Opinion: To the point - The future of learning

I want to continue my focus on the Rose Review of the Primary Curriculum which I wrote about for this column last month (22 January). I talked then about my concerns relating to early entry to the reception class currently being advocated in the Review. Under the lead of our president, Wendy Scott, TACTYC has just prepared a response to this which you can see on our website and which may assist you in making your own responses - there's still time.

I wrote about the need to protect children's rights in relation to them being in a high-quality and age-appropriate learning environment. For children of five years and under, this is a nursery environment, a pre-school, a kindergarten - whatever you call it. Each of these, in whichever country you find it, has two underpinning features in common. First, they place playful, experiential and active learning at the heart of the child's curricular experiences both indoors and outdoors. Second, and integral to the first point, they support the child's right to select and develop their playful learning experiences from the basis of their own interests and preoccupations, some of which come from their home life and some from their 'school' life. The adult's role is to nurture and support this process with appropriate pedagogy and provision. Knowing how to do that is a very complex business.

What worries me over all of this in England is where we will locate and nurture this related body of knowledge in the future. It was once well developed in our nursery schools. Some of our most innovative thinkers and writers on the early years 'blossomed' in nursery schools. These were spacious and well resourced, with equally spacious outdoor environments that were a joy for the inner city children who used them. Many of these nursery schools seem to be closing to make way for children's centres. I am not convinced that children's centres can become the repositories for stimulating this particular body of knowledge because their remit is so much wider than that of children's learning; I hope I'm wrong. I am certainly not convinced that reception classes have a tradition, a heritage or a commitment to taking on this particular mantle.

If playful learning in the early years is to have any future at all, it's time to seriously consider from where our future traditions, heritage and knowledge will spring.

Pat Broadhead is professor of Playful Learning at Leeds Metropolitan University and chair of TACTYC, www.tactyc.org.uk