Independent Schools Council » Early Years Foundation Stage – Private Schools

Teaching under-fives lawful in schools again, says shock report

Sarah McKimm — Thu, 31 Mar 2011 10:19:32 +0000

Dame Clare Tickell’s report into the EYFS makes interesting reading. Frankly, my expectations of government-commissioned “independent” reports are quite low, written, as they tend to be, in formulaic colourless jargon. You read pages and wonder at the end what they have really said, if anything. (Or is that just me?)

In that context, Dame Clare’s style is astonishingly straightforward and her observations are quite rapier sharp:

“ …I received feedback from practitioners who are overwhelmed by the amount of paperwork they are obliged to keep.”

“It is clear to me that Ofsted and local authorities should not be asking to see overly detailed records, but rather talking directly to practitioners about their methods for checking children’s progress.”

And:

“I recommend that the EYFS explicitly states that paperwork should be kept to the absolute minimum required to promote children’s successful learning and development.”

Here is someone who tells it as it is.

When I met Dame Clare during the consultation process I said quite simply that our message was: “Slash and Burn”. We recognise that there is a lot of value in the EYFS. We do not object to the 6 areas of learning; they exemplify what association schools have been doing outstandingly well for years. Our schools meet the ratio and welfare requirements. But the pettifogging bureaucracy has to go!

And this is what Dame Clare has recommended. The Early Learning Goals need to be slashed from 69 to 17. The 117 scale-points of the Profile should be reduced to 20. ( I like the economical: “Research tells us that many practitioners consider that 117 scale points are more than they are able to work with.”) Goals should be removed “which are not easily observed, not sufficiently distinct and …not unique to age five as a particular stage of development”. Goodbye, then, to scale-points such as: “Understands what is right and what is wrong, and why,” and, my personal favourite for the under-fives: “Understands that there need to be agreed values and codes of behaviour for groups of people and children, to work together harmoniously.”

Dame Clare has also tackled the play/teach confusion central to EYFS. While some ISC schools had been reprimanded by LAs for providing a measure of age-appropriate teaching, on the basis that EYFS is “child-led” and a “play-based” curriculum, some child-minders had received the equal and opposite reprimand for not pushing young children towards the 69 goals in the six areas of learning. In the Tickell report, however,“teach” and “teaching” are no longer dirty words nor does she want toddlers woken from their nap to be force-fed learning goals. Rather, Dame Clare recognises that all interactions between children and adults can be described as learning or teaching and she supports the use of “play-based approaches combined with instructional yet playful teaching”. “The key element here,” she says, “is the adoption by professionals of a flexible approach to teaching, based on the level of development of the individual child.”

Most interestingly to schools in ISC member associations, is Chapter Two. The report recognises the politically incorrect fact:

“While a number of different types of provider argue that they have philosophical objections to delivering the learning and development requirements of the EYFS, the difference with independent schools is that inspection results show that these tend to be of consistently higher quality.”

Many ISC schools making provision for early years were judged by Ofsted to be “outstanding” before EYFS was ever conceived. Under ISI inspections of the early years framework, this remains the case.

We have consistently submitted to Ministers since 2008 in letters, briefing papers, consultation responses and meetings, that the EYFS is superfluous for excellent schools. In fact, it is damaging as the natural dynamic of creative interaction is diverted when records need to be kept to “prove” compliance with prescribed requirements. We have suggested several ways out of this: exempting outstanding schools, exempting schools which do not take the EY funding, or exempting all independent schools.

Dame Clare has opted for the first of these. She recommends that the framework continues to apply to all providers but that the Government consider whether the learning and development exemptions be opened to independent schools which meet a quality threshold. She suggests allowing professional organisations representing groups of independent schools to seek exemptions on behalf of their members who do not wish to deliver the learning and development requirements. This is to apply where the professional organisations can show parental support and how quality would be maintained in the absence of the framework. The thinking seems to be a recognition that as the early years sector matures, a time will come when there is a place for greater self-regulation.

