Wednesday 21 March 2012

The spirit of gentle problem solving

I am depressed by the way that politicians and policy-makers are talking about early education and childcare.

According to the National Audit Office's recent report, early education is largely about boosting results at the end of Key Stage One. Alternatively, the recent Field and Allen Reports argue strongly for the social benefits of early education and childcare – reducing poverty, for example, and intervening early to prevent vulnerable children from creating serious social problems in the future.

By both measures, we are in danger of feeling seriously let down. After spending billions of pounds on the free entitlement for early education at three and four, children’s progress at seven has been flatlining for the last four years. Is that such a big surprise? Firstly, it's well-known that the EYFS does not link well to Key Stage One, an issue which the Independent Review of the Primary Curriculum attempted to address, before it was ditched by Michael Gove. Secondly, billions of pounds were pumped in to fund the "free entitlement" without an adequate focus on quality.  The state pays for children to attend private nurseries which are only graded "satisfactory" by Ofsted and which are highly unlikely to benefit the children's development. The EPPE Project showed clearly that quality in private nurseries is significantly lower overall than in the maintained sector. Of course there are good private nurseries - so why didn't the government limit state funding to just the best?

Unfortunately, few lessons have been learnt from the wasting of billions of pounds on the "free entitlement", which is now going to be extended to two-year olds living in disadvantage. Potentially, expanding nursery provision like this is a really good and progressive way forward. But ... only if there are some assurances about quality. And unfortunately, the national evaluation of the pilot phase to provide free places for two-year olds showed no benefit overall to the children. Going back to the themes of the Allen and Field reports - the EPPE Project also suggests that poor quality provision for children under three leads has a negative effect on children's social development and their behaviour. 

Isn't it easy to see where this might go? It will become increasingly easy – in a time of austerity – for critics to argue that there is no evidence that spending money on the early years is making a significant difference. 

Wouldn't it be better if we could travel a little more slowly and carefully, when it comes to designing and delivering projects in the early years. We should be reflecting on what it means to be two-years old and go to nursery. We should be stopping to watch and learn about how small children are, in Alison Gopnik’s words, the best learning machines in the universe. Instead, we are locking our gaze onto a target for the creation of places. As the psychologist Jerome Bruner wisely commented in 1978: “childwatching of a sympathetic kind can go a long way towards helping us to think about child care more in the spirit of gentle problem solving and less as an exercise in ideological projection.”

A version of this piece was first published as my final column for Nursery World. I'm going to be concentrating a lot more on completing my doctorate in education now...

6 comments:

  1. Depressing? At the recent NCrNE Open Parliamentary Meeting points raised regarding Nursery Education in England included:

    1. FUNDING:
     Day care no longer funded – impacting on Children’s Centres
     LEAs claiming Nursery Schools/Chd Centres too expensive to fund
     SEN funding not forthcoming
     Inequality across UK on funding of Nursery Ed
     Early Intervention disappearing
    2. OFSTED:
     Demand for data vs. best practice observational evidence
     Not providing assessors with EY experience to ‘judge’ EY
     Primary’s to be on 5yr cycle. Nursery Schools on 3yr cycle
     Assessor admitted pressure to ensure ‘not so many’ Nursery Schools gain outstanding status
     Separate judgement for EYFS within primary gone
     Registering places with NO OUTDOOR PROVISION
    3. SEN:
     Schools not taking these children into Reception, numbers overwhelming EY settings
     EAL often underestimated, under supported and not considered by LA
    4. DATA:
     LEA/OFSTED data obsessed – translating EY into ‘graphs’ not possible
     Data demanded doesn’t lead into Nat. Curric and therefore useless to KS1
     Settings struggling to produce stats that OFSTED/LEA can comprehend
     Stress on staff
     Learning Journeys vs. data
     Constant battle to provide data draws staff from providing learning experiences
     Danger of compromise will lead inevitably to altering how you view the children
    5. CHILDREN’S CENTRES:
     LA attached one to an Infant School, Reception Classes implemented, EY ethos under disappearing, pressure from the school and the LEA
    6. PROFESSIONAL ISSUES:
     Language of EY altering from play-learn-progress to data-proof-statistics
     Distinction between child care and child education fading
     Child care providers able to use term ‘Nursery School’ regardless of quality of provision
     (And therefore) Do we need to rename Nursery Schools to define them more fully?
     Preservation of Nursery Education vs. Conservation of Nursery Education
     New EY Student Teachers not seeing best practice
     EY Degree students not given holistic model
     What happens when there are no more NNEBs in the system? Many ‘equivalent’ qualifications are not as widely trained
     Removal of teachers from settings was devastating moral, function and outcomes
     England is passive – Welsh teachers have refused to do a baseline that wasn’t child centred in any way – we need to ignite the fight
    7. FAMILIES:
     Facing uncertainty as closures mean the withdrawal of support
     The importance of involving parents missed in other settings
    8. POLICY:
     Single point of entry – children very young, short time in EY
     Decisions on provision deferred to those unable to recognise quality
     Inequality across English LAs on support for Nursery Ed
     Early intervention conspicuous by absence
     15hr provision took away many full time places
    9. OTHER PRESSURE:
     ‘school readiness’
     Places for 2yr olds
     Biology of children’s development vs. demands from Gvmt/OFSTED/LEA
     ECAT visits show uneven provision across each borough

