Commenting on the announcement of a Department for Education
pilot intended to “boost early language skills” from
September, Kevin Courtney, Joint General Secretary
of the National Education Union, said:
“The National Education Union has long been concerned about the
amount of work required of reception class teachers in order to
complete the Early Years Foundation Stage Profile (EYFSP). The
evidence is clear that knowledgeable professionals observing
children in their daily activities is the best way to assess what
five year olds know and can do. But the amount of work that is
imposed on teachers to record and collect evidence for those
judgements is too great and in most cases of very little value.
So we are pleased that the DfE has begun to think about ways of
lessening this workload.
“We still have concerns about some of the changes proposed to the
early learning goals. Although we welcome the focus on play and a
balance of child-and teacher-led activities, the importance of
imagination and wonder in children's learning mustn't be lost.
Government needs to be less secretive about the group of experts
and providers it has engaged to develop these goals, and must be
careful not to read this important and wide-ranging document
through the lens of its own preoccupations with phonics and the
highly contested notion of a ‘word gap’.
“However, we welcome this new approach to developing policy
through consulting and openly trialling proposed changes. We hope
that by engaging EEF and Action for Children to run and evaluate
the pilot, we can learn real things about the goals themselves as
well as ways in which the assessments are conducted, evidenced
and reported. We look forward to the findings of the research
being disseminated and discussed widely. With new baseline
assessment also being developed for reception classes during the
same period, the impact of all these changes will be great, and
Government needs to think carefully about how they will promote
early years teaching as a highly valued and expert profession.
DfE needs to be brave in sharing lessons about the impacts of the
testing, audit and compliance culture on reception class
practice.”