Those who lived through the bleak days of the Woodhead/Blunkett Education regime of the late 1990s scarcely imagined that early-years policy-making could be any more Dark-Aged, but in this respect the current Wilshaw/Gove regime is breaking all previous records.
The chillingly authoritarian tone of the following quotation from the Ofsted website (dated 19 April, accompanying the launch of Ofsted’s new inspection standards) is, frankly, frightening: "Ofsted will… ensure rigorous enforcement for those who are not improving fast enough, and those failing to comply with requirements set out in the Early Years Foundation Stage (EYFS)". And yet on the same day, education and childcare minister Elizabeth Truss claimed at the Nursery World conference that the EYFS is not a "straitjacket" and that the DfE expects professionals to take the lead.
How these fundamentally contradictory discourses emanating from Government can be squared is impossible to fathom. For the Government really can’t have it both ways: either they should simply drive through their quasi-authoritarian approach of imposing, without meaningful negotiation, what their early-years "functionaries" must "deliver", and thus necessarily drop any pretence that they support the professionalisation of the field; or they should give well qualified early years practitioners ("teachers") the professional autonomy to make their own informed decisions about how best to work with their children (including making the EYFS curriculum "voluntary guidance").
The manifest incoherence of Ofsted’s "evidence-lite" position on settings "not improving fast [sic] enough" must also be exposed. Is Michael Wilshaw seriously suggesting that nurseries in disadvantaged areas should achieve "outcomes" similar to children in prosperous areas? – because if so, he displays a degree of ignorance of the available research evidence, that I believe raises grave questions about his fitness to hold office. These areas have such chronically complex, multi-faceted difficulties, often with deprivation grafted upon deprivation across many generations, that the idea that schoolifying "outcomes" for four and five-year-olds (even if they were an appropriate measure, which they aren’t) can become class- and geography-neutral is patently absurd. Go back to school, Sir Michael.
So the "Tesco-isation" of England’s early years sphere is unmistakably on the march, following recent announcements by both Ofsted and Ms Truss. But what latitude do practitioners have to respond? The stark alternatives range between, at one extreme, compliance with, and outright capitulation to, the Wilshaw/Gove regime; and at the other, an ethical response of Principled Non-compliance, with informed professionals refusing to work with their children in ways which they believe will harm them. A key defining feature of our professions is that professionals have a grave ethical responsibility (the so-called Hippocratic Oath) to do the best they can for their clients – in this case, children’s early development. Is the Government now also re-writing the rules of the professions, such that ministers use the law to impose upon early years professionals, pedagogical practices that those professionals know will harm young children? One wonders what our independent judiciary would make of such an extraordinary circumstance.
The elephant in the room, of course, is England’s absurdly young school starting age; and it is this grotesque historical anachronism (along with single-minded ideological zealotry) which is driving current policy-making. Just last Monday we read a carefully timed interview in the Daily Mail with Ms Truss, in which she blamed many pupils’ lack of communication abilities when they start school on "chaotic nurseries", rather than invoking the far more plausible (and for her, inconvenient) explanation – i.e. that England’s school starting age is just far too young for many of our young children.
Rather than "making schools ready for children" (as researcher Caroline Sharp has so wisely argued), we are witnessing increasingly desperate attempts by Government and Ofsted to make what is a totally inappropriate school starting age "work", by means of the ever-more draconian and age-inappropriate "schoolification" of early childhood experience (reduced ratios, play being sidelined, more teaching in groups, toddlers needing to show "purpose"… – and all the other absurdities that ideological zealotry can dream up), as they continue to dig themselves deeper, ever more furiously, into a hole of their own making.
