Independent Review of the Primary Curriculum - thoughts?

I think that the Independent Review is important and everyone interested in education in England should respond to the Call for Evidence (though you only have to 30th April to do this now).

Here are my thoughts about some of this; I would be really interested to see any feedback on this from others, and I will be able to use this feedback in my role as one of the members of the Advisory Group. So please add a comment if you have any views.

Extending the Early Years Foundation Stage into the Primary Curriculum

I think that this is an issue which needs to be considered as a number of separate items.

Areas of learning and development I think that the decision to split the curriculum into 6 areas in the Early Years already makes life quite difficult for nursery and reception staff. For example, Knowledge and Understanding of the World is a huge curriculum area which seeks to unite large areas of learning which are really distinct (e.g. history and ICT). In my experience, parents do not understand what is meant by this wide term, and it makes planning and assessment difficult. Cross-curricular planning is not made easier by uniting different areas of learning under one heading.

Children’s emotional and social development; the role of care in the curriculum I think that the principles and introductory sections to the EYFS give a useful account of how care links to learning for young children. My experience in Islington and Haringey is that we are in the middle of significant cultural/social changes around the role of schools in relation to care of children. Many children now spend extended hours in schools. Additionally, there appears to be less consensus and certainty in society about important aspects of bringing up children, especially how to set limits on children’s behaviour, and how much time and freedom should be given to young children for independent play, especially play outside and/or away from the supervision of parents. Whilst I think there can be a false nostalgia about social coherence in the past, there is a present and real difficulty being experienced by parents I work with in these areas.

Schooling plays an important role in how society constructs and understands childhood. So I would argue that there are two significant themes of importance about care in primary education. Firstly, many children appear to need more care from their schools, than they did in the past. They are showing signs of distress, anger, unhappiness and insecurity in school, and the school cannot help children to learn unless there is engagement with these issues of care. Secondly, there is a wider lack of confidence about how children should be cared for: how they can be loved, encouraged and valued, but also helped to learn about what sort of behaviour is socially acceptable, and what is not. Many children also need help to manage the fragmentation of modern family life, and social and cultural diversity in local neighbourhoods and society at large, and many parents are looking to schools to help their families.

It is for these reasons, that I think the primary curriculum should follow the lead of the EYFS and show more regard to children’s social and emotional development, and the importance of children feeling cared for in schools as well as provided for in a narrower educational way.

However, I think that a temptation arises out of this to see social and emotional development as a thing which can be taught. I think that this reification is unhelpful. My experience is that programmes developed elsewhere and sent out to schools are not helpful. Personal, social and emotional development cannot be taught as a separate lesson. My experience is that for staff to help children in this area requires a whole-school and whole-staff approach which (to be brief) is about how staff relate to children throughout the day; how staff are helped to cope with and make sense of the sometimes disturbing behaviour they have to manage; how staff are encouraged to make real relationships with the children; and making time and space for play in schools.

I would stress the importance of play, by which I mean opportunities for children to play freely and symbolically (e.g. homecorner play, play with dolls and small world people and animals, etc). I think that play can provide the opportunity for children to symbolise difficult feelings and experiences. To do this, play has to be given enough time, space and value for children to develop it (so it cannot be just done in “playtime” or as a treat for a few minutes when work is finished). Teachers need to consider providing play as being important – it requires care and attention in terms of what materials are offered and how this is developed.

With opportunities for quality play, and with the support of thoughtful and caring teachers and teaching assistants, children can be helped to feel safe and secure in school, to manage some of the difficulties of modern life. Schools can also share these aspects of their work with parents, which parents may find helpful in coming to answers for themselves about how to help their children’s development. I can share further examples from my experiences at Kate Greenaway Nursery School, if helpful, where children’s behaviour has improved significantly, especially in respect to children becoming self-disciplined, co-operative and collaborative.



Dispositions to learn It seems to me that the Children’s Plan has been developed partly in response to concerns about the current state of childhood in England. The plan gives a clear message about the potential of all children to succeed, enjoy their childhood, and grow up prepared for adult life. Therefore, children should not be over-pressured by over-formal or too narrowly focused teaching and learning to the exclusion of other fundamentally important areas of development and learning. The EYFS states that all aspects of development and learning are equally important; but many young children, especially those born in the summer, then experience (at a young age) a narrow Key Stage One curriculum. This pressure and narrow focus prevents children’s own natural, exploratory drive developed through self-directed play and rich first-hand experiences. I would argue, therefore, that a second element of the EYFS which could usefully be extended throughout the primary years, is the emphasis on the development of children’s dispositions to learn. With a balanced curriculum, including time for play and first-hand real experiences, children’s curiosity, perseverance and ability to communicate and collaborate are all nurtured. On the other hand, with an excessive early focus on narrowly conceived literacy and numeracy, some young children are effectively “switched off” learning. My understanding of the research into children’s early literacy and numeracy in schools is that there is still an excessive emphasis at Key Stage One on teacher-direction to the exclusion of more dialogic talk and extended conversation in classrooms. Whilst there is now good research evidence for the synthetic phonics approach to teaching reading, and for many aspects of the teaching of number in the Primary Strategies, both depend strongly on a classroom context in which children feel engaged, in which there is a context of rich, “whole” language, and in which number and other mathematical concepts are applied in real situations. I would argue therefore that primary schooling could be usefully rebalanced to allow more time and opportunity for children’s self-directed play; and a broader and more balanced curriculum which is therefore more likely to match the range of interests children have.

