7/24/2008 6:56:00 AM
Nursery teaching framework sets more than 500 development milestones
The Times 24 July
A powerful lobby of leading authors and educationists accuse the Government today of setting children up for failure.
In a letter to The Times they say that ambitious education targets – including using punctuation before a child turns 5 – are unrealistic and risk harming pre-school children by setting back their development.
They accuse Beverley Hughes, the Children’s Minister, of ignoring her advisers and shelving research commissioned by her department because it contradicted policy. Philip Pullman and Michael Morpurgo, the children’s authors, Susie Orbach, the sociologist, and Steve Biddulph, the psychologist, have joined dozens of academics to demand that the reforms be scrapped or turned into a voluntary code before they come into force this autumn.
Children as young as 4 are expected to write in sentences and use punctuation under the Early Years Foundation Stage (EYFS) framework – widely described as a “toddlers’ curriculum”.
The Times
'EARLY LEARNING POLICIES SHOULD NOT BE IMPOSED'
Letter; The Times 24 July
Literacy goals are far too advanced for 4-year-olds
Sir, Children as young as 4 will be encouraged or even required to write in sentences and use punctuation under the Government’s statutory framework, the Early Years Foundation Stage (EYFS), being introduced in England this autumn — but resisted elsewhere in the UK. Key aspects of this highly contentious legislation have been widely criticised across the field, with even the Government’s own advisers urging reconsideration, in a letter extracted under the Freedom of Information Act.
The department has also recently “shelved” its own commissioned research, which casts large doubts on aspects of the strategy.
Beverley Hughes, the Children’s Minister, has now made two alleged “concessions”, but these fail to address the concerns. She has ignored calls to scrap or suspend literacy goals, which are widely deplored as being far too advanced for many young children.
Her other “concession” — the 34-page exemption process purporting to enable childcare providers to opt out of some of the “learning requirements” — is expertly camouflaged, labyrinthine and bureaucratically complex, appearing to have been intentionally designed to deter anyone from applying.
Until recently, the very idea that practitioners and parents would have to apply for exemption from state educational policies imposed on pre-school-age children would have been quite unthinkable.
We continue to campaign for the compulsory learning requirements being changed to voluntary guidance; for EYFS to be extended until the end of the school year when children turn 6; and for no achievement targets to be imposed on local authorities before then.
Parents should have the right to choose how their pre-school children are cared for and educated. Young children should also have the right to be protected from an imposed system which harnesses their development to prescribed targets, and which may well force them into inappropriate early learning.
Dr Richard House
Senior university lecturer in psychotherapy
Graham Kennish
Teacher trainer
Kim Simpson
Counsellor/Parent coach/ Montessorian
all for the “Open EYE” Campaign Steering Group — www.savechildhood.org
PRE-SCHOOL CHOICE
The Times 24 July
The Government has started a furious debate on early years education. It must now find the courage to listen carefully and change tack
Despite vehement criticism from experts, parents and practitioners, the Government is pressing ahead with a scheme to standardise pre-school teaching and childcare so that all under-5s are assessed against the same broad range of educational goals.
The Early Years Foundation Stage (EYFS) becomes law in September, in private as well as state-funded nurseries. Ministers could ignore the outcry they have provoked and force parents to go along with the scheme, even though there is strong evidence that it will harm precisely those children whom it is meant to help. Or they could relent, put the children first, and let parents keep the choice in pre-school education that they already enjoy. It would take a major policy reversal, but it is not too late.
This scheme is well intentioned. It is also far more radical than the Government admits: the EYFS aims to give all children a comparable start in life regardless of family background. Dickens and Gladstone would have approved, even if neither would have believed it possible.
Ed Balls, the Minister for Children, Families and Schools, does believe that it is possible, but only through the earliest possible intervention by the State. “Gaps open very early on between children from richer and poorer backgrounds,” as he has said. A four-year-old from an affluent home is likely to have heard three times as many words and vastly more complex sentences than one from a poorer family. That means a larger vocabulary and better speaking, listening and social skills. Hence the exhaustive list of goals (69) to which all children will be expected to aspire by the time they are 5, and the “developmental milestones” (500) they will be expected to pass.
The goals invite mockery. Who honestly expects four-year-old children to “understand what is right, what is wrong and why” or to understand “that there need to be agreed values and codes of behaviour for groups of people ... to work together harmoniously”? But the real problem with the EYFS is not its ambition, but its method.
Ministers insist that the programme involves aspirations rather than targets, to be pursued through play rather than conventional teaching. Yet it is goal-driven, mandatory and requires continuous written assessments by teachers and childminders. This has a profound bearing on the atmosphere and ethos of an early-years classroom, and a growing body of research suggests it may actually limit rather than boost later academic attainment: children pushed to read too young often lose their appetite for learning later on. By contrast, a major comparative survey of ten countries indicates the more genuinely free play that children are allowed at pre-school age, the faster their language skills develop.
Formal schooling already starts a year earlier in England than in most of the rest of Europe, with no obvious effect on standards. The move to impose a national template even earlier in children's lives is hard to rationalise except as a bold piece of social engineering - which itself is likely to fail. Educationally, there are more risks than benefits. Organisationally, it presents childminders with a new administrative challenge so daunting that many have left the profession. Ethically, it limits choice for parents committed to informal educational philosophies such as those of Steiner and Montessori schools. In principle they can now opt out of the EYFS system, but only through a complex application process and only on a trial basis.No child should be left behind. Equally, no government can tell parents what or whether their toddlers should be learning. The EYFS should be made voluntary, not mandatory, leaving the most important decisions about young children to those who know them best.Times
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