The report, Inside the Foundation Stage: Recreating the Reception Year, by Sian Adams, Elise Alexander, Mary Jane Drummond and Janet Moyles, found that there was a lack of understanding of the place of the reception year in education, too few opportunities for purposeful talk, complex play and first-hand experiences, and not enough partnership between reception teachers and other practitioners in the Foundation Stage.
ATL primary education adviser Nansi Ellis said, 'Reception teachers are victims of disjointed national education policy. The Government's relentless preoccupation with school "standards" hinders young children's development.'
The report, published last week, was based on questionnaires completed by reception class teachers, teaching assistants, Foundation Stage governors, local authorities, and Early Years Development and Childcare Partnerships, as well as interviews and observation data. The research revealed a contrast between practitioners' welcome for the Foundation Stage and the Curriculum Guidance for the Foundation Stage, and 'some confusion'
surrounding their implementation.
The report said best practice in the years prior to reception should be implemented throughout the Foundation Stage. 'This should not give way to practice in the reception year that is typically characteristic of Key Stage 1 classrooms, with a daily rhythm of lessons, learning objectives and plenary sessions,' it stated.
The education union advocated training opportunities for Foundation Stage practitioners, which 'rather than prescribing what they should do, would offer them a well-argued rationale for the principles of early childhood curriculum and effective pedagogy in the early years'.
Welcoming the ATL research, Pat Broadhead, research professor in education at Northumbria University, said she was not surprised that teachers'
aspirations for the Foundation Stage were not being matched in reception classes. 'When I was in teaching training I know that early years courses were massively changed to respond to the demands of the national curriculum for testing children and a focus on subject based learning.'
She added, 'We are reaping that whirlwind now. We have a generation of teachers who think it is appropriate to have an hour of literacy and an hour of numeracy when children are only four years old and they think it's right because the Government has told them it's right and Ofsted inspections have looked for it. But many of these teachers know in their hearts that this is wrong.'
The summary of the report is free to members or 8.99 to non-members from ATL on 0845 4500 009.