Well before the paint is dry on the initial implementation of the EYFS, government ministers (who really should know better) are already planning what will be in the next phase. The 'Independent Review of Mathematics Teaching in Early Years Settings and Primary Schools' by Sir Peter Williams, Chancellor of Leicester University, has been accepted in full by the government so that nurseries and childminders will now be expected to encourage children to write and draw, helping them to develop their "mathematical marking" skills. Ministers, who have always resisted the need for an enquiry into the way the EYFS was drafted because "the EYFS will be reviewed in 2010", are now saying that the EYFS may be further changed in the 2010 review to include the concepts of time and volume. And all this is, of course, to be aimed at the under 5s.
Then, in a written answer published yesterday to a question from Maria Miller, Beverley Hughes has admitted that the DCSF have "not commissioned specific research on the developmental appropriateness of the EYFS". Yet still they continue to tweak and tinker with our children's learning.
Remember 20 years ago when SATs tests were first introduced as a simple test to determine the attainment level of a child, but are now used as a device to make or break a school, headteacher or teacher? Looks like the EYFS could well snowball in a similar fashion as the government decides that not only is earlier better, but, from 2010, more will be better as well.