The Guardian published responses (today) Friday 7th July which is s response to Labour’s plans for education for the under-fours
from Carolyn Meggit, Lise Bosher and Sally Chesildine.
Comments include:
Carolyn Meggit: “However, I feel that the emphasis she places on graduate teachers in the early years is misplaced. We also need a well-trained and educated workforce to provide the holistic care and education promise…”
Lisa Bosher: “Oh dear. Nurseries, the last bastions of whole-child education, are to be given over to teachers trained under the unimaginative, inflexible, Ofsted-type tick-box system of education. Abandon hope, humanity. Why do people not in nurseries imagine that there is no expertise within the nursery already?…”
Sally Chesildine: “Planning for early years care and nursery education is complex. Yes, the overall aim is to have happy, competent children who have equal opportunities. Children also need the warmth and love that can build confidence in the outside world.”
To read all of their comments and perhaps add your own – please follow this link
“We need to start earlier and have a focus on early years because by the time children arrive at school that gap has already started to widen.”
So Phillipson recognises that by the time children reach school, the gap has already widened, those of us working in the sector have known this for a long time.
The introduction of 30 hours funding has, whilst positive for working parents, in my experience as a Nursery teacher for many years, see it having a negative affect on many receiving only 15 hours – usually the most disadvantaged.
I have found that children receiving 30 hours (full-time place) often join Nursery with far better communication and language, social and personal skills than many of their peers who are receiving 15 hours. Within those 15 hour children, there are the most disadvantaged. Children that may have not taken up 2 year old provision, children whose parents are out of work and who are facing many difficulties themselves, economic, housing, mental health etc, etc.
Until the government accept that for some 15 hour children who already disadvantaged before starting Nursery, then the gap will only continue to widen before it has had a chance to narrow.