Are we seeing, unfolding before our eyes, a studied, well-orchestrated ideological offensive by the current government and Ofsted, seemingly determined to undo much of the progress made in early childhood education over recent years?
They certainly seem to be doing all they can to give that impression. I am known as someone who believes passionately that England’s early years policy-making has not been nearly progressive enough since 1998; so it feels somewhat strange, now, to be strongly defending that of which I’ve been critical, since ‘Open EYE’ was founded in 2007!
We will have our robust exchanges over the extent to which the ‘play’ outlined in the EYFS is genuine, authentic play but all sides would surely find common ground in arguing that it’s far better to have some prominent notion of play in the EYFS, however denuded, than none at all. Yet this is precisely what now appears to be under threat from the current government.
On the BBC News website on 25 June, under the disturbing heading ‘Play being "pushed aside" in nurseries’ , we read that ‘the role of play is being sidelined in England's nurseries because of government shifts towards more formal learning’. Thus, under two key qualifications currently being drawn up, nursery teachers and child carers will no longer need training in how children learn through play. The A-Level-standard EYE qualification, for example, requires trainees to ‘deliver effective teaching and learning’, enabling children to progress and be ready for school.
CULTURE OF COMPLIANCE
One only has to read one’s Winnicott, Susan Isaacs or Steiner (among many others) to see that the current government’s claim that there is no contradiction between teaching and play is to fundamentally misunderstand the deep nature of play, and to be privileging a ‘culture of compliance’ above one of freedom and creative imagination. And it is a delight for campaigners to find the Pre-School Learning Alliance’s Neil Leitch quoted as saying, ‘…We are moving to a position where we are not wanting our children to be children any more…. We have concerns about the top-down pressure from government that could lead to the "schoolification" of early years as a result of developmentally inappropriate practice…’.
This is especially galling when even a modicum of research reveals, first, that England’s school starting age was legislated under highly dubious parliamentary circumstances over 140 years ago (in the 1870 Education Act), with no pedagogical rationale underpinning its implementation; and with some 88 per cent of the world’s countries currently having a school starting age of six or seven – while England’s hapless young children are herded into institutional schooling at just four.
Moreover, last week we witnessed Ofsted head Sir Michael Wilshaw advocating young children being tested in basic language and literacy skills before starting formal education (see NW news). Sir Michael recently admitted to a parliamentary committee that he knows little if anything about early years, and here he certainly betrays a fundamental ignorance of both early learning and the noxious psychological side-effects of the testing culture. It is simply false to claim, as Wilshaw does, that young children are 'falling behind': rather, they are being expected to reach levels of development grossly inappropriate for their age. Moreover, all of the alleged 'shortcomings' that Wilshaw identifies are completely accounted for by England's unconscionably early school starting age, which leads to a plethora of early developmental distortions, as teachers desperately try to 'make children ready' for school, rather than our schooling system being made flexibly responsive to welcome young children in all their wonderful diversity.
RESIST THESE PERNICIOUS CHANGES
So how are we to respond to this desperate state of affairs? Many will wish to pursue a strictly democratic route – and an autumn mass lobby of Parliament is currently being planned to support the progressive gains our field has made, and which may also focus on England’s school starting age and the ‘summer-borns’ issue. Others may contemplate taking the grave path of ethical ‘principled non-compliance’ with any governmental diktat which, if implemented, they know would harm the well-being of their children. I hope that all attempts to resist these pernicious changes will be respected by everyone in the field who places young children’s well-being above ideological, politicised motivations. The current generation will surely never forgive us if we fail to embrace our principled professionalism to protect them from these assaults – and I trust that none of us wants a ‘bystander’ label weighing on our conscience, either.