Last month a group of national early years experts took up new jobs as the first regional directors for the Foundation Stage. Their remit is to work closely with local authorities and Early Years Development and Childcare Partnerships (EYDCPs) to support training in the Foundation Stage curriculum in early years settings and primary schools. The team of 12 regional advisers will work under Lesley Staggs, who became the first ever national director of the Foundation Stage when she took up the post last October and whose appointment was so warmly welcomed by the early years sector.
Ms Staggs says the aim is not to develop a 'one-size-fits-all' approach, but is about national experts working with local authorities and EYDCPs to support training and share good training programmes. She says, 'This expert support is not about introducing wholesale change, nor about moving towards a more centrally prescriptive approach. It is about raising the profile of the Foundation Stage at every level to ensure it gets the focus it deserves and most critically, it is about raising the status and expertise of early years practitioners.'
Early years experts have questioned how the learning and teaching style of the Foundation Stage can fit with the more formal literacy hour. Ms Staggs, says, 'I think that's often to do with people not understanding messages from the strategy' and hopes the benefit of the regional advisers will be to 'finally convince people that there are different messages'. There has always been a lot of flexibility around the notion of introducing the literacy hour, she says, with teachers and practitioners deciding how to implement it. 'It is for individual schools to work out what works best for them.'
She adds, 'We recognise that the transition from the Foundation Stage to Key Stage 1 is sometimes a cause for concern and we will be looking at ways to help schools make this transition as smooth as possible.'
A key feature of the work of the regional directors will be termly regional conferences with local authority representatives to discuss policy. The first round of conferences took place in April and focused on agreeing a basis to work from around the skills and core competencies needed for effective Foundation Stage practice. This helped to contribute to a revised version, which will be circulated at the forthcoming conferences.
The next round taking place in June and July will include workshops and discussion on the Foundation Stage Profile, feedback from the 65 LEAs who received funding for additional training for heads, reception and Year 1 teachers; new training materials on observation and assessment in reception classes. The issue of sharing good practice will also be discussed and will focus on supporting area special educational needs co-ordinators (SENCOs) and teachers with qualified teacher status in schools. The conferences will also launch 'Playing with sounds', new additional guidance on teaching phonics in Foundation Stage and Year 1.
Early years consultant Marjorie Ouvry feels that the quality of implementation of the Foundation Stage in reception classes is 'very patchy' and hopes that the directors will bring reception classes on board.
She says, 'Some head teachers haven't embraced the spirit of the Foundation Stage. I hope that the new regional directors will galvanise them to support the Foundation Stage more than they do.'
She believes that heads need the support of someone in authority to help them understand the Foundation Stage and that regional directors 'will have the clout to raise its profile, celebrate good practice and share it'.
She adds, 'It is possible that the regional directors will in fact be able to support those local authorities that do not have a tradition of supporting their Foundation Stage practitioners. They might bring up those authorities that are lagging behind.'
She believes another possible benefit is that regional directors will be in a position to audit what's happening in the Foundation Stage throughout England.
But Margaret Edgington, a trainer and early years expert who has devised her own training days on the Foundation Stage for local authorities, is uncertain about the need for the regional directors and feels their role is 'ambiguous'. She is concerned about a move towards centralised training.
'Does that mean every trainer has to link their training to certain competencies? There is always the worry that there will be some kind of central requirement,' she says.
