Brent Council's lead member for education shares union concerns over opening of early years settings

Following this weekend's letter to Brent Council from the National Education Union  LINK expressing strong fears about the safety of fully opening early years settings, Cllr Tom Stephens made the following statement:

I fully share the concerns which have been raised, by the NEU, GMB and others, about the Government’s position on the opening of early years settings. The Government has failed to set out the scientific basis of closing primary schools to face-to-face teaching whilst keeping early years settings open. 

The decision to fund early years settings based on attendance this term also needs to be urgently reversed. Settings should be given the funding they need to sustain them throughout this crisis, based on their 2019 attendance. These twin issues have put early years settings under a period unprecedented pressure and confusion.  

Guidance on the opening of these settings is set nationally and not locally, and is a matter for each relevant governing board. 

 

Given this, Brent Council is regularly and actively engaging with unions and schools to support them in developing robust risk assessments and management arrangements, as we have done throughout this crisis. 

The council will continue to support settings in developing these. Given the current context, this is the best way of navigating these issues in a way which supports schools, staff and children.

Potential 'Non-compliance' on 'schoolifying' of the early years

On the day that Michael Wilshaw called for more formal learning for two year olds it was good to see this letter in the Daily Telegraph. Signatories include Dr Richard House who is a member of the Green Party.

GRADGRIND FOR TINY TOTS

SIR – “The erosion of childhood” is becoming a theme of concern to citizens across the political spectrum.

The latest salvo in this “paradigm war” for the heart of childhood has been discharged by the head of Ofsted, Sir Michael Wilshaw. In a letter to all early-years inspectors, he instructs them to judge nurseries mainly in terms of preparation for school. They must “teach children the early stages of mathematics and reading”.

This utilitarian shift from experience to content betrays an abject (and even wilful) misunderstanding of the nature of early childhood experience. The determination to dragoon England’s young children into unconscionably early quasi-formal learning is catastrophic for their well-being, and is setting up many for failure at a very young age.

England’s early years education and care is safe in the hands neither of Sir Michael Wilshaw nor of the current incumbents at the Department for Education. We urge Sir Michael and the DfE to stop digging in their current “schoolifying” hole, and step back from this misguided drive to over-formalise England’s early-years sphere.

The alternative might be that these policy-makers end up precipitating the first wave of professional “principled non-compliance” with government policy that our education system has known in living memory. Any government that underestimates the strength of feeling on this issue, and the resolve to resist it, does so at its peril.

Letter and full list of signatories HERE 

Save Treetops and Harmony Nurseries

SIGN THE PETITION HERE (More than 160 signatories so far)