MNHQ here: seeking your views on 'school readiness' and early education for a debate in Westminster Hall

[RowanMumsnet]

Hello

We've been contacted by Parliament's Public Information and Resources Group; they're interested in hearing your thoughts on children's early years development and school readiness, to inform a debate that will be held at Westminster Hall this coming Tuesday (July 12).

The debate has been called by James Berry, Conservative MP for Kingston and Surbiton, and here's what he has to say about it:

"We sometimes think of education as starting only at primary school or once children have reached their fourth or fifth birthdays, but this is far from the case. Even the very youngest children are learning all the time and a growing body of research shows that this early learning is vitally important; early education and childcare play important roles in children’s life chances."

"The doubling of the early years free childcare commitment to 30 hours is an opportunity to look at what actually goes into this provision. How can we get our children ready to have the best possible start at school?"

"I have called a debate in Westminster Hall, together with a cross-party group of MPs, to examine this issue from all sides and to inform future government strategies on the topic."

James would particularly like your input on the following questions; your responses may be referred to during the debate (which you can watch at 9.30am on Tuesday July 12 here - or indeed attend in person.)

Questions
*What has made the greatest contribution to your child’s development in their early years?

*What support could the government give you as a parent to improve their learning and development at home?

*What would you like to see in the government’s workforce strategy for early years education – do childminders and nursery staff need greater training to deliver healthy development? Do they need specific qualifications?

*Do we need a syllabus or targets in early years education? Would you support testing or any other measures to gauge attainment?

Thanks
MNHQ

Question 1 What support could the government give you as a parent at home..
Strong maternity / employment rights

Question 2 - What support could the government give you as a parent to support learning and development at home
The government should support the libraries (rhyme time) and surestart children's centres. My local sure start centre is particularly good at supporting young mums and also focuses on encouraging children's language through rhyme and song.

Also the government can ensure green spaces are maintained and developed.

Question 3 - i am not sure if they need a specific qualification but i know nursery childcare is a hard job with long hours and poor pay. I think the 30 hours is going to put more strain on the system. Unless the government is willing to raise the amount they pay per child, I don't see how they can demand a specific qualification

Question 4. NO NO NO. My DS key worker already has too much paperwork to complete, would much rather see childcare workers engage with their charges.

What has made the greatest contribution to your child’s development in their early years?

As a working parent, I've been fortunate to find good childminders for my children who have enabled me to extend the 'home from home' care that I personally think is valuable at this age. I have also found children's centres, libraries and toddler groups vital to their development.

*What support could the government give you as a parent to improve their learning and development at home?

I would love to be able to work part time and spend more time with my children, so anything that could facilitate that would be welcome. The option to extend my maternity leave would be excellent.

*What would you like to see in the government’s workforce strategy for early years education – do childminders and nursery staff need greater training to deliver healthy development? Do they need specific qualifications?

No I don't think so. I've had two childminders so far (we moved so that's the only reason we had to find a new one) and they follow the EYFS structure, which as a parent is way over and above what I was expecting of a childminder. I was simply looking for someone who could provide a loving, caring, home style environment for my child - an extension of what they get from me. I'm more than happy with the existing EYFS. Working parents need more childcare options, not less! By putting in qualification barriers, you risk putting a lot of people off.

*Do we need a syllabus or targets in early years education? Would you support testing or any other measures to gauge attainment?

No, not at all. I wouldn't want to get to a stage where they start making pre-school compulsory for example. Children learn through play and experience. Let's not over think this please. Focus your attention on those lost tranches of society who are the least likely to use the valuable resources of libraries and children's centres etc.

I have three year old and live in Germany. I think the system here is far and away better than in the uk.

DD is one of the youngest in kindergarten. There are children there who are almost 7, all mixed in the same group. She has picked up masses of stuff from the older kids and has matured massively in the year since she started.

There are no expectations and no testing (testing! I'm flabbergasted anyone could think it's ok to test preschoolers!). The only focus is on developing her security, her confidence and her social skills. This will continue to be the focus until she is 6.

A flexible school start - as she is born between sept and Dec she will have the choice when to start school. She can start in the September she is 5 or the September she is 6. It is entirely my choice.

