The A to Z of Early Years. June O'Sullivan

The A to Z of Early Years

children from deprived backgrounds. There was a large consultation, and what became clear was that the sector had warmed to the EYFS and asked that the framework itself should not be changed, but that how it was being interpreted should be examined, especially with regard to funding and paperwork.

Published in 2011, the Tickell Report (Tickell, 2011) made some key recommendations, reducing the number of Early Learning Goals from 69 to 17 and replacing the six areas of learning with seven areas. There were three prime areas (communication and language; personal, social and emotional development; physical development) and four other areas (literacy; mathematics; expressive arts and design; understanding the world). The changes caused many discussions, some of which still rage, especially the school readiness agenda and the lack of guidance on teaching and learning. Despite these concerns, the new Early Learning Goals were made operational and generally accepted by the sector. There was a slight amendment again in 2014 and since then we have been using them with relative tolerance. The challenge between what new research tells us about how children learn, and the school readiness agenda, remains both controversial and emotive.

Things changed when the Children and Families Minister, Nadhim Zahawi, instigated a review of the ELGs in 2018. The approach courted controversy from the initial appointment of an advisory panel by the DfE and a pilot tested in 24 schools during 2019 with the intention of allowing schools to adopt the new framework from September 2020. All of this was organised quite furtively with limited input from the early years sector, causing much consternation.

The stated purpose of the revisions (DfE, 2019) was to:

make all 17 ELGs clearer, more specific and easier in order for teachers to make accurate judgements;

focus on strengthening language and vocabulary development to particularly support disadvantaged children;

strengthen literacy and numeracy outcomes to ensure all children had a good grasp of these areas of learning in preparation for Year 1;

ensure the ELGs were based on the latest evidence in childhood development;

ensure they reflected the strongest predictors of future attainment.

The early years sector responded as it always does by debating publicly and lobbying quietly. There was sympathy with the intention to examine why the achievement gap between children eligible for free school meals and their better-off peers had not changed and remained stubbornly at around 17%. Everyone was happy to explore how we could improve children's speech and language and who would complain about any effort to reduce workload? The issue was that no one was convinced that changing the ELGs would solve the workload issues without addressing the process of assessment, and nor would it address the fundamental issue of how children learn to communicate without looking at how we teach and how children learn.

The government was quite open that the new ELGs were a way of trying to align the curriculum to how maths and phonics are taught in Year 1. This simply confirmed the view from the early years sector that the Early Learning Goals were moving towards a more formal Reception curriculum, in contrast to the rich and varied play-based learning proven to be a more effective way for small children to gain a strong concrete grasp of the skills, knowledge and understanding necessary to apply abstract concepts. Was this yet another push towards rushing children into meeting targets that they were not developmentally ready to meet? Or was this approach contributing to the negative achievement gap currently applied to children's circumstances, rather than a response to inappropriate developmental targets?

The specific changes to the ELGs tended to align with the view that the government wanted a more formal curriculum pushed downwards onto our smallest children in direct opposition to a raft of international educational research. The tone of the changes to the ELGs seem to imply that they were designed for the older children, including using the term ‘pupils’ which would be rare in an early years setting. Unsurprisingly, the sector's greatest concerns began with the language and communication goal, e.g. removing ‘understanding’ failed to recognise the significance of how small children learn to ‘read’ communication through non-verbal cues and facial communication, and how they link this to meaning. The use of ‘recently introduced vocabulary’ was a source of confusion, especially with the addition of ‘using full sentences’ and ‘making use of conjunctions’ overcomplicating this desired outcome. It will be interesting to see how Ofsted inspectors interpret this statement and the pedantically phrased ‘hold conversation when engaged in back-and-forth exchanges'. How else do we converse?

The introduction of the concept of self-regulation has caused a great deal of apprehension and confusion, especially in the attempt to reduce it to a simple concept much misunderstood by staff. Already, people think of it as sitting still and concentrating, while in fact it addresses the complexity of metacognition.

People were unhappy with the decision to try to bring together elements from three existing ELGs into one (managing self) and failing to articulate the appropriate expectations of children by age five as clearly as the current ones for self-confidence and managing feelings. The removal of health and self-care from the physical ELG has also been a source of much alarm, especially as this means ELG has now been limited to fine and gross motor skills. It seems odd to remove an understanding of healthy diet in a world where child obesity is increasing.

The mathematical ELG proved very controversial. There was uproar that the DfE seemed to be rejecting the evidence that informal mathematical learning should be a key element throughout the EYFS, and that many basic mathematical operations rely on the development of cognitive abilities which may not be in place until the end of the Foundation Years. The biggest outcry resulted in ‘shape, space and measure’ being reinstated, as well as an acceptance of the importance of spatial reasoning, which is why every decent setting has construction and puzzle activities.

The focus on a deep understanding of number to 10 instead of 20 was tentatively welcomed, as was the inclusion of ‘subitising’ which encouraged children to understand the ‘make up’ of numbers. However, the requirement to ‘automatically recall’ (without reference to songs, rhymes and counting) number bonds up to 5 and some number bonds up to 10, including double facts, contrasts with the focus on depth of understanding and instead is more about the rote learning of number symbols.

Finally, I was surprised to see the removal of technology, and the changes to the ‘understanding the world’ Early Learning Goal appeared to contradict the Ofsted focus on cultural capital. It talks about learning about other cultures and the world around them from books read in class, clearly failing to acknowledge the funds of knowledge acquired from home and community life.

Call to Action

There is no way to judge these changes yet as they will only become live from September 2021, but given that the ELGs will be used to assess children's progress by the end of the Foundation Stage, it's imperative that we watch how they are used and assure ourselves that they are fair and developmentally appropriate, and not another institutional measure that confirms disadvantage with the unintended consequence of widening the achievement gap.

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The A to Z of Early Years. June O'Sullivan