As schools in the ISC associations are inspected by ISI, we have a ready mechanism for maintaining quality. Associations also have their gate-keeping requirements and on-going professional support for members. This is, therefore, potentially a great opportunity for our schools to reduce bureaucracy.

The details will have to be thrashed out, however, when the formal consultation begins towards the summer. I can see some immediate issues: Would ISI have to continue to inspect against the EYFS in order to show that schools continue to meet it, even if they have been granted an exemption? Or would inspection against the Standards be adequate? Would LAs still “moderate the profile” or would the profile and its moderation all fall away for an exempted school?

Presumably one benefit of an exemption from the learning and development requirements would be that schools will no longer have to shoe-horn their curriculum into the EYFS “areas of learning” straight-jacket, although this is likely to become more flexible anyway. Where some LAs have found it difficult to recognise the value of dancing, music and French lessons, that issue might fall away. Schools would be freer to stretch the most able pupils and to tailor their curriculum to lead into their own Year One curriculum better.

But if a setting continued to take the free-entitlement funding, would this allow the LAs to maintain their interference with schools thereby removing the benefit of an exemption?

We await the government’s response to this insightful report and look forward to receiving your comments and working with our members to achieve an outcome which benefits our pupils.

Link :

www.education.gov.uk/tickellreview

Born Creative

Holly Harris — Mon, 22 Nov 2010 16:43:52 +0000

Think-tank Demos recently hosted a roundtable discussion to discuss the role of creativity during children’s early years development, and to launch a new pamphlet, Born Creative. At the heart of the discussion was the purpose of ‘play’ as advocated by the Early Years Foundation Stage (EYFS). The framework places much emphasis on play’s importance during childhood; the discussion, however, focused on whether this was because the skills developed alongside the creativity involved in play, help to ready children for full-time education – with an eye on their future contribution to the economy – or because it is part of the exploration and development that children undergo while still young, which are valuable processes in themselves.

Bernadette Duffy, Head of the Thomas Coram Children Centre (TCCC) in Camden, which enables children and parents/carers to participate in creative activities together, firmly believes the latter. To qualify for Early Years funding, nurseries and childcare centres must show that they are able to get children ready for school, and Duffy believes that by following the EY framework and incorporating play into their day, they can do so effectively. However, she argues that being ready for school life is more a by-product of being a happy, creative child than a direct effect of going to nursery.

For this reason, creativity should be central to all learning, and can be best fostered through play. If children can engage with adults at the same time, so much the better. The benefits of such interaction, where adults aim to act as facilitators rather than teachers, are numerous: children can develop a wider vocabulary, have the freedom to communicate and express their feelings, and child-initiated activities encourage their natural inquisitiveness. It is crucial, however, that they are not stifled by misdirected intervention and attempts to structure their encounters.

The problem is that in many nurseries and day-care centres, the staff interacting with the children are often at a very junior level (after completion of level three training) and lack experience of working with the arts. A study of pedagogues in Denmark, referenced in the Born Creative pamphlet, highlighted that participating in the arts opened the eyes of those training for pedagogical positions to the particular values of discovery and creativity. Those that don’t have this experience may not create the optimal learning environment for young children who are keen to experiment during play. Similarly, it is vital that the child, not the adult, has a chance to think up ideas and scenarios themselves, to develop mental agility and to learn to extrapolate from their experiences.

Criticism of EYF tends to focus on the framework’s implementation, not its principles. The guidance has been maligned for several reasons, including for its unwieldy and unmanageable paperwork, and a too-rigid framework that puts many burdens on the EY workforce. If more trust was put into the ability of the professionals working with children, this rigidity could be relaxed, leaving them free to give the child more space on occasion. This would allow the child to create his or her own world of learning during play, but with occasional challenges discretely offered by the staff to enhance it as well as permitting more time to be devoted to each child rather than to accompanying paperwork.

We know that across ISC schools, children have a vast array of different needs, and each school has its own approach that best assesses these needs to produce an outstanding education. If individual education centres and schools had more autonomy at early years level, there might not be a perceived need for such tight regulation as can currently be seen in the EYFS guidance.