There is no phonics, reading, writing or number work whatsoever until school.

Added to this, all women are entitled to three years mat leave. The first year can be shared with the father.

I feel sorry for friends kids in the uk who are subject to all this ridiculous expectation.

What has made the greatest contribution to your child’s development in their early years?
Firstly and most importantly that I'm able to be a stay at home parent and can easily alter my approach to him based on his needs as an individual. And secondly that I have been able to build up a very strong network of extended family and friends (mostly with young children) to give my son a 'village' to love and learn from.

What support could the government give you as a parent to improve their learning and development at home?
The ability for families to have one parent at home more often, either as one stay at home parent or two parents working less hours and sharing primary care between them. And secondly a change to the way the country has developed economically so that more people can afford to live in the areas where they grew up and have extended family, if they choose.

What would you like to see in the government’s workforce strategy for early years education – do childminders and nursery staff need greater training to deliver healthy development? Do they need specific qualifications?
It needs to be hammered home that children need to play, free play, preferably outdoors as much as possible. It's how they learn.

Do we need a syllabus or targets in early years education? Would you support testing or any other measures to gauge attainment?
No absolutely not, they need to play freely. If that play includes an interest in academic learning, then let them explore those subjects but only as play. My 3 year old can read quite a bit and is learning to write and type. He can do basic addition and subtraction, sets his own savings goals and has a good understanding of physics concepts such as acceleration, trajectory and potential and kinetic energy (thanks Blaze). But if he was forced to learn these things at set times and in set ways, he'd come to hate them. Learning needs to be fun for small children and it's up to us to follow their lead not the other way around. I have arranged for him to attend a forest preschool with no formal learning 2 days a week in September and a Steiner school in the same forest the following year with no academic learning and no homework for the first few years.

What has made the greatest contribution to your child’s development in their early years?
Being in a family-like environment when they couldn't be with actual family. Particularly being around older and younger kids. I found nursery environments with a narrowly segmented age range to be detrimental. Partly due to not having older children to copy and younger children to look up to; partly due to the number of changes as they moved "up" rooms. Huge rooms at nurseries should be banned. DS was put in a room with up to 40 kids at one point. However many staff there are, that was way too much for 3 yr olds. Also shuffling kids around like a commodity at the end of the day did not give the stability or continuity of care small children need. Which, like many matters nursery, probably comes down a lot to funding.

What support could the government give you as a parent to improve their learning and development at home?
Support the library service and sure start type provision. Don't try to pressure patents back to work. But also provide adequate funding so that child care can be done properly not on a shoe string employing mainly teenagers as no-one else can afford to live on the salaries.

What would you like to see in the government’s workforce strategy for early years education – do childminders and nursery staff need greater training to deliver healthy development? Do they need specific qualifications?
I'd like to see better paid and respected roles. I don't think that necessarily means academic qualifications, certainly not for babies. Though some kind of proper EYFS training in the 3-4 range would be good. DC's preschool teachers have told them some things wrong in terms of phonics etc (not necessarily teaching, but just answering DC questions) which isn't great for starting school.

Do we need a syllabus or targets in early years education? Would you support testing or any other measures to gauge attainment?
Unsure. I think more flexibility in terms of moving them on from EYFS when they are meeting certain milestones rather than at a fixed age could be considered. Hard to see how that could be arranged though. It seems wrong kids being pushed into reading and writing in reception at 4 when they're not all at that stage of natural development. It's so much easier and happier when they're ready, but the pressure is on for reception teachers to achieve standards so kids are pushed ready or not.

Younger children to look after that should have been.

Definitely no syllabus and no testing!
Main childcare up to 3yo was Grandparent who gave him lots of love, played with him and took him out. One day a week with lovely childminder. We were astonished to discover that nursery staff and childminders are not supposed to cuddle the children (child abuse issues). Fortunately the chosen childminder ignored this.
Free childminders from having to do a daily log for each child.
Local library has lost its focus on books and quiet reading and replaced whole rooms with computers and a generally noisy buzz.