The effective elements of the Primary Strategy approach to literacy and numeracy need to be more clearly contextualised, so that formal learning is not introduced too early, and so that teachers and teaching assistants use more shared-thinking, dialogic and conversational techniques rather than simply delivering a pre-planned session and using questioning narrowly just to judge children’s levels of achievement.

Transitions

Summer-born children Some time ago, I was teaching twin boys in a nursery class who had been born prematurely, so their birth date was the end of August, not the middle of September as it would have been if they had gone to term. Their prematurity caused mild developmental delays and health professionals anticipated that over time, these delays would become gradually less significant. However, their developmental delay was extremely significant aged 3:11 with the prospect of their starting Reception the following month. After a great deal of discussion and negotiation with the local school, educational psychology child psychology, etc, it was finally agreed that they should stay an extra year at nursery. They then transferred to Reception successfully and have needed much less special needs support than had been anticipated the year before. On the basis of this experience (and the personal experience of being father to a prematurely born child) I would suggest that there should be more flexibility about starting Reception, with local authorities perhaps holding a multi-agency meeting to agree on what would be the most appropriate school start date for children “at risk” of starting school at the wrong time. Further consistency between the last two years of the Foundation Stage will also help children as they move from year to year, and it is also important that Year One planning recognises that many of the children are at the same age and/or development as those in Reception.

The role of the key person, and children's experiences of parting from their parents

I've been thinking a bit about children's experiences of parting from their parents, after reading Anna Freud's account of running the Hampstead Nursery during World War 2.

I'm also looking for participants for a small piece of research into the care of children in nursery settings. If you are a nursery nurse or nursery teacher in/close to London, please have a look at the note at the end of this piece.

Here are my thoughts:

I am sitting at the desk by the front door of the nursery where I'm the head, and I hear crying, then a clutter of doors. A mother comes past, glances at me and says "oh no, I timed that all wrong." We speak for a few minutes before she has to leave for work. She had settled her little boy in with his key person, she explains. He was playing happily and she started to move away. If she had just left then, it would have all been alright. But she had waited a few more minutes, then he had looked round at her and become distressed as she started to leave. I reassure her and say that her child's key person can phone later in the morning to let her know how things are going.

As expected, the child settled after a while, and his key person was able to phone later to say how he was and what play he had been involved in. But it made me wonder about whether there really is a knack to getting the timing just right when you drop your child off. It is so easy to feel that you are getting it wrong at either extreme - hurrying off too fast, or hanging around and maybe causing your anxieties to rub off on your child. It also struck me that in nurseries we often put a lot of emphasis on calmness, and a general cheerfulness. If you're the parent whose child cries and gets upset, it must be easy to feel that all eyes are on you, that your child is making a fuss or you are getting it all wrong.

Perhaps there is something of a myth of the ideal drop-off in nurseries. Of course many children are well settled and come into nursery very happily. But I wonder what it might sometimes cost a child, to come and settle in "without a fuss"? Sometimes children can seem quite startled early in the morning, or seem unusually subdued during the day, as if they did not really have time to find their place and adjust to being in nursery.

The little boy might not have cried if his mother had left more quickly, but I wonder who would have benefited in the end? We can put a lot of emphasis on nurseries feeling calm and children being sensible, big boys and girls who can let their parents go without making a fuss, but in the end this is only better for children in the sense, as Anna Freud argued, that "we would all be better off, i.e., more sensible, without emotions." The important thing for little children is not to create conditions in which they are kept safe from mixed up and difficult feelings. We would do better to allow children to go through what Anna Freud called the "the painful and often disturbing process of learning how to deal with such emotions."

I'm looking for people who are working with children in nurseries who would like to help me with a small research project about the role of the key person. The dates - the 5th, 12th, 19th and 26th June from 1pm-4pm in central London. You will need to be able to come to all 4 sessions.

Participants in this group will have the opportunity to discuss how they understand their role as a key person, and consider how to develop their practice to provide intimate, playful and responsive care for babies and toddlers.

Interested? Email me at julian.grenier@gmail.com to join in; please put "key person" in the subject line.