It is not only at school that children develop their individuality and abilities. Creating bridges between activities done at school with play at home has been shown to extend the enjoyment and enthusiasm that children feel towards their activities, so it is important that parents understand the techniques used to further their child’s learning. At the TCCC, parents are actively encouraged to take part in sessions, which has been found to speed up the development process in their children thanks to the consistency between home and school life.

The title of the pamphlet – Born Creative – serves to warn that being born creative (having, as a child, none of the hindrances or restraints that adulthood introduces) does not necessarily mean being creative. If we are to ensure that our children are given the best opportunities for cognitive development and independent thinking in their most formative years, we must ensure that the environment – at home and at school – in which they absorb these skills are as supportive as possible, and take care not to instrumentalise their creativity.

Practical implications of Social Mobility Myths

Kristen DiLemmo — Fri, 05 Nov 2010 11:47:24 +0000

At a seminar hosted by Civitas yesterday, Professor Peter Saunders expanded on the discussion of social mobility laid forth in his publication Social Mobility Myths. Prof Saunders began the discussion by identifying Britain as a nation dedicated to bolstering an image of inequality. Numerous longitudinal studies, however, may be seen to challenge this notion by demonstrating consistent and explicable levels of social mobility. ISC researcher Manuela Winkelmann blogged a summary and critique of Prof Saunders’ text shortly after its release in June 2010.

While much of the seminar was a rehashing of the ideas set forth in Social Mobility Myths, the lively question and answer session that followed explored the practical and political implications of Prof Saunders’ report. The claim that ability (rather than class) is the single most important factor in determining future success adds an interesting nuance to the debate, but also raises a debate of whether government could – and should – attempt to influence this equilibrium.

Prof Saunders’ exploration of ability separates out school performance from social background, but it is also in danger of concealing any interplay between the two. Emphasising a direct correlation between a child’s IQ at the age of 11 and his/her likelihood to end up in a certain professional class begs the question that ability is fixed at birth and relatively uninfluenced by external factors. While it might be argued that intelligence is fixed, the shaping of that intelligence is surely fluid.

As the IFS noted in Educational Inequalities in Childhood, attainment gaps between lower- and middle-class pupils start at age 3 and widen significantly as children progress through school. Is it not risky to dismiss ability as a fixed measure if a child’s performance can weaken between the ages of 3 and 5 due to limited parental support or poor schooling effects?

The IFS report highlights the importance of strong Early Years investment in combating this gap, and Prof Saunders did indicate that he has no objection to this mode of intervention. The concerns raised during the seminar focused on the dangers of social engineering and attempts to “punish” pupils from wealthier backgrounds at the point of university entry or in the job market.

On this theme, the panel discussed the effectiveness of government policy aimed at affecting social mobility. A particularly interesting point was that the National Child Development Study shows consistent levels of social mobility between the 1958 and 1970 birth cohorts. Considering that a raft of government intervention – such as broadly scrapping grammar schools – was aimed at increasing levels of social mobility, is it possible that the mobility equilibrium is unaffected even by large-scale policy change? If so, will future social mobility initiatives be in danger of having far more cost than positive effect?

Research highlights economic advantage of strong early years education

Kristen DiLemmo — Fri, 30 Jul 2010 14:07:36 +0000

In the ongoing debate about the long-term value of early years education programmes, research tends to focus on achievement effects as measured by test scores. A recent report from the ONS and NIESR found that children who learn to read from a very young age perform no better in Year 1 than those who learn later; this report fed the argument that government expenditure on pre-school services was ill spent.

A team of American economists, however, has taken a different approach by comparing childhood test scores with future earnings. The economists linked data collected by the STAR experiment – which included 12,000 kindergarteners based in Tennessee in the 1980s – with US tax records to evaluate the long-term financial impact of early years education.

After controlling for other factors, the researchers found that participants in the STAR experiment were making an extra $100/year for ‘every percentile they had moved up the test-score distribution over the course of kindergarten’ – and the benefit also increased as they aged. A pupil making a typical progression up the test-score range could expect to make $1,000 more a year at age 27.

