PROGRESS BLOCKED
I am in total agreement with comments about Early Years Professional status (Online, 21 February). I graduated from the University of Teesside in November with a 2:1 BA (Hons) Early Childhood Studies and hoped to undertake EYPS this year. However, I am not eligible as I work as a teaching assistant (level 3) in the foundation unit of an LEA primary school. I have been informed that EYPS is only applicable to the PVI sector.
I was full of optimism as to my future, but there is no progression or opportunity to take on more responsibility in the school where I work. This would also deny me the opportunity to undertake EYPS if I was in an appropriate setting.
I also find my experience is not appropriate to work in a children's centre, and I am unable to obtain work experience because the children's centre staff I have spoken to are just too busy to organise this with me.
So, I have higher level qualifications and early years experience but am unable to move on. Like other readers I think that, even without EYPS, the Government wants a graduate level workforce in early years, but we are cheap, highly qualified staff, unable to progress in the way that teachers are.
I, too, wonder why I studied hard for three years. I love my job and I'd be happy to stay if I could progress, but with my newly gained knowledge and skills it is my employer who is the winner.
Margaret Wright, by e-mail
Letter of the Week wins £30 worth of children's books
THE REAL STRATEGY
'Hear, hear!' to Ian Blunkett-Evans' 'Letter of the week' (28 February). We have also been vocal to our local authority on the state of the nursery system, the pressures on practitioners to focus on the education value for even very young children, the increasing demands from parents because the media has told them what they can have, and the continual running costs of a private business hampered by the NEG finding.
We also strongly criticised the Code of Practice and how the destructive influences of Government have slowly eroded our once successful industry.
There are so many ways that the childcare sector could have been made 'strong', but the Government at the beginning of its ten-year strategy had one plan only - nationalisation. It was always clear to me what they were doing; maybe it has only been the private providers who could see the grim reaper.
Tina Blick, owner, Honey Pot Nurseries, Isfield, East Sussex
ONLY ANTI-AUDIT
Your headline reporting on the sell-out OpenEYE London conference said 'anti-EYFS campaign' (News, 21 February).
Open EYE is not anti-EYFS. It only challenges the Learning and Development goals and the assessment regime which audits them.
OpenEYE seeks to change their status from what has been made compulsory for all children and all providers, to the status of professional guidelines only. Compulsory goals and assessments are already proving counter-productive to the motivation of children and teachers in primary schools. Why bring the damage down to even younger, more vulnerable children? Other countries in Europe don't begin formal schooling until six or seven years old and their children have overtaken ours in literacy and numeracy by the time they are ten.
If this audit culture is now forced down into pre-school settings, it will only focus carers on keeping the statistics up and focus children on how they are failing. Watch for the announcement of compulsory pre-school league tables. Some carers have already reported being given 2008-09 targets for children they have not yet seen! I wonder why the term pre-school has been quietly dropped?
'By three years, most children should ...' contradicts the EYFS guidance manual (there are about a dozen 'shoulds' in a few pages of the official guidance for practitioners). Then there are suggestions that two-year-olds should be instructed on how to use a TV remote, a photocopy machine and practice clicking icons on a computer screen.
For obesity, lethargy, boredom, disaffection, poor social skills, low creativity and starved emotional intelligence, click here.
Graham Kennish, parent, teacher and lecturer, by e-mail.
