Research and policy
Policy: The EYFS review is exhilarating stuff
19 Apr 2011
I’ve just breathlessly finished reading Dame Clare Tickell’s independent review of the Early Years Foundation Stage (EYFS) curriculum and it is exhilarating stuff.
These kinds of review are habitually branded “independent”, which often provokes cynicism. Commissioned by a secretary of state, published by his department, how independent can it be? However, this review is fresh, clear and challenging. It dares to outstrip its stipulated terms of reference and takes an holistic overview of how the early years sector has developed and embedded the EYFS so far.
The National Literacy Trust has spent the last two years working with 21 local authorities to raise literacy levels by supporting the home learning environment. The approach has worked best where partnerships between local services are developed to meet the families’ needs - in effect a local integrated infrastructure of support. Dame Clare’s recommendation that there is an early years summary providing an overview of a child’s development at age two to two-and-a-half is backed up with a statement of the importance of this integrated support network:
“This local infrastructure needs to include children’s centre, speech and language therapists, special educational needs coordinators and outreach workers. As local authorities redesign the services that are available to children and their families, particularly early years services, I cannot emphasise enough how important it is to understand the pivotal role of these services and to ensure that they are retained.”
This mirrors the experience of the National Literacy Trust. And it is a strong message that we hope government responds to.
Dame Clare envisions a refreshed EYFS which is not only accessible to parents but in which they are partners with practitioners in their children’s learning. She then goes even further:
“I recommend…that all practitioners continue to have access to the necessary resources needed to support the incorporation of effective parental engagement into their practice.”
Again this strongly reflects our research and the practice we promote. In the long term the key approach that will interrupt intergenerational patterns of low literacy and address the strong relationship between disadvantage and low literacy will be an approach that engages families and increases parental support.
Any hesitations in my enthusiasm for the review are around the implications of the separation of the prime area of communication and language from the applied area of literacy. The conceptual separation of speech and language from reading and writing may be unrealistic in an early years curriculum and damaging if projected upwards into the national curriculum.
Unusually this review leaves you wanting more! In particular, answers to two big questions:
- The Allen and Field Reviews are referenced throughout but how will the Department pick up on them?
- How will their approaches be integrated within a revised approach to early years flowing from the Tickell review?
Dame Clare emphasises the need to dovetail EYFS with the primary curriculum. However the current national curriculum review seems increasingly to be basing its thinking on the secondary curriculum and projecting downwards (concepts of the English Literature canon are protruding into conversations about primary literacy). In this case will the rupture between the EYFS and Key Stage 1 be even greater? Will Dame Clare’s review be seen as a foundation document for the national curriculum review?
However these issues are resolved, this report is a highly significant and refreshingly bracing overview of one of the most important developments in literacy provision in this country in recent decades. The issue of esteem bedevils the early years sector. Hopefully this review, the evidence it uses and the best practice it espouses will go a long way to positioning early years at the summit of national education policy.