The New York Times interprets the findings as a challenge to the ‘fade-out effect’, which posits that any advantage gained from strong early years provision dissipates as a child progresses through primary school. While it may be the case that future test scores reflect little to no signs of lasting improvement, as asserted by the ONS/NIESR study, strong early education programmes appear to sharpen skill sets that later contribute to a distinct economic advantage.

Research emphasising the value of early years education also helps us to define the ideal learning environment for generating positive long-term effects (a point discussed in a previous ISC Bulletin, p12). The STAR experiment found that smaller class sizes and peer effects contributed to higher kindergarten performance – and, as is now suggested, greater earning potential – but variation in class performance is largely attributed to the teacher effect. The new research estimates that an excellent kindergarten teacher is worth $320,000 a year: the value of the extra money a classroom of pupils can expect to earn over their careers.

Considering the controversy surrounding high levels of government expenditure on pre-school services (£5bn in 2007/8), this calculation makes an interesting contribution to the debate. And for the independent sector as well as the maintained, the research demonstrates that early expenditure on high quality education has lasting and measurable economic benefits.

Science teaching at prep schools

Rudi Eliott Lockhart — Wed, 07 Jul 2010 10:57:58 +0000

Today’s publication of the latest of The Royal Society’s ‘State of the Nation’ reports makes for interesting reading. The report casts light on the teaching of Science and Maths between the ages of 5 and 14, and draws attention to the paucity of science specialists in primary schools, it also concludes that the testing regime in England has “stifled creativity”. The study points out that science is a practical subject that requires an understanding that cannot be achieved by the simple rote learning that teaching to the test encourages. This is an important and well considered report, but it is not one that pays heed to the independent sector, indeed, the two main criticisms within the report do not apply to the teaching of science in independent schools. The Royal Society highlight that only 3% of primary teachers at maintained schools in England are science specialists and only 2% are maths specialists, but figures from ISC’s own Teacher Survey paint a rather different picture for the independent sector. 8% of primary level teachers at ISC schools have a science undergraduate degree while 5% have maths degrees. This is important because, as the Royal Society report points out, even though many primary school teachers are generalists it’s important for teachers to have access to specialist advice, particularly in relation to a teacher’s subject knowledge, where perceived lack of personal knowledge can lead to low confidence and influences teaching approaches. This means it’s advantageous to have at least one science and maths specialist in each school. As for the report’s other main criticism, the independent sector is also fortunate to be free of much of the regime of testing that leads to the culture of teaching to the test in the maintained sector, so this concern does not apply to independent schools to the same degree: independent schools are able to focus on inspiring their pupils and teaching them to really understand science, rather than to regurgitate facts. The teaching of science is one of the great strengths of the independent sector. This is often demonstrated by university entrance figures and impressive A-level results, but it’s also due to the superb standards of science education at prep level. This strength is not just about having access to labs and other facilities, but the use of specialist teachers and a commitment to establishing scientific method and basic knowledge at an early age when pupils’ imaginations and enthusiasm are at their most fertile.

Independent Schools and Early Years Foundation Stage

Rosie Keeling — Mon, 09 Jun 2008 08:20:50 +0000

By definition independent schools have the freedom to set their own curriculum and have freedom in their choice of pupils and are not dependent on Government or Local Authority finance.

Why then are they now being told that they will need to adhere to the Early Years Foundation Stage (EYFS) and be inspected by Ofsted for their under fives?

These restrictions undermine the very route of success of independent schools, which rely on their freedom from regulation by central and local government and also of each other.

Excessive bureaucratic burden of assessment associated with extensive form-filling creates no tangible benefit to children, and results in the diversion of teacher time from more beneficial tasks. There is also the imposition of staff qualification requirements on the independent sector that EYFS brings.

Is it also not a violation of parents’ rights, who select independent schools because of their independence? Children who are particularly able are likely to be held back by the implementation of these regulations and therefore will not receive the support they need.

For more information on this topic, view our letter expressing our concerns on the EYFS to the Minister of State for Children, Young People and Families, available in the Latest News section of our Member Zone.