Gill Jones, deputy director of early education and co-author of the report, told attendees gathered at a briefing event at training organisation Early Excellence in London, ‘It’s caused quite a stir. Part of me really wishes it hadn’t, but part of me is quite glad about it, because I’ve been fighting about the importance of Reception for years, and that’s a really good thing.’
In response to concerns, Ms Jones is holding a series of briefings at Early Excellence’s centres in London and in Huddersfield to clarify the background to the report and what it means for the EYFS and Reception.
Ms Jones insisted that it was ‘not unusual to write reports like Bold Beginnings’, saying that in her role as deputy director for four years, Ofsted has produced similar reports done in the same way ‘but without pictures on the front’.
In terms of Reception, she said that Ofsted was most interested in why it is that in some schools children that are disadvantaged actually do better than in other schools.
‘Why did we focus on Reception? Well, because it’s a measure we look at in all our inspection work and we think this shows a real improvement over time for all children. If you look back to 2013, children are doing significantly better at the end of Reception at achieving a good level of development at the end of Reception, that’s what the data tells us, than they did back in 2013. And that’s all children, including disadvantaged children. But there’s that stubborn gap between advantage and disadvantage and we’re interested in exploring why this exists.’
Ms Jones said that the areas of learning in the EYFS that are the weakest are reading, writing and numbers at the end of Reception, but, ‘Most areas are developing quite well. Early years as a whole is doing really well. That is why we focused a lot of the visits and in the report on reading and writing.’
She stressed that a key finding from the schools featured in the report was that ‘reading was at the heart of the curriculum. The word heart is really important. Children have to have a love of reading.’
Ms Jones said, ‘Why did we focus so much on literacy, reading and maths? Well because those were the weakest areas later on in terms of development.’
Acknowledging the mixed reactions to the report, she said, ‘Hindsight is wonderful. I think if I was doing this again I might re-consider how I landed this report because really essentially what this is about is about getting children on the road to reading and becoming really good readers. Because if you create a reader you create a child that has access to absolutely everything and if you create a non-reader or can’t create a reader then they find all sorts of mechanisms for hiding that.’
She added, ‘When we write reports in Ofsted there are protocols and may be some of those protocols should change, about how we write key findings and who they’re intended for.
‘Recommendations never say keep doing what you do well. It’s not a recommendation to say that you’re getting the PSED really good in foundation stage. What we’re doing is pinpointing the things that need to improve.’
Commenting on the recommendations for the Department for Education for maths schemes, she said, ‘I think this is the one where we had the most controversy. By a scheme we didn’t mean that all schools have to go out and buy maths schemes, but we’ve had Letters and Sounds and other schemes that have been really prominent in Reception in the literacy arena, but much less so in the maths arena, so that was our recommendation to the Department to look at that and get the maths a bit sorted please.’
During a question and answer session afterwards, some delegates said they had been reassured by what Ms Jones had said, but urged her to consider publishing a clarification document.
One said, ‘What you said today has put my mind at rest until an untrained early years inspector walks through my door.’
Ms Jones said that Ofsted was working closely on the training of inspectors and that the definition of teaching in the inspection handbook still stands.
Another said, ‘I urge you to write a really short clarification document.’ She was also asked if she would consider temporarily withdrawing the report. Ms Jones said, ‘If I watered down the message that was not my intent. I stand by the recommendations.’
Read more on Bold Beginnings in our exclusive interview with Gill Jones in Nursery World on 5 February. National director of Early Excellence Jan Dubiel also gives Early Excellence's view of the report.
- Early Excellence will be filming an update on the briefings by February half-term. Sign up here to receive an email when this is available at http://earlyexcellence.com/subscribebb/