Letters - Letter of the week overload of change

Summer-born children do not access funding until the year before most go to school. Children have one year in a pre-school/nursery (even older ones have only two at most), then a year in a reception class where they change to a teacher, 30 pupils in a class, adapting to a new place and people, different rules, a uniform, set lessons and maybe even homework. Then it's all change again. Surely at least the EYFS (three to five) should be just that - a foundation for children aged three years up to six years in one place, with a stable foundation.

The biggest problem I see is trying to train the staff in this stage to raise their expectations of the children. Only then can the children benefit from it. Trying to put children through more changes cannot be the answer.

My motto is, the older the better into school. My experience has certainly shown older children with two full years of pre-school behind them to be best placed for starting school. This would certainly save evening sessions for summer-born five-year-olds, who are repeating reception class, as I am now offering!

Jenny Hazel, Peterborough

- Letter of the Week wins £30 worth of books

TOO MANY GRADUATES

While the academic professionalisation of early childhood practitioners by making it a legal requirement to have a graduate in every full daycare setting (News, 18 December) will likely lead to some enhancement in overall quality, this is certainly not unambiguously good news for standards and quality. Practitioners will understandably support pretty much anything that improves their comparatively lowly occupational status; but whether the academic training route is the most appropriate one for working effectively with pre-school children is, at the very least, contestable.

Within the counselling field, there are comparable doubts as to whether a university-based qualification is the most appropriate way for training in the kinds of qualities that therapists need in their work. A similar argument applies even more strongly in the subtle, often intuitive qualities needed for working with young children, for whom unbalanced, overly intellectual learning can be developmentally inappropriate and positively harmful. It is quite possible to raise the occupational status and effectiveness of early years practitioners without embracing the graduate route alone. One obvious alternative is high-quality vocational training, such as in Steiner Kindergarten trainings, which have experiential learning, artistic and musical ability and personal development, rather than academic ability, at their heart.

Dr Richard House, Open EYE Campaign

BUGGY QUESTIONS

Jennie Lindon is right (Letters, 18 December) that we should focus on the person pushing the buggy as much as the buggy design itself.

The research by Dr Suzanne Zeedyk was commissioned by Talk To Your Baby, the early language campaign of the National Literacy Trust, as a way of finding out what life is like for babies in buggies and how it might be impacting on their language and communication development. It's important to be clear about the aims of this research, as we would never suggest that buggy orientation alone will solve the problems of poor early communication skills, and we agree that supporting the 'real live equipment' (the adult) is at the heart of improving these problems.

The pilot research was not able to extend into other interesting questions such as, how long are children spending in buggies each day? At what age should children be walking instead of riding? Sadly, since many young children are not experiencing 'plenty of adult attention throughout the day', those precious communication moments that are more frequent in a face-to-face buggy may be a simple way to make a difference. It is this that led us to think about the use of buggies as we strive to improve communication.

Liz Attenborough, manager, Talk To Your Baby

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