    Issues came from all over England. People were Governors, Headteachers, Teachers, Nursery Nurses and EY Consultants from:
    Southwark, Lewisham, Greenwich, Croydon, Enfield, Chelsea and Kensington, Harringey, Westminster, Tower Hamlets, Hackney, Hammersmith and Fulham, Wandsworth, Kent, Berkshire, Chester
    And the perfect advice from the President MP Karen Buck was:
    “Do not underestimate how little decision makers know about what is happening in your setting!”

    Now that's depressing!

    Check out www.NCNE.co.uk and join the campaign for REAL Nursery Education

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  2. Hi - thanks for the comment, I think that's a record to have one longer than the original blogpost. These are difficult times...but maybe we need to focus on a few key issues together to move this on?

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  3. I agree that some (though not all) of these issues are very real, but it is not useful to list and labour them in this way, particularly on a valuable blog like this one. This type of cynicism leads only to becoming bitter and twisted. Far better to focus on what is positive (and there is plenty) and have courage in your convictions and reflect these in practice. Policy may change but the nature of young children's learning never does. Good practitioners know that and are passionate enough to give children the enabling environment they need to flourish whatever policy makers decree. There is some fantastic practice out there to set good example - so let's start with that Julian instead of unpicking negativity. Campaigning is one thing but a continuum of the same old moans without reflection becomes a little tiresome after a while.

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    Replies
    1. Hi Janet, thanks for leaving a comment. I agree with you about the perils of cynicism, and like you say there are many practitioners with an unshakeable commitment to giving children the very best. I am less sure about the emphasis on passion as opposed to policy - because while there are a great many individuals whose passion takes them, and the children, a long way I think that in the end we need the right policies for the early years to flourish. We can't just rely on the passion of some - because that means that others will miss out. And those others will usually (though not always) be the children in the poorest neighbourhoods because we have become too tolerant of inequality and too mistrustful of our capacity to bring about a fairer society.

      I'm going to post later in the month about some of the opportunities that the new EYFS might presents, notwithstanding the problems ...

      I hope that my readers don't feel like they're hearing the same old moans without reflection.

      But I trust you to tell me whenever you do.

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    2. Hi Julian, my comment referring to the same old moans was aimed at the previous posting and not your blog in general. I don't disagree with you about policy, and I acknowledge this right at the start of my post, but the message I was trying to convey was that there is flexibility within the revised EYFS to facilitate good practice across the board, but it is in the interpretation of a very slimmed down framework, and it is there that my concerns lie. I just feel that a list like that is a very negative take and we should be campaigning within an atmosphere of accepting what we have but reflecting on how we could further improve the experiences of our youngest citizens. Such deep rooted (and passionate)concerns, listed like that, do not serve a purpose with policy makers and in fact can create the perception of a continual moan. Then it becomes ineffective.

      I really enjoy reading your blog Julian, a public forum like this opens up good debate, and I felt I had to respond to that post with my perspective.

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  4. Hi Janet - and thanks for doing just that (responding with your perspective). I agree that the new EYFS is not, in itself, a barrier to developing good practice - it gives plenty of scope and space for that. What I worry about is the increasing target-driven culture, which ends up with trying to implement policy too fast, and trying to rush children to particular outcomes without thinking enough about the process and the journey. The traditional focus on "now" for young children in English early education, together with the emphasis on process over outcomes, are still important and worth saving - and they can be kept alive within the new framework, I think.

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