News

Foundation Phase starts on cash shortfall

The statutory roll-out of the Foundation Phase for three- to four- year-olds in Wales began last Monday, despite concerns over a 10m shortfall in funding.

Visiting a primary school, Welsh education minister Jane Hutt said, 'TheFoundation Phase takes a different approach to learning and a keyfeature is using the outdoors to encourage children to learn aboutconservation and the environment. In Wales we are lucky to have afantastic outdoors and children will discover their environment, theseasons and the weather by exploring.

'Having drawn on international practice from countries such as Denmark,New Zealand and Italy in introducing the Foundation Phase, we believethat the pay-off of this radical new way of learning will be long-termand its impact will be felt for many years to come.'

But groups such as the Welsh Local Government Association and theNational Association of Head Teachers (NAHT) Cymru insist that an extra10m funding, on top of the 30m already allocated, isrequired to ensure staff:child ratios of 1:8 from nursery through toreception (News, 15 May).

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