UNCORRECTED TRANSCRIPT OF ORAL EVIDENCE To be published as HC 369-i

HOUSE OF COMMONS

MINUTES OF EVIDENCE

TAKEN BEFORE THE

CHILDREN, SCHOOLS AND FAMILIES COMMITTEE

 

TEACHER TRAINING

MONDAY 23 MARCH 2009

PROFESSOR PAT BROADHEAD, DI CHILVERS, PROFESSOR ELIZABETH WOOD and SALLY YATES

 

Evidence heard in Public

Questions 1 - 57

 

USE OF THE TRANSCRIPT

1.	This is an uncorrected transcript of evidence taken in public and reported to the House. The transcript has been placed on the internet on the authority of the Committee, and copies have been made available by the Vote Office for the use of Members and others.
2.	Any public use of, or reference to, the contents should make clear that neither witnesses nor Members have had the opportunity to correct the record. The transcript is not yet an approved formal record of these proceedings.
3.	Members who receive this for the purpose of correcting questions addressed by them to witnesses are asked to send corrections to the Committee Assistant.
4.	Prospective witnesses may receive this in preparation for any written or oral evidence they may in due course give to the Committee.

 

 

Oral Evidence

Taken before the Children, Schools and Families Committee

on Monday 23 March 2009

Members present:

Mr. Barry Sheerman (Chairman)

Mr. David Chaytor

Mr. John Heppell

Paul Holmes

Fiona Mactaggart

Mr. Edward Timpson

 

Examination of Witnesses

Witnesses: Professor Pat Broadhead, Chair, Training, Advancement and Co-operation in Teaching Young Children (TACTYC), Di Chilvers, Early Years Regional Adviser, Professor Elizabeth Wood, School of Education and Lifelong Learning, University of Exeter, and Sally Yates, Vice-Chair, Universities Council for the Education of Teachers, gave evidence.

 

Q1 Chairman: May I welcome Professor Pat Broadhead, Di Chilvers, Professor Elizabeth Wood and Sally Yates to our proceedings? We value your time and your expertise. We shall go straight into a proper session. You know what we are about. As a Committee, we have been looking at what we regard as the three great reforms of the past 20 years. As you probably know, we have done a major inquiry into the testing and assessment. We are about to publish another inquiry report on the national curriculum, and we have already embarked on a inquiry into accountability, Ofsted and all that, but we have never, certainly since I have been Chair of the Committee, looked at the training of teachers. So, in parallel, I thought that we might interest ourselves in the two spheres: the training of teachers and the training of social workers. We are doing a lot of training at the moment, and we need you to help us, so I shall riff through and start with Pat. Do any of you want to make a statement to get us going, or do you want to go straight into questions? It is your option.

Professor Broadhead: I prepared a few thoughts, so I am happy to make a brief statement if that is acceptable.

Chairman: That is even better. We shall have a few thoughts to get us started, and I shall riff across to anyone who wants to share those few thoughts.

Professor Broadhead: I will read them out. Given the nature and focus of the Select Committee, it will not be a surprise that I want to take an opportunity to emphasise the importance of having well-trained and qualified early years teachers working in the early years sector. It is absolutely paramount to train to work, in my view, most substantially across the three-to-seven or even eight years age range, although I am not omitting birth to three years old.

We know that the mother's educational achievement is a key indicator of a child's achievement, so surely that would be applicable to the qualification level of those who are caring for and educating young children during their early years. In keeping with the new emphasis being given to the early years foundation stage, I would also like to see a lot more play for learning and play for pedagogies becoming substantive elements within courses. In our initial teacher education courses, both undergraduate to some extent and our PGCE courses to a large extent, the play-for-learning and the play-for-pedagogies elements have diminished over the years because of external pressures, so it would be good to see them emphasised and valued, and to be returned.

