions or discussion, no interest in what the participants were bringing to the day. He went so fast at a few points that as he stressed the need for inclusion, the poor BSL interpreters had to beg for a pause of a few moments to allow the merits of inclusion to be put to the deaf man sitting near me.

There's also quite a big problem with authoritianism going on here. So one moment great pleasure in the backing of the law, or the Department for Education, Ofsted, or whoever for his points (but in general do we want things railroaded through in education like this, by ever more laws, powers, inspections, etc?) The next: parents are "wrong" if they want their autistic children to attend a specialist provision. Other parents need to be challenged for their "disablist" views - and still other parents, with disabled children, need to be told to stop mollycoddling their children by staff.

So, as usual, half the time (or more) is taken up with an obsession with the "culture war" - whilst no time is devoted to hearing from the participants about what they are doing in their nurseries, playgroups etc. Richard Rieser himself showed little to no knowledge about early childhood education and care, and basically suggested a load of ideas for older children which he had watered down.

Later in the day, running two workshops on children's emotional development, I did have a good time with two lively groups with a lots of ideas and controversies coming out - and meriting a separate posting, some time soon.

Ofsted report on early years education

There's a pretty good reaction to this on the BBC website - but I think Mike Baker, their education correspondent, misses some of the important points.

There is a gathering body - international in scope - of evidence to show the benefits of a play-based early childhood curriculum that emphasises learning outdoors, care, social and emotional development. There's even some pretty good evidence that the positive impact of this extends for 35 years and more after a child leaves early education and care.

What's missed out in Mike Baker's column is the fact that English nursery schools have been doing exactly this job for decades. They've swung in and out of fashion - and of course adapted with the times, and in response to research. But there is still a resognisable connection between a good English nursery school now, and the ones set up by the Macmillan sisters early in the 20th century. Here's my item on the BBC website.

What's wrong with the Early Years Foundation Stage (EYFS)?

The Early Years Foundation Stage (EYFS) is the new statutory framework for early childhood education and care in England. Like most recent initiatives around early childhood in the UK, it started with a pretty sensible idea - to bring together all the different guidelines and legal requirements which cover children from birth to about 6 years olds. I say about 6, because the framework runs up to the end of the child's first year in schooling, at which point the youngest children in England are just coming up to 5, and the oldest just coming up to 6 years old.

Instead of picking through all the draft documents (EYFS) I'd prefer to ask one simple question.

Is it right for a government to legislate for what babies of six months old should be learning in nurseries and with childminders about maths?

Well, they'd prefer you to call it "problem solving, reasoning and numeracy". And they'd like you to think that because you can't ever have any concept of number, for example, unless you have grasped and reached hold of something as a baby, therefore mathematical learning can be traced back to babyhood. So it is to be laid down - in law - that there must be objects for babies. They must be displayed in a bright and attractive way. And the babies' responses must be noted down.

It's a significant enlargement of the territory covered by legislation. And it brings the bureaucratic instruments still further into the lives of young children. You can also be sure that it is costing quite a bit to devise all these guidelines, implement them, inspect them...let alone the costs of time and effort for childminders and nursery nurses to do the work.

There will, of course, be plenty of money to be earned by early years consultants and trainers when these guidelines are brought in. I'm not expecting to hear much criticism from most of them.