Please just let children be children - to play. They learn so much through unstructured play as it is why this need to make children learn things before school? Its not a race. Its their lives.

I think there are good and bad versions of "just let them play". Just dump them every day in the same room with the same tired old boxes of toys is not good privision. Change things around, have a play shop one day, go to the park when it's sunny, go to the library when it's rainy (or the other way round!), have water play another day. Lots of different things for them to observe and experiment with and play at. Not structured learning as in sit down and do phonics, but very structured in making sure they have a wide variety of opportunities to see and ask questions. Like they would have in a family getting on with normal family life.

Giving my opinion as an outsider in a country with excellent early years education - I think in nursery settings there should be at least one teacher per group/class who has at least a Bachelor's level education in pedagogy and on-going training should be encouraged/provided for all staff.

Childminders are different in that their focus is more on providing a home-like setting but on-going training should be encouraged/provided too but no higher qualifications than already required.

I think an early years curriculum is necessary but not anything like a school curriculum - early years education should be focussed on the emotional, social and ethical side of education, not the academic, so a rough curriculum setting out ways in which to develop those aspects but not one that defines specific 'achievements' that the children must attain. And no testing apart from normal developmental milestone testing.

I think also having a special ed teacher come in to assess children considered at risk of having learning difficulties would be very beneficial as then those children could have support from day one once they start school (for instance in my daughter's nursery she was assessed by the special ed teacher just because she is bilingual as that's a risk aspect for language skills in the early years)

And mixed age classes are another aspect I'd recommend. My daughter's nursery mixes the children from age 1 to 6 so the young ones learn a lot from the older ones and the older ones learn responsibility and ethical behaviour from helping out with and caring for the younger ones.

Questions
*What has made the greatest contribution to your child’s development in their early years?

Being able to be a sahm thanks to tax credits

*What support could the government give you as a parent to improve their learning and development at home?

Money, short answer - to help parents actually be there for early years if they want to be. Personally though, I don't need any additional support

*What would you like to see in the government’s workforce strategy for early years education – do childminders and nursery staff need greater training to deliver healthy development? Do they need specific qualifications?

Our nursery staff (flying start in Wales) were fabulous, they don't need any additional training or qualifications

*Do we need a syllabus or targets in early years education? Would you support testing or any other measures to gauge attainment?

No. Hell no.

I would like to add that I think nursery staff should be paid more to encourage the right people in the roles.

Yes thats what I meant catkind, not ignoring them and expecting them to get on with it. Providing a wide range of experiences but letting them enjoy them rather than following a lesson plan on what they need to get out of it.

Questions
*What has made the greatest contribution to your child’s development in their early years?

• My being able to stay at home with them before they started school. They began nursery for their 15 hours a week at 3.5 as secure, confident, and articulate kids who were physically able to eat/drink/dress/go to the loo, and mentally ready to soak up the new experience. We would have struggled to do this without tax credits, so I am very grateful for that. I was offered free hours from 2 years old for my second child but didn't take them up because I felt it was too young for him to be milling about on his own in a pre-school environment.

*What support could the government give you as a parent to improve their learning and development at home?

• Our local library (for rhyme time songs, borrowing books, and which also has space for kids to play and draw), and for my oldest child the sure-start centre (Stay and play but also breastfeeding cafe when v.young) were brilliant resources. Keep these places open to welcome parents and children together. Even though there are lots of church hall toddler groups about which are great, the surestart centres were free and had early years staff there who weren't distracted by their own kids. There were lots of sand/water type things that we couldn't do at home, they had ideas about games etc that I wouldn't have come up with, and it was a good place to talk about parenting problems/development issues in a non-stressful by-the-way type way.

• It would also be amazing to feel like the government/society placed any value at all on being a stay at home parent. As it is I felt like a freak for not going back to work after a year and I still feel a bit like I need to apologise and explain, even though I know I've done the best I could and worked hard looking after our family. And I don't mean this to turn into a working/home argument - at the end of the day we are all just trying to do their best for their own families in whatever shape that takes.

