Transforming environments

This is a short piece to go with my presentation as part of the Transforming Environments seminar at the National Children's Bureau - the first in their Listening as a Way of Life series.

My presentation is about my experience of coming to an old 1950s nursery school in central London 2003, which I found personally a depressing and grey place, and where I felt many of the children were experienced and thought of as difficult, defiant, like animals to be tamed. I was fortunate to be able to work with Wendy Titman, a uniquely talented designer and builder of nursery school gardens. We were able to engage in a kind of conversation with the children and their families; a conversation which is resulting in the design of a beautiful nursery school garden. It’s a conversation which has also had many broken phrases and antagonisms, especially at the beginning. I still think of the community consultation event as the worst night of my life, partly joking.

I was putting these slides together when I was supposed to be learning about interview techniques in qualitative research. I came across Steinar Kvale’s description of ‘…the original Latin meaning of conversation as “wandering together with”’. Kvale also cites Rorty’s comments on inspired criticism to elaborate on his idea of a transformative conversation that is “the result of an encounter with an author, character, plot, stanza, line, or archaic torso which has made a difference to the critic’s conception of who she is, what she is good for, what she wants to do with herself; an encounter which has re-arranged her priorities and purposes”.

This is one way of thinking about the garden, as a type of wandering together with the children; learning something of what a garden might mean to a child growing up in a small flat; how a garden could transform a child’s feeling of what she is, or could be; and thinking about how and why the desires of the children could often seem at cross purposes to the intentions of the adults.

Steinar Kvale (1996) InterViews: an introduction to qualitative research interviewing

Confusion over the Early Years Foundation Stage

Now that the Early Years Foundation Stage is statutory, discussions about it seem more confused and heated than ever. Fortunately, some interventions can be safely ignored by people who like to consider matters for more than a moment or two, like the Sunday Telegraph’s continual criticisms of the “nappy curriculum”, seemingly oblivious to the fact that the EYFS covers the whole early years phase up to the end of the Reception Year. Given that not long ago readers of the Telegraph were packing their seven year olds off to boarding schools, it seems a little odd that they now object to a curriculum for five year olds. 66% of respondents said that they were against the “nappy curriculum” on a recent MSN poll – an extraordinary result that suggests one in three people support a curriculum designed around the diaper.

Objections that the guidance on ICT will somehow poison the development of young children can also be safely ignored. Most parents of toddlers will know how much they enjoy technology, and there is no evidence that moderate use of computers, electronic toys or watching TV harms children’s development. It is fair to say that children’s development is not helped by excessive TV watching or computer use; equally many children really enjoy well-made children’s programmes and benefit from good-quality ICT resources. Sensible parents and early years practitioners understand the importance of moderation; ICT is not a kind of poison.

Confusion also seems to have arisen between the welfare requirements of the EYFS, and the guidance on development and learning. There have always been welfare requirements for children in daycare; they have not changed significantly with the new EYFS, and I would argue that they play an important role in protecting children from the worst types of unsafe and harmful care. Lax regulation goes along with poor standards of care, as is the case in the United States.

Similarly, when people object (rightly, in my view) to the inappropriate level of some of the Early Learning Goals, they are criticising Goals which have been in place since the original Curriculum Guidance for the Foundation Stage was published. I do not understand why this has been prompted by the EYFS. But the bigger point is that many of the Goals are set far too high for many children, and they need to be changed.

The EYFS offers many positive messages about the importance of play, attentive care, and good quality environments for learning indoors and out for children, and for that reason I welcome it. However, there is also excessive detail about development and learning and this is absolutely unhelpful as it deprofessionalises early years practitioners. This type of over-prescription, along with the level of inspection from Ofsted, might even kill off creativity in the development of early childhood education and care in England. Once the key commitments of the EYFS become bedded into early years practice, it will be essential to reduce the size and complexity of the document. Early years practitioners need more scope for professional judgment.

Role of the key person in small nurseries and reception classes

Sometimes a ‘key person’ is understood to be a person to co-ordinate observations and record-keeping for the child. Whilst an administrative system like this may be an important part of the way you work in nursery or reception, it is not the same as a key person system. A key person system is not principally about administration and record-keeping.

Read on (clicking here will download a PDF).

The continued threat to nursery schools

As I have written previously, despite the huge increase in funding for early childhood services in England, more nursery schools have closed in the last decade than any other. Yet nursery schools have the best outcomes for children according to the EPPE research project, and more nursery schools are judged outstanding by Ofsted than any other sector of the school system.

The Conservatives are currently mulling over the idea that Children's Centres should only provide outreach services. Since most nursery schools are now Children's Centres, that would mean the end of the nursery school as a distinct form of early education for children in the English tradition.

Meanwhile, the Minister of State for Children - Beverley Hughes - has written the strangest letter to the Campaign for Nursery Education. Asked what she plans to do, in order to safeguard the nursery school from the currently accelerating programme of closures, she replies that the government is unable to intervene. Even more oddly, she continues that she plans to equalise funding across different types of early years provision and is determined to develop a "vibrant childcare market".

Three comments on this.

Firstly government can intervene - there had previously been a declaration (with admittedly little impact) that there should be a presumption against the closure of nursery schools. Wouldn't it be more honest to say that government can intervene but chooses not to.

Secondly it would be fine to level funding across the early years system, if this led to a Swedish-style system in which each setting has adequate funding to employ highly qualified staff. But as there are no plans to increase early years funding to this extent, one can only assume that the high levels of funding that enable nursery schools to employ qualified teachers and headteachers are vulnerable. It is the employment of high-quality staff in nursery schools that leads to a high quality of education and care.

Strange to reply to a letter expressing concern about the closure of nursery schools by saying that you plan a course of action that will cut their funding.

But the third point is, I think, the most important. Early education and care is not a commodity: having a vibrant market does nothing for children.

[You can read the full text of the letter here.]