Why should local authorities be responsible for targets in the Foundation Stage - and what can practitioners do to help them? Lesley Staggs weighs up their new duties
There is an understandable - and very well-founded - concern among most early years practitioners at the mention of the word 'targets'. They bring images of our youngest children being hot-housed and pressurised with the consequent erosion of the opportunities to make the most of the 'here and now' that underpins the work of early years practitioners. There's also a suspicion that this is, yet again, a downward pressure driven by targets schools are expected to achieve when children are 11.
Despite all of these very real concerns, I welcome the introduction this year of Foundation Stage targets for local authorities. I believe that high-quality Foundation Stage provision makes a positive difference to children's early years. And I don't believe that we need to shy away from being held accountable for the huge investment that we have demanded and continue to demand.
From this year, local authorities are required to agree targets to improve children's outcomes at the end of the Foundation Stage, assessed using the Foundation Stage Profile.
There are three targets:
- First, to increase the number of children who achieve a good level in Personal, Social and Emotional Development and Communication, Language and Literacy. (A good level is defined as scoring six or more in each of the scales.)
- Second, to increase the number of children who achieve 78 points across the 13 scales that cover all six areas of learning.
- Third, to close the gap between the lowest achieving children and the rest.
These are not targets for schools and settings. They are targets which hold local authorities accountable for the quality of their early years provision, in the maintained, private and voluntary sector, as well as for ensuring that provision is there in the first place. If only we had had a similar dual responsibility when the explosion of places for four-year-olds happened!
When local authorities are held accountable only for numbers of places, there is a tendency to focus on numbers rather than the quality of those places. Places in themselves have never been enough and we have increasing evidence from research that it is high-quality provision that most improves children's outcomes. Local authorities have a key role to play in working with their schools and settings for ongoing quality improvement. Their Foundation Stage targets are an important lever in ensuring that they take on this role effectively.
Nor are they targets for reception classes. Although the targets are based on the Foundation Stage Profile, which is completed at the end of the Foundation Stage, by which time almost all children are in reception classes, everyone who works with children from birth to five is contributing to that achievement.
Care and support
The final year of the Foundation Stage builds on this and is an important part, but only a part of the whole. And, of course, the care and support babies and young children get from their families and communities and the wider range of children's services are crucial for them to thrive socially, emotionally, physically and cognitively.
Just as the successful implementation of the Foundation Stage in early years settings depends on the knowledge and commitment of senior leaders and managers, so it is in local authorities. There is already anecdotal evidence that this new accountability is leading to a sharper focus among senior local authority staff on the quality of their provision for under-fives.
Just as early years practitioners know how hard it is to make improvements without that knowledge and commitment, so early years staff in local authorities know the importance of the knowledge and commitment of the director of children's services, council members and senior officers.
That knowledge means they understand the importance of high-quality early years provision in promoting the outcomes for children set out in Every Child Matters and they know what high-quality practice looks like for children from birth to age five. Commitment ensures that clear and consistent messages are given by and to everyone who works in their schools and settings about what quality practice looks like. And of equal importance is a commitment to providing the necessary resources in respect of funding schools and settings and a specialist early years service to support practice.
Broader approach
Targets must not be about narrowing the curriculum. That is why it is so welcome that the targets have the three strands, which include progress in all six areas of learning and closing the gap between the most disadvantaged children and others, as well as the narrower focus on the key areas of children's social, emotional, communication and language development.
The breadth of focus will be an important safeguard against a narrow focus on literacy and mathematics, particularly in reception classes, and could - indeed should - provide a model for target-setting at later key stages.
And having a strand that focuses on closing the gap between the most disadvantaged children and others has to be right. It makes more transparent how well we are doing for the most vulnerable children and challenges us to make real the aspiration to give the greatest support where the need is greatest.
So, what does all this mean for the work of local authorities with their settings and schools? First and foremost, it emphasises their key responsibility to both support and challenge their settings and schools in improving the quality of their practice. They need to engage with managers, leaders, headteachers and governors as well as early years practitioners. They need to put in place systems that support good transitions and ensure continuity for children as they move between settings. They need to deliver high-quality moderation of Foundation Stage Profile assessment to ensure confidence in the data on which the targets are based.
All local authority staff who work with schools and settings must be well trained in understanding both the breadth of the targets and the quality of the practice needed to achieve them. As well as the early years team this includes school improvement partners and advisers, literacy, mathematics and Intensifying Support Programme consultants.
Most importantly, local authorities need to understand that when they talk with schools and settings about Foundation Stage targets, it is based on a secure understanding that improving children's outcomes depends on providing a broad and balanced curriculum, based on Birth to Three Matters and the Curriculum Guidance for the Foundation Stage, and improving the quality of learning and teaching, based on a secure understanding of early years pedagogy. The responsibility sits with the adults, not the children.
Targets should not, and must not, be dominating the thinking of early years practitioners. Good targets are about being aspirational for children and believing that high-quality provision with well-trained reflective practitioners and well-supported parents and families makes a real difference for all children, but in particular for those with the most challenges in their lives. We need to focus on those aspirations and on doing our very best for every single child. This is the way to improve outcomes. And this could - and should - provide the model for target setting, not only in the Foundation Stage but also at later key stages.
Lesley Staggs is an early childhood consultant, the first national director of the Foundation Stage and a member of the Early Education Advisory Group to the DfES
