The great play-based learning debate

If you want a row in education, start a debate about play-based learning.

Ofsted stepped into that spotlight with its recent report, Strong foundations in the first years of school, arguing that “poorly planned play keeps children busy but does not support their development” because “their hands and bodies are active, but their minds are not”.

Some in early years have worried that this is an attack on play-based learning, and not merely an observation that play in nursery and Reception classes can be low-quality.

That leads us to an interesting question: what do we know about the importance of play in early learning, and how can we evaluate its quality?

Read on in TES

How it all starts: what the research tells us about early years education

I was more than delighted to get the chance to chat with Jon Hutchinson and Emma Turner as a guest on Mind the Gap: Making Education Work Across the Globe. Hope you enjoy listening in.

Stigma, safeguarding and social change: toilet training in early years

Teaching in the early years can be hard, especially at the start of the new school year.

It's getting harder. 

Kindred Squared recently surveyed teachers and teaching assistants in Reception about the 2023 intake. Their feedback: around a third of children are not ready for school, and the problem is getting worse. One of the biggest challenges is the number of children who aren’t toilet trained.

Read on in TES

Time to choose: do we want evidence-informed practice or influencer-informed practice in the early years

The government recently announced a significant investment in evidence-informed practice for early years practitioners, through the Early Years Stronger Practice Hubs programme. 

So, this is an important time to consider a key question: what do we actually mean by evidence-informed practice? Why should we adopt this approach?

Back in 2013, Ben Goldacre argued that: ‘By collecting better evidence about what works best, and establishing a culture where this evidence is used as a matter of routine, we can improve outcomes for children, and increase professional independence.’

Let’s look at that through the lens of early years. 

 

I'm worried about what I'm seeing in the early years: we should all be worried about growing educational inequality

You're here because you care about educational quality and equality.

So I think you’ll be worried about the most recent information about children’s learning by the end of the Early Years Foundation Stage (EYFS) in England, when most are 5-years old. 

There is a huge and growing gap between disadvantaged children and all others at the end of the EYFS. This is a longstanding problem: England is a country where how well you do in education is strongly associated with how well-off your parents are. That's very different from countries like Canada, where half my family are from. 

Here's the background: at the end of their reception year, teachers are required to check children’s learning against 17 Early Learning Goals. 

The Department for Education explains that ‘Children are defined as having reached a Good Level of Development (GLD) at the end of the EYFS if they have achieved the expected level for the ELGs in the prime areas of learning and the specific areas of mathematics and literacy. This helps teachers and parents to understand broadly what a child can do in relation to national expectations.’

 

It is important to note that we can’t compare the statistics for the Good Level of Development (GLD) in the summer of 2022, because the DFE revised the EYFS Statutory Framework in 2020. 

 

So, after the health warning and the background, let's consider how worrying the headline figures are. 

Overall, 65.2% of children achieved the GLD in the summer of 2022.  

 

However, when we look at the outcomes for disadvantaged children, we see a very stark difference. 

Only 49.1% of children eligible for free school meals achieved the GLD, compared to 68.8% of those not known to be eligible for free school meals. That’s a whopping 19.6 percentage point gap.

(Note: Disadvantage is defined rather crudely by eligibility for free school meals. This isn’t an ideal measure, but it’s the best one we have.)

 

(Source: Office for National Statistics)

 

Putting the EYFS Curriculum into Practice: my keynote at Newham's Early Years Conference in January 2023

 I'm sharing my keynote, which focuses on:

• Context: understanding the current context and challenges, and ensuring that we make the right choices for the children we are working with
• Child development: why it's important to think carefully about child development and get beyond 'levels' and 'drop-down menus'
• The crucial importance of communication and language
• Getting beyond the '30-million word gap'
• The ShREC approach – four evidence informed strategies to promote high quality interactions with young children
• Final thoughts: evidence-informed practice

Download the slides [PDF]

Buy Putting the EYFS Curriculum into Practice from Amazon (commissions earned)

Thinking about the curriculum in a nursery school: two years on

The revised EYFS (2021) has put a much greater emphasis on the curriculum, with its more detailed Educational Programmes outlining the sorts of experiences and activities which we should offer to children.

I'm a nursery school headteacher. As early adopters of the new framework in 2020, we worked hard together to think about what the curriculum might look like for young children in a diverse area of East London, with high levels of disadvantage, and many children learning English as an additional language. As with everything else we do, we looked at this through the lens of asset-based community development. What are the many strengths and competencies of our young children and their families, and how can we build on these? Yet we were also pragmatic. On average, children from disadvantaged backgrounds are likely to be around 4.6 months behind all children by the end of the EYFS. Far from catching up, most will fall further and further behind. 

The families we serve don't want this for their children.

We aim to honour their ambitions.