The media-friendly Open EYE campaigners are (justifiably) pleased with their latest success, which is to get the Children, Schools and Families Committee at Parliament to discuss the Early Years Foundation Stage on Wednesday 21st May.
Here's my submission to the committee. If you want to do the same then you need to email Susan Ramsay - csfcom@parliament.uk
Dear Ms Ramsay
I understand that the Early Years Foundation Stage will come under scrutiny from the Children, Schools and Families Committee next Wednesday, 21st May, and that the Committee would be interested in written submissions.
I am the headteacher of a nursery school and children's centre (Kate Greenaway, in Islington, London); I am also engaged in research and staff development and training work as a doctoral student (part time) at the Institute of Education. Although the views I express below are informed by this, they are my personal views.
I have a number of concerns about the EYFS, which I will detail below, and which I have previously made public during the consultation phase and since. However I believe that on balance, the EYFS is not the damaging framework which it is being made out to be, and that whilst I would wish for changes and improvements in some respects I think that it will on balance improve the quality of early childhood education and care in England.
I have tried to keep my comments brief.
Over-regulation
My understanding of international research is that weak regulation goes hand in hand with poor quality early childhood services, the USA being perhaps the most notable example. The EYFS will effectively bring together an appropriate level of regulation, within the context of stated principles around children's entitlement to play and high levels of care (including a key person system). There are many further important principles, one of which is that Steiner and Montessori schools should be allowed to offer their distinctive approach to early years education and care. My understanding is that there is ongoing and satisfactory dialogue between the DCSF and these sectors to ensure this. The further objection to regulation is that it unduly constrains the freedom of private operators of nurseries. My view is that tighter regulation is essential to improved quality. Children deserve better quality than they receive in many private nurseries (with, of course, notable exceptions - there are good private nurseries, but both the EPPE research and Ofsted inspection system indicate that there is a statistically significant difference in the quality of the maintained sector compared to the private, in favour of the former).
As the state supplies considerable funding (both through the tax credit system, and the NEG) it can reasonably expect good quality and legislate for this.
For the future, I think that government should aim for a better qualified early years workforce, to include early years specialist teachers and with continued encouragement for nursery staff to gain degree-level qualifications. As the workforce becomes better qualified, it is reasonable to expect that the extent and detail of regulation could then be reduced.
Over-formal curriculum
In my view, there are a number of the early learning goals (especially in the area of reading and writing) which are inappropriate for young children. Their impact can then extend backwards through the system and encourage inappropriately early attempts to teach children formal reading and writing skills at too young an age. In effect these are left over from the old Foundation Stage. With the introduction of the new EYFS, the opportunity should have been taken to remove them. I also think that in extent and detail, the "Development Matters" section of the EYFS is unhelpful. However it should be noted that this section is advisory, not statutory. The EYFS places a statutory duty on providers of early education to promote play, to work closely with families, and to develop a key person system. The EYFS training I have been involved with has emphasized the principles and commitments, and has stressed that the "Development Matters" section is for guidance only.
A "toxic childhood"
Objections to the EYFS also seem to see it as part of a larger picture of how society is making childhood "toxic" in the UK. Whilst it is right to be concerned and vigilant on this front, my view is that currently the expansion of Children's Centres and early childhood education and care is making a very positive difference to the lives of many families and wider communities. There are many reasons why it is difficult to bring up children in today's conditions; there are also many aspects of children's and families' lives which are much, much better than they used to be in the days when the state took virtually no interest in early childhood services. The "toxic childhood" discussion also seems to me to end up essentially as an expression of age-old fears amongst some middle class people that their happiness and their children's prospects must be defended against a nasty and growing mob of barbarous others. I want to keep this brief; I have commented previously on this here.
Dear Julian, I was surprised to read that government regulation is what is needed to teach people how to be good child carers. I thought that you held the more interesting idea that if government regulation is the answer then what was the question? You say "My understanding of international research is that weak regulation goes hand in hand with poor quality early childhood services, the USA being perhaps the most notable example". I would like to encourage you to expand on this a bit. My understanding is that our current government, at least under Mr Blair, passed more laws in its term than any government before it, ever (source: Chris Atkins, Taking Liberties, 2007). If we are now in a position which needs even more government regulation, then we should know much more about how we got into this mess. I look forward to reading more about how you have arrived at this position, and also to thank you for your interesting blog. With best wishes, Janet
ReplyDeleteHi Janet -
ReplyDeleteThanks for your comment. Well, I do there think is role for govt regulation in nursery education and childcare - e.g. that staff should be police checked; minimum levels of qualification; space per child; ratio of staff to children etc. Countries like the US where there are very low levels of regulation are the countries where the children get the worst experiences of being in a nursery. Similarly there is a role for regulation in, say, building standards; the operation of trains; etc.
I guess the key issue is should there be more regulation? There is a lot to be said against the EYFS, no doubt about it; but my take on it is that it does not regulate early childhood education and care any further than the previous legislative guidelines. I also do not think that the EYFS is taking away liberties - for example it does not affect the standing of alternative systems like Steiner, etc.
Best wishes -
Julian
Hi Julian, thanks for your reply.
ReplyDeleteYou are of course well steeped in your field, and I'm sure there's a lot of background that informs your opinion that I know nothing whatsoever about. I hope you can tolerate my ignorance a bit more as I think there is something really interesting going on here which would be good to try to make clearer.
Let me persist with this question about the level of regulation in the US and the standard of child care. Perhaps the quick way would be to pose the question in terms of centralism vs local action. The underlying point is to ask what is it that causes the worst experience of being in a nursery? And what counts as the worst experience?
I suppose what I am struggling to understand is where the local picture has gone. Is it that the adults involved are no longer able to make their own regulations or to make them work? If this is true, it must mean that something quite radical has happened, which would be important to know something about.
Thanks again for your blog - you can see that I find it both important and interesting.
Yours, Janet
Hi Janet - I think the other dimension of this discussion is economics. I am no economist so the following section is probably quite simplistic. When childcare is a market there is a driver towards lowest cost per unit. In nursery childcare this means charging the lowest fees by hiring the cheapest staff you can get hold of, in the cheapest premises, etc. There is considerable scope for this in the US and other lightly regulated childcare systems. There is little scope for it in countries like Demark or New Zealand which have highly regulated sectors. The UK is somewhere in the middle. I think that with less regulation the UK would probably go the American way.
ReplyDeleteOne angle on this is that regulation should be a matter of individual and local choice. However I think that for economic reasons there may always be a demand for very cheap childcare, no matter that it isn't good for the children.
Another angle would be to argue for early childhood services to be seen as an important part of the fabric of local government, as they are in, say, Denmark, parts of Italy, New Zealand, etc. So local people are not so much consumers of childcare services, but participants in a local enterprise, with a say in how the centre is run, etc. This is argued for in the book Beyond Quality in Early Childhood Education and Care: Languages of Evaluation by Dahlberg et al. However the context here is that there is significant regulation at a state level, in law, as I understand it.