2020 looks set to be another turbulent year, with the new Government promising to ‘get Brexit done’, and to usher in real change.
Prime Minister Boris Johnson has already promised a ‘transformative’ administration and flagged up what has been described as ‘a brutal Whitehall shake-up’.
The overhaul aims to weed out ineffective civil servants, restructure government departments and address a perceived dearth of skills within the civil service, principally in science, law and business. It’s early days, but I can already foresee early education and childcare sliding down the list of Government priorities as Brexit, trade and the NHS dominate the political agenda.
The sector’s wishlist of changes for 2020 is on pages 6-7. And there is still time to have your say on the changes you would like made to Government proposals for the EYFS – out for consultation until 31 January.
Under the proposed EYFS and new Ofsted framework, practitioners will have to grapple with ‘behaviour’, ‘attitudes’, ‘the Characteristics of Effective Learning’, ‘self-regulation’ and ‘self-control’. What they mean and how they overlap are complex, but the task of getting to grips with these elements of learning and development is made all the more confusing by the fact that the Government itself seems to lack an understanding of what self-regulation is (page 14).
SOMETHING TO CELEBRATE
Providers may feel they are starting a new year with little to celebrate, but in this issue we profile a growing success story: settings’ support of families, as well as people within the wider community, by welcoming in excluded teenagers to isolated older people, with benefits all round.
Also in this issue, we start a series celebrating picturebooks. The series will look at their potential to develop children’s language skills, but much more besides. Author Andy McCormack is a nursery school teacher studying for a PhD at the Centre for Research in Children’s Literature, University of Cambridge, so is perfectly placed to offer advice on what to choose and reveal the wonders of the form.