Learning through play’ has become the place where some of the fiercest conflicts about early years are taking place. In 2009, when the most recent review of the EYFS happened, the Department for Education’s Literature Review stated that ‘play is a prime context for development’ and then added, slightly wearily, ‘again, this is not new’. Yet this conclusion, reinforced by research year after year, does not seem to be translating into action. In fact, some schools appear to be expressing a full-scale rejection of ‘learning through play’, especially during the Reception year.
When professionals go against mountains of research evidence, something odd must be happening. Anecdotally, many early years practitioners blame head teachers and senior leaders who have not themselves taught in the early years and are tightly focused on outcomes at the end of Key Stages 1 and 2. If writing is a problem in Year 6, best get cracking early and give handwriting worksheets to nursery children.
On the other hand, the large majority of heads and senior leaders I have met, as a National Leader of Education, have a genuine commitment to the children in their schools and want the very best for them. I may not agree with them about everything, but I would be very reluctant to imply that they do not want to develop high-quality, evidence-informed practice. Yet there are some who ignore the available evidence and expect to see an increasingly formal early years curriculum. Why might this be?
I would argue that there have been two main factors which have brought this about:
- The logic of the educational system, which can seem to prioritise progress data over the individual experience of the child.
- Shortcomings in professional development and training.
PROGRESS DATA
The desire to do well in league tables and to have the best possible data for Ofsted are some of the strongest driving forces in education. In an important recent speech, Amanda Spielman, Her Majesty’s Chief Inspector, commented on the conflict school leaders experience between ‘your desire to give children the right education and the pressure to maintain your league table position’.
A similar concern is reflected in the most recent report of the House of Commons Education Committee, which expresses the concern that the proposal for new baseline tests for children in Reception will merely shift the ‘negative consequences of high stakes accountability to early years’. This sort of accountability drives teachers to focus on getting the best possible progress data, rather than on the proper purpose of schools, which is to offer the best possible education to every child.
Assessment throughout schooling – and perhaps especially in the early years – should be about planning to build on children’s existing competencies. It should help practitioners to identify the barriers children have in their learning, and help the children to overcome them.
As Professor Dominic Wyse from the UCL Institute of Education put it in his evidence to the Education Committee, ‘The main purpose of the assessment of children in nursery and Reception should be to assess their learning to inform teaching, and to inform parents about their children’s progress.’
Where the system demands ‘progress data’, it is ever-tempting to shimmy past all of these purposes, and merely produce the required outcomes. But that is not only poor practice, it is almost certain to obliterate some of the most important features of effective early years provision. Maybe the lack of focus on the ‘whole child’ is one of the factors contributing to the rise of childhood obesity and poor mental health?
Where the early years curriculum focuses on a narrow set of skills which are tested, children may miss out on the support they need for their health, their emotional well-being and the development of their dispositions to learn. In some cases, children appear to lose their enthusiasm for learning before they have even started compulsory schooling.
As Ofsted argues in its recent report, Teaching and play in the early years: a balancing act?, ‘play provides the natural, imaginative and motivating contexts for children to learn about themselves, one another and the world around them.’
The regime of testing and data comes from a desire to make the education system more accountable, a desire which is understandable when one considers the many decades of poor-quality education that so many children – especially the most disadvantaged – received in recent decades. Through much of the 1990s, when I first started teaching, it was still common for parents to know little about how well their children were progressing in schools, and for teachers to fob them off with vague comments and jargon.
Having accurate assessment information, and being able to analyse it, also matters if we are going to translate general theories of equality into action. If we do not know which groups of children are making poorer progress in our early years, then we cannot take the necessary actions to change that state of affairs.
Back in the 1990s, Bangladeshi pupils had some of the worst results in the English system: but many decades of hard work, including careful analysis of assessment information, in areas such as Tower Hamlets in East London, have helped to change that and give the current generation of Bangladeshi-British pupils a much better chance of educational success than their parents had. So, assessment and progress data matter, but the stakes should not be so high.
Schools should not be using targets in their data to drive the development of their early years curriculum. Instead, the curriculum needs to be, as Amanda Spielman has argued, ‘broad, rich and deep. It matters so much for children, and particularly for disadvantaged children, who are less likely to have the gaps filled in at home.’
INITIAL TRAINING
I would argue that the second factor which is influencing this turn away from an evidence-informed early years curriculum is the inadequate initial training received by many practitioners. The inadequacy is compounded when there is a lack of high-quality ongoing professional development.
Ignorance about effective early years teaching is rampant within the sector – where, as Professor Cathy Nutbrown found in her recent review, both teacher training and the whole qualifications framework for staff at Levels 2 and 3 leave so much to be desired. And more widely, there is still a sense that the early years are less important.
School Direct trainees based in the early years must have experience in both Key Stages 1 and 2 – but trainees in those Key Stages are not required to have early years experience. That is why it was so heartening to hear Sir David Carter, the National Schools Commissioner, say, ‘I think that focus of what really good early years teaching looks like should actually be a prerequisite of every teacher’s training.’
We need better-trained teachers and early years educators with a wider schools’ workforce which is more informed about early education. Then, perhaps, the difficulties of putting the research findings which so crisply underpin the revised Early Years Foundation Stage will diminish. That is a long-term project.
In the meantime, practitioners need much more time and support to engage with the new approaches to assessment without levels, and to focus on the formative use of assessment – rather than merely labelling children with levels and totting up meaningless progress data.
Better early years practice needs to be developed through high-quality professional development which helps all practitioners to unpick, understand and implement the EYFS. And finally, the messages from Ofsted’s new Chief Inspector, and in its recent report Teaching and play, need more careful consideration.
More information
DfE (2009) Early Years Learning and Development. Literature Review, www.foundationyears.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2012/08/DCSF-RR1761.pdf
House of Commons Education Committee (2017) Primary Assessment, www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm201617/cmselect/cmeduc/682/682.pdf
Ofsted (2015) Teaching and play in the early years: a balancing act?, www.gov.uk/government/publications/teaching-and-play-in-the-early-years-a-balancing-act
