EYFS, dubbed the "nappy curriculum", is the first legislation to give the State a say in the raising of children under five.

[mrz]

EYFS, which comes into force in September next year, has already been harshly criticised by teachers, parents and politicians.

At the time of its launch Margaret Morrissey, from the National Confederation of Parent Teacher Associations, said: "I think it's really sad that we have reached the point now where instead of reducing children's stress we have increased it.

"Will nurseries be worrying more about children reaching these targets than caring for our children?"

EYFS applies to around 25,000 nurseries across both private and state sectors, plus all childminders.
openeyecampaign.wordpress.com/about/

I have ready about this but I don't understand the fuss - can you explain further?

Nurseries already have all sorts of workbooks etc. that they create for each child - why is this any different?

This curriculum will be statutory for all children from birth to five (if they attend a childminder, preschool, day nursery or school.

The State is defining what child development is.

"It means that a pre-school would have to pursue the Government's defined view of healthy child development, even if it contradicts with their own view. Unlike the national curriculum for schools, which does not apply to independent schools, the framework will apply to all pre-school settings ? state, private and voluntary.

Experts believe that the legislation will impose a system of ?audit and accountability? on children that will profoundly affect the way in which teachers interact with them.

Do we really want to encourage a clipboard culture with childminders watching to see if a toddlers is able to "rub a rusk around their feeding tray" to show that they are interested in making marks or judging if they
"enjoy babbling"?

Hmm I don't know MrZ

Actually this IS what I want

My children's nursery has always measured detailed child milestones and development on a regular basis. It's definitely what I want from childcare - I want to know how my child is developing and that they are hitting milestones.

I need a more reasoned argument against it TBH.

I have a copy of the EYFS and I don't understand why it is a bad thing. It's not about forcing children to reach milestones but about making sure the adults who work with them know roughly what they should be working towards and how to help them & provide opportunities for them to reach them.

I would have thought that most good nurseries etc are already doing this. And, if not, they should.

SATs were introduced to take a snapshot of children's progress. They have become a stick to hit people with if the children are not reaching the targets. I think that is the worrying thing about eyfs. Too many tick boxes. Too much prescribed as to how a child should develop and when. It's setting a lot of children up for failure because as we know they don't all develop at the same rate. Parents disappointed with their toddlers because they weren't able to tick such and such a box.
The whole thing has the potential to be very restricting in much the same way as the NC.
And that's without the possibility of lots more paperwork taking the adults away from the children. Plus taking away choice for parents by forcing it onto childminders and other independant childcarers.
That's my initial take on it.
The open eye website is worth a look.

There is significant evidence to suggest that introducing formal education too early is damaging to some children in both the short and the long term, especially to boys. Consequences may include the development of unpredictable emotional and behavioural problems, unwarranted levels of stress, damage to children?s self-esteem and erosion of their enthusiasm for learning. Research has shown that 5 year olds drilled in reading and writing were outstripped four years later by children whose first year at school was more socially interactive and stimulating.
Young children learn most naturally and effectively through a subtle balance of free play, movement, rhythm, repetition and imitation. An overly formal, academic and/or cognitively biased ?curriculum?, however carefully camouflaged, distorts this learning experience; and an early ?head-start? in literacy is now known to precipitate unforeseen difficulties later on ? sometimes including unpredictable emotional and behavioural problems.

Recent evidence ? including the reports of the Cambridge Primary Review www.primaryreview.org.uk/Publications/Interimreports.html, and the latest OECD PISA report (the ?international league tables?)www.oecd.org/document/22/0,3343,en_2649_201185_39713238_1_1_1_1,00.html - suggests that government-driven changes in education have been largely ineffective in driving up standards and may at worst be adversely affecting both educational standards and the quality of children?s educational experiences.

For childminders it is a complicate paperwork issue

I will have to:

record fridge & freezer temperature
record food core temperature
make formal recorded risk assessments
make formal recorded observations of children
plan actual activities for the babies (?) rather than sit with them making funny faces & noises

so far - & I have only had 2 hrs training
Schools & nurseries will get additional funding (as I understand, I could be wrong) to help the progression to EYFS but childminders will have to attend in the evenings or weekends or lose income to attend the courses available

Plus if a parent wants their child looked after in a particular way (wrt reading, eating, sleeping) I will not be able to comply unless it is within the new 'rules'

EG Birth to three suggests that children be allowed to sleep when they want and that 5 F&V a day are recommended. EYFS states these as necessary - so if your child falls asleep after 3pm & you want me to wake him I can't (if an OFSTED inspecetor is around)

England has one of the most (if not THE most) prescriptive early years curriculum, Scotland and Wales are implementing their own "child friendly" curriculum with much higher adult to child ratios than England. In EYFS it has the danger of becoming so bogged down in paperwork that children's needs will take second place. Good teachers and early years practitioners know the children in their care they don't need tick lists. There are 117 YES 117 points for each child to achieve before they even reach school age, multiply that by the 82 children in my care and it doesn't leave much time to teach.

morningpaper -- as one example, EYFS mandates that preschool children should "develop understanding of the correspondence between spoken and written sounds and learn to link sounds and letters and use their knowledge to read and write simple words by sounding out and blending."

Quite apart from the fact that the writer of that particular passage should perhaps have developed understanding of the consequences of over-use of the word "and" in a single sentence , there is very little research to suggest that attempting to teach under-fives to read is a good thing in terms of their long-term educational prospects (and some research to suggest that it may be actively disadvantageous).

At present, for example, it's fine for an independent Steiner school to put off starting to teach reading until a child is seven or eight. When EYFS comes in, it will paradoxically be a legal requirement for a Steiner preschool to teach reading even though it is at direct odds with their whole educational philosophy.

