From attendance tsars to ‘every moment matters’ campaigns, even those outside of the education sector can’t be immune to the volume of media coverage on the school attendance ‘issue’ and the initiatives being churned out to tackle the ‘problem’. It isn’t unusual for me to think ‘just look at early years’, but on this occasion, I want to scream it from the rooftops. Learn from us.
I know there are glaringly obvious differences between school and the early education sector. Even with our differences, though, I’m still convinced there is something to be learnt from our approach.
We know there has been a rise in adverse childhood mental health, in special educational needs diagnoses and school-related anxiety. Instead of diving straight into command and control and issuing fines, how about looking at these children’s contexts. Childhoods disrupted by the pandemic, lack of prompt access to health and support services, and a primary education system that has become increasingly rigid, increasingly controlling.
I remember a podcast where a child psychologist compared schools to prisons: the controlled access to the outdoors, the focus on conformity, compliance. My heart sank. While that analogy may be stretching it too far, there is something in it: conformity coupled with a curriculum that is increasingly narrow.
This is where I want to scream, look at early years. Look at how we meet children where they are, at how we differentiate for individual strengths, interests, stages of development. Look at how we use something exciting and interesting to the child as a hook to draw them into learning, to make learning irresistible. Look at how we use the outdoors, how we blend pedagogies, how we innovate and balance boundaries with flexibility. Look at how we understand behaviour that challenges to be communication, a fight response, dysregulation – and react not with suspension but with support. Look at how we comfort with a cuddle. Look at the breadth of our curriculum, the way areas of learning weave together and come alive in practical applications.
I wish for all the children with us now that resources could be poured into building understanding of child development, pedagogy, trauma, co-regulation, mental health and neurodiversity – not into tsars, advertising campaigns and heavy-handed compliance. After all, children can’t learn where coercion exists.
