Literacy goals to be reconsidered
The Government is to review two of the literacy Early Learning Goals and allow nurseries and childminders to apply to be exempt from specific parts of the EYFS on 'philosophical' grounds.
Children's minister Beverley Hughes said on Monday that she had appointed Sir Jim Rose to review two of the goals centred on children's ability to write and use punctuation in simple sentences by the age of five.
A number of early years experts have criticised the goals as being set too high for children.
In what will be seen by many as a climbdown by the Government, Ms Hughes acknowledged that, while the EYFS was 'a highly flexible framework', some parents and childcare providers felt that some 'specific parts were incompatible' with their philosophy'.
Ms Hughes said, 'I have listened to these views, and while we believe the EYFS to be compatible with their philosophy, we have agreed that a time-limited process should be possible, so we can monitor the implications of the EYFS in these particular settings and inform our review in 2010.'
Dorian Bradley, former director of children at Ofsted, will be the independent advisor on exemptions, and applications will be administered by the Qualifications and Curriculum Authority.
Commenting on Sir Jim Rose's appointment, early years specialist Wendy Scott said, 'Experts in early years will be pleased to be able to make their points again to him, knowing that he advocates the application of principled professional judgement to the needs of individual children.'
She added, 'There are already indications that the EYFS may be undermined by the way the primary strategy is being implemented in many settings and schools. All the Foundation Stage and Year 1 teachers I have spoken to recently are finding that many children have difficulty in keeping up with the pace expected once a systematic phonics programme has been introduced. National data confirms that fewer than half the children have achieved the expected literacy goals, so it is hoped that the flexibility and individual approach enshrined in the principles underpinning the EYFS will override arbitrary requirements for decoding and encoding print that do not relate to many children's stage of development around the age of five.'
The Open Eye campaign has led a highly successful protest against the EYFS becoming law, which led to scrutiny by the Commons Select Committee in May.
Lynne Oldfield, early years expert and spokesperson for Open Eye, said that the human rights issue had not been adequately addressed, because exemptions would be limited and conditional. She said, 'Our campaign has centred around two key issues, that of the extent and force of the legislation and the inappropriateness of the EYFS profile requirements for reading, writing and ICT.
'A serious and questionable step was taken when the legislation imposed state-defined learning and development requirements in pre-compulsory school-age domain and across the divide between public and private spheres in education.'
The goals under review are:
- Use their phonic knowledge to write simple regular words and make phonetically plausible attempts at more complex words;
- Write their own names and other things as labels and captions and begin to form simple sentences, sometimes using punctuation.