*What would you like to see in the government’s workforce strategy for early years education – do childminders and nursery staff need greater training to deliver healthy development? Do they need specific qualifications?
- I thought that there were early years and childminding courses, and offsted involvement already? I would say that if you want staff with higher levels of education and training then you should be looking at paying them a bit more than the minimum wage. Perhaps by offering to pay the nursery providers a commercial rate for the state-provided hours, on the condition that they pass this on to their staff. For young children I would have thought that greater adult/child ratios, with caring and motivated staff, would be more useful than particular qualifications.

*Do we need a syllabus or targets in early years education? Would you support testing or any other measures to gauge attainment?

I strongly believe that the early years should be play based and child led. Rather than focusing on a letters and numbers type syllabus this is the ideal time for them to make friends, learn through play about getting on with people, co-operation, and negotiating with their peers, explore their own interests and immerse themselves in things for fun, build things, make things, climb things, and race around like demons for the sheer exhilaration of it. Nursery (and all Early Years) should be about fun, not target-driven assessments. Maybe instead of making up a curriculum you could have a huge resource sharing database where people could swap ideas for games or activites, and others could find local homes for old toys or equipment that they wanted to donate. I am sure that would be better than creating more forms to be completed.

1. Shared parental leave. This allowed DH to have time at home with DS when I first went back to work & we all benefitted - I felt less guilty about leaving my 6mo old, DHs confidence in his parenting increased (he was starting to feel a bit shut out) and DS got to build a really strong bond with his Dad.

1. Availability of public services and spaces - Children's Centre (now closed), public library (to become volunteer run), play parks, swimming pools. If we have a 2nd child I can afford to drive to the next town to access groups and we can afford to buy books fairly regularly if the library closes completely so these cuts will have an even greater impact on those that can least afford it

1. I don't think there is much to be gained by focusing on increasing qualifications within individual settings (though it's obviously an easy box ticking measure of 'quality'). I think there would be a lot of benefit from a network of highly trained/qualified specialists which nurseries, child minders and parents can call on where they have concerns.

1. Where these are needed they already exist - arguably the 2 year check includes 'targets'. These should exist purely as a gateway to channel additional funding and resources to children whorequire further support, whether that is short term or long term. There are no circumstances in which further assessment of toddlers should be considered necessary

As an experienced early years teacher those questions make me want to cry with anger and frustration
But all the replies clearly demonstrate that parents are supportive of good early years care and education
That also makes we want to cry :)
I'm very passionate about my job
I absolutely do not want to see testing in any way in early years

Targets for early years education - no, absolutely no! Early development is so different with each child. There is no way that nurseries should have goals and targets or that children that young should be aware of being compared to other children.

The best aid to early years learning at home - books. Access to a library is hugely important. I also found toddler groups at the council run community centre helpful and affordable.

Greatest contribution A combination of me being a SAHM plus using the 15 hours Early Education allowance at a preschool with lots of free play. DS has had lots of outdoor play, reading, rhymes, jigsaws, games etc. Plus also just experiencing day-to-day life with me and talking about what we're doing eg food shopping, handling money, going to appointments etc.

Support from the Government Keep children's centres open; they were absolutely vital during DS's first year when I suffered from PND. The LA here are proposing to have fewer large "hubs" in future which will mean about half of the houses in the town will find it extremely hard to get to them unless they have a car.

Reduce NHS waiting lists for diagnosis and intervention eg speech therapy, ASD.

Greater training for staff Unless a lot more money is provided to deliver training and pay staff appropriately if qualifications are required, I can't see how this can work. Childcare is already prohibitively expensive for many parents and the funding available for the existing 15 hours is insufficient to cover the actual cost.

Testing and syllabus Dear God, no! Stop trying to make all children fit a narrow definition of acceptable. They develop at such different rates.

DS (high-functioning ASD) would score pretty well on a test looking at "academic" things like reading, numerical skills, ability to concentrate etc because he is interested in this so has naturally developed these skills. So he's school-ready if you look at that. But he struggles a lot with social situations and making friends and will need a lot of support with this at school. So he's way off school-ready in this area. But how do you measure a child's social abilities objectively which is what any testing will have to do?

