With news of threatened nursery closures across the country - a series of financial questions spring to mind. How much did/does the Early Years Foundation Stage cost to set up and how much does it cost to run? My thinking is: if the Early Years Foundation Stage Learning and Development Requirements and the Profiling are fundamentally flawed - as [...]
Archive for April, 2010
26 Apr
Open Eye Conference (June 12th.) and the Early Years Foundation Stage
As a family we’ve come a long way since we applied for and were refused a parental exemption to the learning and development requirements of the Early Years Foundation Stage legislation in our state-funded primary school. It was back in August last year that I first became aware of the existence of the organisation Open [...]
22 Apr
Are the Early Years Foundation Stage Learning and Development Requirements child (and parent) abuse?
I spent half an hour on the phone this week being interviewed by a fellow journalist from a national newspaper. We talked about parental exemptions to the Early Years Foundation Stage Learning and Development Requirements. Once again I was asked if we were the only parents in the U.K. to apply for and be refused an exemption [...]
19 Apr
Education, the election and the Early Years Foundation Stage (EYFS)
I’ve always said to my four year old child that education is a joy. Gordon Brown in contrast tells us it’s a “key election battle ground”. But if education has been reduced to the status of a political battle ground then the Early Years Foundation Stage is nothing less than political dynamite. And I’m waiting for it to blow. Shadow schools secretary Michael Gove is [...]
16 Apr
Manifesto policies, finance and the Early Years Foundation Stage
“The big arguments about ‘Growth and a debt heading for £1.4 trillion by 2014′ went untouched. (One viewer’s verdict on the first ever televised-party-leader-election debate last night). Is this true? The fantastic thing about this blog is the number of parents, early years education practitioners (running into the hundreds now) and teachers who have contacted [...]
14 Apr
The Liberal Democrat Manifesto on the Early Years Foundation Stage.
For a while there, I was dreading having to write that none of the three major political parties of Britain had mentioned the EYFS (The Early Years Foundation Stage) in their election manifestos. And then Nick Clegg surprised me with “Change that works for you”. I listened to the audio version of the Liberal Democrat Manifesto today. It’s [...]
13 Apr
The election. The Conservative manifesto on education and schools. Early Years Foundation Stage?
I’ve pledged to examine the party manifestos each day this week with relevance to the Early Years Foundation Stage and the much-criticised EYFS compulsory sixty-nine learning and development requirements – which are in danger of putting the under fives at risk of ‘teaching-to -the-test’. Today it’s the Tories turn. It’s half past ten and the [...]
12 Apr
Education. The ‘election battleground’ and the Early Years Foundation Stage.
After having dropped my four-and-a-half-year-old off at nursery today I met with news of the Labour Party manifesto launch in Birmingham. Gordon Brown has told the Times Educational Supplement education is a ‘key election battleground’. The Labour Party want to conquer ‘middle England’…hey wait a minute. That’s us they’re talking about, isn’t it? I’m taking the three party manifestos in turn and highlighting [...]
7 Apr
Early Years Foundation Stage. Election Packages.
Early Years Foundation Stage. Election Package. So. There we have it. My ‘in’ box is spilling over with press releases from every organisation I can think of. It seems many of us are considering how we can make our voices heard in the (carefully orchestrated) media mayhem which is the general election. The teaching unions [...]
2 Apr
The Early Years Foundation Stage. Parental input and early reading
Interesting that the editors at ‘Children and Young People Now’ have recently deemed criticisms of the Early Years Foundation Stage learning and development requirements important enough to warrant taking on a blogger who appears to be dedicated to the subject. It’s high time the ‘educational’ press took these matters more seriously. I’ve been wondering for quite some time why I appeared [...]