If the Government does effectively de-professionise the sector, with practitioners becoming lackeys of DfE ands Ofsted diktat (which looks ominously likely), then not only will history pass a damning verdict on the perpetrators of these flagrant attacks upon childhood, but they may have to contend with non-complying practitioners, highly unfavourable media coverage, and even challenges in the courts of the land. I really think this could be where we are headed in these, the bleakest days in England’s early childhood landscape since the appalling Woodhead/Blunkett regime of the late 1990s. There is still time – just – to draw back from this arrant madness, as the Labour Government had the good sense to do in 1998–9, but will the current Government? Alas, I’m not holding my breath – and I am (along with many others) certainly making contingencies…
How these fundamentally contradictory discourses emanating from Government can be squared is impossible to fathom. For the Government really can’t have it both ways: either they should simply drive through their quasi-authoritarian approach of imposing, without meaningful negotiation, what their early-years "functionaries" must "deliver", and thus necessarily drop any pretence that they support the professionalisation of the field; or they should give well qualified early years practitioners ("teachers") the professional autonomy to make their own informed decisions about how best to work with their children (including making the EYFS curriculum "voluntary guidance").
The manifest incoherence of Ofsted’s "evidence-lite" position on settings "not improving fast [sic] enough" must also be exposed. Is Michael Wilshaw seriously suggesting that nurseries in disadvantaged areas should achieve "outcomes" similar to children in prosperous areas? – because if so, he displays a degree of ignorance of the available research evidence, that I believe raises grave questions about his fitness to hold office. These areas have such chronically complex, multi-faceted difficulties, often with deprivation grafted upon deprivation across many generations, that the idea that schoolifying "outcomes" for four and five-year-olds (even if they were an appropriate measure, which they aren’t) can become class- and geography-neutral is patently absurd. Go back to school, Sir Michael.
So the "Tesco-isation" of England’s early years sphere is unmistakably on the march, following recent announcements by both Ofsted and Ms Truss. But what latitude do practitioners have to respond? The stark alternatives range between, at one extreme, compliance with, and outright capitulation to, the Wilshaw/Gove regime; and at the other, an ethical response of Principled Non-compliance, with informed professionals refusing to work with their children in ways which they believe will harm them. A key defining feature of our professions is that professionals have a grave ethical responsibility (the so-called Hippocratic Oath) to do the best they can for their clients – in this case, children’s early development. Is the Government now also re-writing the rules of the professions, such that ministers use the law to impose upon early years professionals, pedagogical practices that those professionals know will harm young children? One wonders what our independent judiciary would make of such an extraordinary circumstance.
The elephant in the room, of course, is England’s absurdly young school starting age; and it is this grotesque historical anachronism (along with single-minded ideological zealotry) which is driving current policy-making. Just last Monday we read a carefully timed interview in the Daily Mail with Ms Truss, in which she blamed many pupils’ lack of communication abilities when they start school on "chaotic nurseries", rather than invoking the far more plausible (and for her, inconvenient) explanation – i.e. that England’s school starting age is just far too young for many of our young children.
Rather than "making schools ready for children" (as researcher Caroline Sharp has so wisely argued), we are witnessing increasingly desperate attempts by Government and Ofsted to make what is a totally inappropriate school starting age "work", by means of the ever-more draconian and age-inappropriate "schoolification" of early childhood experience (reduced ratios, play being sidelined, more teaching in groups, toddlers needing to show "purpose"… – and all the other absurdities that ideological zealotry can dream up), as they continue to dig themselves deeper, ever more furiously, into a hole of their own making.
If the Government does effectively de-professionise the sector, with practitioners becoming lackeys of DfE ands Ofsted diktat (which looks ominously likely), then not only will history pass a damning verdict on the perpetrators of these flagrant attacks upon childhood, but they may have to contend with non-complying practitioners, highly unfavourable media coverage, and even challenges in the courts of the land. I really think this could be where we are headed in these, the bleakest days in England’s early childhood landscape since the appalling Woodhead/Blunkett regime of the late 1990s. There is still time – just – to draw back from this arrant madness, as the Labour Government had the good sense to do in 1998–9, but will the current Government? Alas, I’m not holding my breath – and I am (along with many others) certainly making contingencies…
- Richard House lectures in early childhood at the University of Winchester, is a trained Steiner Kindergarten teacher, and founded Early Childhood Action http://www.earlychildhoodaction.com/. Richard.House@winchester.ac.uk