I'm answering these as a qualified Early Years Professional and a full-time nanny:

What has made the greatest contribution to your child’s development in their early years?
Parents who are engaged with their child's learning. Not pushy, just interested and excited about watching them develop. Reading books together, singing and dancing, doing arts and crafts, and playing outdoors with their DC.

What would you like to see in the government’s workforce strategy for early years education – do childminders and nursery staff need greater training to deliver healthy development? Do they need specific qualifications?
Children learn and absorb information from the world faster in the early years than at any other time in their lives. With this in mind I believe early years staff should have specific early years development qualifications and the sector should be recognised as a profession in its own right. This would attract the highest quality and most passionate staff who are able to support a child to reach their full potential.

Do we need a syllabus or targets in early years education? Would you support testing or any other measures to gauge attainment?
I think the EYFS milestones are helpful in identifying the normative range of development and assist in identifying delays to progress. I think Learning Journals are an effective way of documenting this and, done well, can be effective in engaging parents in learning too. I would not, under any circumstances, support testing in the Early Years. High quality staff will be able to spot any areas for development in their charges without the need to put them under pressure to perform.

What has made the greatest contribution to your child’s development in their early years? Learning to read and CBeebies...

*What support could the government give you as a parent to improve their learning and development at home? Try educating people about being parents before they become one

*What would you like to see in the government’s workforce strategy for early years education – do childminders and nursery staff need greater training to deliver healthy development? Do they need specific qualifications? I would like to see the goverment step back from designing strategies and use educational experts from countries with the happiest children to come up with a guideline for best practice

*Do we need a syllabus or targets in early years education? Would you support testing or any other measures to gauge attainment? God no, kids need freedom to learn without the pressure of targets.

I meant to add that if you are thinking about support for parents who need it please remember that if you are on a very low income, and have a small child in a pushchair, having to take a bus there and back to access a library/children's centre might be off putting. It costs money for one thing, but also when you are standing at the bus stop in the pouring rain, and another bus sails by because it has a buggy on it already, you might think twice before going again. The people who really need these services need them to be local.

Syllabus, targets, testing - dear god please not.

Questions
*What has made the greatest contribution to your child’s development in their early years?

Being able to stay at home so my my kids have one primary carer and being able to form a good attachment.

*What support could the government give you as a parent to improve their learning and development at home?

Support for the primary carer - More free mum & baby groups, more babylocal cafes. I found that meeting other mums was my lifeline in the 1st 2 years. Therapy has also been a lifeline for me and has helped me to be a much better parent.

*What would you like to see in the government’s workforce strategy for early years education – do childminders and nursery staff need greater training to deliver healthy development? Do they need specific qualifications?

I think attachment theory and early infant brain development should be standard training in all childcare professions, as well as the importance of independent play.

*Do we need a syllabus or targets in early years education? Would you support testing or any other measures to gauge attainment?

NO, I would not support more testing, or targets. There is already too much testing. I think more trust is needed to support childcare professionals & teachers. Testing & targets just create more stress in both children & professionals. What's wrong with a normal appraisal system?

*What has made the greatest contribution to your child’s development in their early years?

Cbeebies.

Seriously, DH and I always being able to work part time and flexibly, allowing one of us to be around most of the time while our children have been preschool age. We've never worked more than about 55 hours a week between us, and that's been crucial.

The 15 hours were also very useful, but I don't personally see the need for 30 hours for 3 year olds. Would rather see the funding more thinly spread across ages, so for example 8 hours a week for all 2 year olds, 15 hours a week for all 3 year olds.

*What support could the government give you as a parent to improve their learning and development at home?

Re-open the SureStart centres.

You could also give those of us with summer born children more options when it comes to starting them in school. Sure, we don't have to send them until the term after they're 5, but meanwhile there's no provision for that year other than school and they'd start in Year 1 and miss reception. Near me at least. How is that helpful?

*What would you like to see in the government’s workforce strategy for early years education – do childminders and nursery staff need greater training to deliver healthy development? Do they need specific qualifications?

They probably need more money to attract and retain better staff tbh.

*Do we need a syllabus or targets in early years education? Would you support testing or any other measures to gauge attainment?

Not a chance in hell. That's a terrible idea.