All is lost in bright confusion

Abstract

Editor All is lost in bright confusion The Tables look like they are finally turning. For so long, early years education was given scant regard by politicians. education started when a child was five-years-old, everything else was, well, child’s play. Post five, education was free, unless you wanted to pay for it, and there will always be those who see paid education as providing a better route to life success than state schooling. You knew where you were, your child went to school, which was free, they were educated, to a greater or lesser extent, and for many years their schooling was dictated by the National Curriculum. The landscape has now, well and truly changed. early years is big business, politically and socially. We have statutory guidance, with the latest revision due to be released any time now (it could be out by the time you read this), which everyone needs to work to (with some exceptions), whether they agree with it or not, and some of it is ‘kind of ’ free. however, in primary education, things are changing. The government is committed to a seemingly inexhaustive drive to turn everything into an academy, which has no compulsion to work to the National Curriculum. by the time the revised primary curriculum is comes into play (latest estimate 2014), there is a chance that very few schools will be teaching to it, or at least to all of it, which makes a mockery of making the Early Years Foundation Stage dovetail more closely with it. Where does this leave the reception year, and how will parents know what on earth is going on, let alone the children that these curriculum experiments have most effect on? so we now have a compulsory early years curriculum, but an increasingly un-compulsory primary and secondary curriculum. Make sense? Imagine being a parent faced with this system. Picture the confusion: You are told that your child might be eligible for some free education between two and three-years-old, but that there are limitations as to when these hours can be taken, often to the detriment of the parent. That between three and four, they are definitely eligible for free nursery hours, but again, when and how they can take them may change depending on where they live. That when their child is four, they may or may not move into reception, which may or may not be attached to a school, and may or may not follow the eYFs or the primary curriculum (which the school may or may not follow). look at the mess surrounding funding – childcare vouchers, local authority funding, education grants, no money being ringfenced, so that the level of funding each nursery receives differs depending on location. and this is the tip of the iceberg. Does it really need to be this confusing and complicated? If the eYFs is to be statutory, can we really not take away these ridiculous funding streams and come up with something much more simplified, much fairer, much easier to implement? Is there another way? Finland had the political will to change (see pages 35-37), and early Childhood action are drafting an alternative curriculum, but it is the political will that, I suspect, is lacking in england. Editor Neil Henty MSc Consultant editor Jessica Waterhouse MA, early years teacher, Cypress Infant School, London