Policy and Politics
'Don't change the EYFS', practitioners say
There is 'overwhelming' support among most early years practitioners for the EYFS framework, new Government research by the Institute of Education suggests.
The study commissioned by the DCSF and published by the current Government, was carried out to find out the views all those working with the framework throughout the children’s workforce, ahead of a planned review of the EYFS this year.
In July children’s minister Sarah Teather announced a review of the EYFS led by Dame Clare Tickell.
The report, Practitioners’ Experiences of the Early Years Foundation Stage, concluded that there was ‘overwhelming satisfaction with the current requirements,’ but noted that there were criticisms of the framework’s implementation.
It added, ‘The majority of respondents would like to see only minor changes in the EYFS, and would prefer "no change" to radical change in the current requirements.
Many of the dissatisfactions expressed by practitioner groups stem from the implementation of the EYFS rather the documentation itself, which is widely viewed as embodying the beliefs, principles and practices to which most practitioners adhere.’
The areas of learning were found to be ‘generally appropriate’ but there was some criticism of the levels set for the early learning goals for Communication, Language and Literacy and the Problem-solving, Reasoning and Numeracy goals.
The report said, ‘Both teachers and headteachers disliked the strong emphasis on emergent literacy and numeracy (CLL, PSRN) and felt that these goals tended to be pursued at the expense of personal, social and emotional development.’
Practitioners also said that they found that the need for assessments against the EYFS Profile, were ‘increasingly problematic’ in Reception ‘and practitioners attempt to map children’s individual developmental trajectories on to a scale which many practitioners regard as ill-founded, illogical or inappropriate’.
The research took place during the first 18 months of the framework, between September 2008 and March 2010 and involved 190 attending focus groups and subsequent one-to-one interviews with 42 practitioners.
A Government consultation was launched in August, inviting nurseries, childminders, parents and all those working with the EYFS to contribute to their views on the framework to feed into the review. The consultation closes at the end of the month.
