Select Committee on Education and Employment Minutes of Evidence


Examination of Witnesses (Questions 280 - 286)

WEDNESDAY 24 MAY 2000

MS EVA LLOYD, MS CLAIRE POWER AND MS MARY DICKINS

Mr St Aubyn

  280. I want to be clear about the implications of the statement in your submission to us when you say the adult as perpetual expert stance is contrasted with what you prefer, child-focused learning. That is a summary of what you are saying. Are you concerned that a child-focused learning approach makes higher demands in terms of the skill and training of the teacher, and that level of skill and training may not be available out there in the marketplace, so to speak?
  (Ms Lloyd) I acknowledge it. I am not necessarily concerned, because at the same time we are saying that yes, the work force is looking for additional training, mostly as part of continuing professional development, because if we only concentrate on first entry into the profession, we will lose the work force, and there will not be people to deliver this early education. What you are saying also links in with the point we made about boys. It is reflecting the ways we deal with children. It is something all the workers need to do. When I quoted the adult as perpetual expert stance, it was really referring to the view of my mentor, Professor Barbara Tizard, the former Director of the Thomas Coram Research Unit and an eminent educational psychologist, who based this on her observations of children—and it was four-year olds, and it was four-year old girls, to create some homogeneity in the study sample. She was observing girls talking at home and at school, girls from different social classes. She could see that some of these girls were definitely clamming up at school in response to the adult as perpetual expert stance taken by the teachers in this case. Their language at home, which was mostly with their mothers in this case, but also with Dads, was rich and complex, and there might have been style differences. The range of issues might have been different. This might have been in homes where there were not a lot of books for reasons of poverty or whatever, but there were definitely already, at the point where these children were entering nursery education, problems in the interaction, the communication between the work force and the children with the skills and potential that they brought to the setting. The new strategy, the whole new era that we are entering in the Early Years service gives us a chance to address those as well.

  281. What I am getting at is partly reflected in the visit three of us made to Switzerland a couple of years ago, and I think it would be fair to say the Swiss approach is much more a child-focused one. The formal learning happens much later, and yet by the age of 11 their literacy and numeracy standards are higher than ours. What struck us was the quality of the teachers that we saw, and of course, the remuneration they receive there is on a different level. There may be a practical point here, which I would like you to consider, that while the more formalised approach, the Literacy and Numeracy Strategy, at this early age are not your preferred option, they may guarantee a basic minimum result, whereas the child-focused approach, without sufficient training and support and development of the teaching profession for the Early Years, might actually on average, given those drawbacks, produce a less satisfactory result.
  (Ms Lloyd) I would like to make a quick comment. I do not share your optimism that the strategies will deliver the looked for results. Again, I refer to history. If we look at the history of nursery education in this country, we do not find the research evidence that says that greater formality in mostly disadvantaged areas led to greater educational achievement later on. Think of Islington, think of the education statistics. Where is the evidence? That should give us the confidence to say let us look at the other evidence, not just the evidence for informal approaches in a fairly restricted setting where there was a short-term package of education, two and a half hour sessions, but let us look at the evidence as it is coming out from research by Tony Bertram and Chris Pascal, of course, she is one of your advisers, from the Early Excellence Centres, where a much more holistic approach to children's and families' needs has been taken. It is difficult to do that. I know. I had a meeting with OFSTED the other week. Of course, OFSTED has just finished the Hillfields evaluation, the first OFSTED combined inspection of an Early Excellence Centre. There is a report available on the Web. The people I was talking to were concerned about the difficulties thrown up by inspecting such a complex set-up, and if we are really serious about the outcomes for children, we cannot just withdraw into a professional stance and say, "Oh dear, I can't stick this in boxes." We have to face it.

  282. The box-ticking culture, where we like to say someone has reached this standard and that standard, may give an artificial view, you are saying, of what you are actually achieving?
  (Ms Lloyd) And how, the process by which, yes.

Helen Jones

  283. Can I try and tease out what appears to me to be a contradiction in some of the evidence which has been given to this Committee, not simply by yourselves but by other people as well. We would all agree that Early Years education is very complex and requires very special, highly gifted practitioners, whether they are trained teachers or nursery nurses, and we all agree about wanting to raise the status of those involved in it. That is what I was getting at earlier. My firm belief is that men do not do it very much because it is badly paid. If that is the case, how at the same time can people argue before this Committee, as they have done, that we can also let gifted amateurs do nursery education and Early Years education? Can you try and resolve that contradiction for us?
  (Ms Dickins) I find the term "gifted amateurs" a little disturbing because what I have in mind is, for example, an Early Years worker who has 23 years experience, who is multi-skilled, and I presume that is who you mean.

  Chairman: It is not a Committee term.

  Helen Jones: We are talking about volunteers.

Chairman

  284. It is because we all consider ourselves gifted amateurs in this business.
  (Ms Dickins) I would just flag up the role of professional development yet again, because I think that what is important in Early Years education is that workers actually caring for children are abreast of the issues, they are abreast of developments, and are able to take on board some of the bigger picture. I am continually surprised when I go out in the field training how few Early Years workers actually know there is a Childcare Strategy. I think it is very important that professional development is up to date and actually flags up those issues so that childcare workers, so long as they are informed, so long as they have continuing professional input, I feel can be just as effective as Early Years teachers. I think the key issue is in-service training.

Helen Jones

  285. Perhaps I can try and press you a little more on that, because a lot of Early Years education is delivered by people who, at least at the beginning, are not trained. It is a question this Committee is trying to get to grips with. We all want to see the involvement of parents, we are aware of what the voluntary movement has done, but why do you believe that is appropriate for very young children, to have their Early Years education left to people who are not trained to deliver it, when we would not countenance it anywhere else in the system? We would not allow it for post-five-year olds, we would not allow it in secondary education, so why is that appropriate for very young children?
  (Ms Lloyd) Certainly as far as the National Early Years Network is concerned, that is not our position. We are asking for everybody to be trained, but different routes towards training, and I have already said to you that there is this great demand for training. We do recognise though that we cannot take a cavalier attitude to the incredible input from volunteers, and the history of this field, but we recognise completely what you are saying about the need for training and, as I said, it cannot just be at first entry to the profession. It should be, and we are trying very hard to help that process along, through different routes, through updating skills and experience, as Mary has already said.

Chairman

  286. You said you have just met OFSTED. What is your group's attitude to the kind of inspection that applies in your area?
  (Ms Lloyd) The OFSTED meeting was in the context of an action research project that the Network is undertaking together with Professor Penn at the University of East London, which is looking at the relationship between the voluntary early years sector and nursery schools. I mention nursery schools in particular because it cannot have escaped your notice as you have been visiting the field that there is currently a great loss going on amongst nursery schools, who are losing the competition against nursery classes in primary schools in terms of attracting three- and four-year olds. The action research is about trying to preserve the potential that nursery schools have, having focused traditionally on young children, often having purpose-built buildings, having a big philosophy behind them of early education and early years work, and how we might contribute to preserving the 500 that are still around so that we maintain more integrated settings, because, of course, we know that if primary schools with nursery classes are going to move towards delivering a more holistic service to young children and families, in many cases they have a very long way to go.

  Chairman: Thank you very much for that. Can I thank all of you for your excellent evidence. As far as I am concerned, it could have gone on for two or three more hours and I would still be enjoying it. Normally the best contributions are the ones that you think of when you are on the Tube going home. This is a very open Committee. If there is something vital we have missed today or something you meant to say, do tell us. We want to make this an extremely good report, and we will only do that with your continued help and support. Thank you very much.





 
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