And so forth. All working parents will have no choice but to have their preschool children taught reading, unless they are lucky enough to have free relative-provided childcare or rich enough to afford a nanny.

But if you want the nanny paid by vouchers or to claim tax credits for childcare - they will find a way to make nannies do it too

www.thisislondon.co.uk/news/article-23430539-details/Brown+advisor+calls+for+tax+breaks+for+s tay-at-home+mums+after+warning+over+nurseries/article.do

Gordon Brown's own advisor is warning about the damaging effects of some nurseries.

I think he said "any kind of childcare", actually, mrz -- which may not be exactly the point you were trying to make (and not exactly relevant to this thread).

I think this framework is an absolute nonsense - as a current teacher, new mum and potential childminder. The government's many hoops they make children jump through do not raise standards or help children achieve, they just make children wonder why they are not as "good" as they "should" be. If you're against it too, sign the petition for the attention of no 10:

petitions.pm.gov.uk/list/open?cat=439

I think if you put this thread together with the other one about the Government's current attitudes to stay at home parents, it starts to look like there's an agenda here. That being to remove parents from the equation and get state control in there right from the start. Scary stuff if you're a cynic.

The Government has poured billions (twenty one at the last count)ten billion of it into the Prime Minister's favoured Children's Centres Professor Belsky and his team were asked to evaluate the impact made by such centres and his conclusion is "Those who spend time in centre-based care from a very young age are particularly at risk. Combine that with an inappropriate statutory curriculum for the very young and the outcome cannot be good.

morningpaper you say that you actually want your nursery aged child to be filling in workbooks and that is your choice but as an experience early years professional I would be questioning the practice of any nursery I visited working this way. Usually the response I get is "Our parents like it".

I would recommend looking at a book entitled
"L is for Sheep" written by a group of experienced and respected Early Years professionals, which in the preface demonstrates why worksheets/books teach children nothing more than how to jump through hoops in an attempt to find a response which will please adults.

Mrz I don't think morningpaper said she wants her pre-schooler to be doing workbooks - i couldn't see where she said that, at least.
I agree re. workbooks/worksheets - they are often used lazily, and are not appropriate before yr 1 IMO.
I want to understand all this further. It is my interpretation that the EYFS goals are supposed to be achieved by the END of RECEPTION YEAR - i.e., after the child is 5 yrs anyway? can you enlighten me......

The EYFS is not a 'curriculum'. It is a set of guidelines to help practitioners and reception teachers plan for the 0-5's education.

It is in depth and very wordy and perhaps not the ideal answer to the question of how best to support children's development.

In its favour, it does not simply highlight what children should achieve and by when, but how practitioners can support the child holistically and how they can communicate effectively with parents and other people involved in the care of the child.

IMO the best way to improve Early Years Education is to recognise the roles of people working in the sector as professional ones. The EYFS and its predecessors (The Foundation Stage and 0-3 Matters) are necessary because sadly the people working with under 5's are often under paid, under qualified and uninterested.

In answer to the first post on this thread (which I have just re-read), it is very possible that a poor nursery/pre-school may use the GUIDELINES in a way that was not intended. But a good nursery will plan its activities with the guidelines in mind and ensure that each child is treated individually and allowed to develop at their own pace.

Good nurseries have been doing this for years, with or without guidance from the government.

nosnikrap EYFS will become a STATUTORY CURRICULUM in September. Just as the Curriculum Guidance for the Foundation Stage is the current curriculum for 3-5 year olds. EYFS is NOT guidance.

I'm not sure if you are familiar with the EYFS curriculum which is a very slim document but accompanied by detailed developmental grids which are guidance.

Just to clarify the status of EYFS

"The EYFS is given legal force through an Order and Regulations made under the Act. From
September 2008 it will be mandatory for all schools and early years providers in Ofsted
registered settings attended by young children ? that is children from birth to the end of the
academic year in which a child has their fifth birthday."

So wouldn't a better answer be to raise the pay and status of child care as a vocation? That would mean chains of nurseries creaming off less money in profit and actually paying their staff well plus bothering to train them, of course... Plus probably some government funding.

My experience, of the Asquith chain, is that each assistant in the baby room was pulling in £2,700 a month (on a 1:3 staffing ratio), yet paid £10k to £11k per year. And they wouldn't fork out £500 for my son's keyworker to take her NVQ - despite promises when she joined.

Parents are paying an awful lot for childcare and someone is making a hell of a lot of money out of it. But it isn't the people actually doing the job.

Is it likely that pay will increase while the government is promising "affordable" (cheap) childcare for all?

& rather scarily I childmind up to 9 children (under 5) each day & I have 4 qualified (NVQ3) staff - I met a nursery owner recently with 70 children and only 7 qualified staff (but lots of NVQ2 staff)

I am trying (as most of you know) to open a nursery & in this area, we will be lucky to break-even. We will be opening as a co-op so the people doing the job will get any spare money there is

"morningpaper you say that you actually want your nursery aged child to be filling in workbooks"

lol no that's not what I said

But by the time my child left nursery I was presented with her records, which amounted to an enormous log of work done, milestones achieved, tick boxes, grading etc. In my entire time with my child at nursery, I never once saw her carers doing paperwork, or heard DD complain that they did paperwork.

As another poster said, a good nursery will be planning work towards these guidelines/syllabuses anyway.

From birth - 5 is a LONG TIME for a child to be in a caring environment - 117 checkpoints over the course of that time is not a great deal of work.

But I agree that it is a bit odd to dictate when a child should sleep!

What other precise points are contentious? I still don't really seem to have got THE POINT.