These are exciting times for early years and childcare. Implementation of the Government's ten-year strategy has already begun to make a real difference. And a groundbreaking Childcare Bill will continue to transform the early years landscape.
The Bill's focus is on improving children's life chances, reducing inequalities, improving information to parents and ensuring sufficient childcare is available to meet their needs. It speaks powerfully on quality and provides for the creation of the Early Years Foundation Stage.
The EYFS has been designed to deliver the quality children need and the confidence parents want in childcare. It is designed to ensure that settings provide a nurturing environ- ment, that they are safe and that there is a focus on every child's development. And the framework goes with the grain of existing practice. It brings together three currently separate elements: Birth to Three Matters, the Foundation Stage and the National Standards for daycare and childminding.
So, care, learning and development in this earliest phase of a child's life will be brought together in a single framework, bringing greater coherence and emphasising continuity.
Alongside the statutory requirements, EYFS will set out guidance and describe good practice to help raise quality across the board. This is being developed in partnership with the sector, so it reflects existing effective practice in the very wide range of settings which will deliver EFYS.
The majority of the goals at the end of EYFS will mirror those in the existing Foundation Stage. One goal has been slightly altered in both the draft EYFS and the renewed literacy framework, to take account of the findings of the Rose Review into early reading.
We've seen a lot of nonsense in the press that our proposals will force young children into formal learning too soon. That is not the case. For staff, EYFS will be rigorous. It will require effective planning, observation and assessment - a systematic approach. It will require practitioners to think hard about their teaching and their support for children's learning. But the individual child's experience will continue to be informal, spontaneous and enjoyable.
Learning through play
Early education and care must be about using play to enhance and develop children's experiences. Teaching and learning take place through practitioners getting involved in children's play - planning, supporting and extending it.
And play is, of course, an essential experience in its own right, through which children not only learn and develop their creativity and imagination, but enjoy life, make friends and feel good about themselves and about others. Babies will still play with 'gloop' or in the sandpit, children will still explore, make mistakes and be adventurous.
Working in partnership with parents is an integral part of EYFS, which providers will do as a matter of course. Other partnerships with, for instance, speech and language therapists, portage workers or specialist teachers, will also be key.
Collaboration between providers will be essential if each child is to learn to the best of their ability. For example, a child may start the day with a childminder and go back to the childminder after playgroup, nursery or school. The childminder might, for example, pursue a 'zoo' theme which a child had begun at nursery, through everyday activities like feeding the rabbit.
Workforce and training
We all need to set our sights high and develop a truly world-class workforce if we are to improve outcomes and reduce inequalities. In driving up quality we must build on existing good practice and improve qualifications, training and management.
Research has shown that children's outcomes are better in settings where staff are highly qualified. We have considered how best to encourage settings to employ more highly qualified practitioners, without adversely affecting affordability and sustainability. We have made 250m available for a Transformation Fund to improve qualification levels, with training routes to a new, graduate-level Early Years Professional status, and better qualified staff at all levels. The Fund is targeted towards private and voluntary sector providers, who have such an important role in delivering the Early Years Foundation Stage.
It will be vital that local authorities use this funding to take the lead on the workforce agenda and ensure that early years education and childcare workers receive the appropriate learning and development to deliver the EYFS well.
Further information
* The Early Years Foundation Stage - Consultation on a single quality framework for services to children from birth to five can be downloaded at www.dfes.gov.uk/consultations. The consultation runs from 5 May to 28 July 2006.
* This article is an edited extract from Beverley Hughes' speech launching the consultation at the Early Years and Primary Teaching Exhibition in Manchester on 5 May.