For me, birth to three and working with parents, and supporting them, should be addressed-must be addressed-in the initial course of training. I should also like to see those dimensions become part of a continuing professional development element for qualified teachers, because it is only as teachers become more experienced and mature in the setting that they begin truly to understand the complicated business of working with very young children and of supporting parents in those areas. Perhaps those elements might become part of a Masters in Teaching and Learning, as CPD work progresses.

There are special issues around teaching quality for reception age children, the transition from the earliest foundation stage to Key Stage 1. Formality and teacher-directed learning have prevailed there for a range of reasons, and we need some strong, cultural shifts in our reception teachers and support for our reception teachers in their work. That would tie nicely into the elements of the Rose review of primary education and some of the ideas that are coming out of there. It would make that transitional experience for children a much firmer, stronger experience for them.

In my view, early years practitioners need to be extended professionals in order to interconnect the curriculum with young children's interests and with their prior learning. That is a very challenging business. Again, understanding that has implications for a master's qualification, for ongoing CPD work that experienced teachers might gain over time and for further professional development.

Given the expansion of early years provision through the increase in children's centres, in my view, it is more crucial than ever that the Training and Development Agency for Schools monitors the number of early years teachers qualifying and going out into the work force. At the moment, we do not even have that number as a sub-set of primary numbers. All that we know is the number of primary teachers who are being trained and going out into the work force.

At this point in time, there also needs to be some urgent debate and guidance for individuals and schools and settings around the relationship between the teacher and the early years professional as individuals working together in settings and the implications for those roles and responsibilities across the settings overall.

Chairman: Thank you, Pat. Di?

Di Chilvers: I think that you are aware of the position that I am in. I taught at Sheffield Hallam University for eight years on graduate and postgraduate courses, and I now work for the National Strategies. One of the feelings that I had about giving evidence today was that, although I might not be able to give you the most up-to-date, at-the-moment issues in universities, what I can do is give a broader perspective of what I see as the issues for the work force now working out there with local authorities and the National Strategies. I hope that my evidence will be helpful to you, but I am coming from a broader picture, not just from the university picture. I hope that that is helpful.

There are some main issues that, for me, are terrifically important in terms of the work force out there. One is that we have had such a massive change in the landscape of early years policy and practice over the past few years. We now have a clear remit with the nought-to-five agenda and the early years foundation stage, which is a real opportunity to shape undergraduate and postgraduate training using the principles and practice of the early years foundation stage to underpin everything. We have a clear remit for that particular phase of nought to fiveness now, which I think is important, not the division between nought to threes and threes to fives.

There is a drive to bring care and education together, which in the past has always been a little bit of a sticky issue, but the nature of bringing those two distinct but very necessary aspects together in training is really important, as well as the clear message that we need people who work with young children to have a good understanding of child development, how children learn and how to observe and record that and make sense of what they are seeing. It is a terrifically skilled role in terms of understanding what children are thinking, doing and learning, and helping and supporting them in that.

There is also a big drive to involve families and communities more. There are some clear messages about it being a bigger picture. We are trying to involve all the other aspects more. Then there is the multi-professional and multi-agency agenda of working across. It is not just about teachers and schools; it is about all the professions that work with young children and families coming together, I suppose, in the Every Child Matters agenda and so on. That is one aspect that I think is really critical.

As part of that, the big thing now is the work force. From what I see of the work force, having trained at the university for so many years and having gone into local authorities, got feedback from the work force and seen how they are centrally raising the quality of provision and practice, I think that one of the key issues is raising the aspirations and confidence of that work force, which is predominantly female and predominantly made up of people who come out of school, perhaps with low qualifications and so on, and low aspirations.

I think a big part of any sort of training is building confidence and aspirations for people working with children and families. It is about growing the work force. How do we move them on from being 16-year-olds at NVQ level 3 to being graduates? How do we give them that confidence? How do we step that approach to make it seem doable and achievable to them? They will be critical for leading practice, so for me the work force, training and so on underpin everything.

The other thing that I wanted to say was about quality. Quality is central to everything we do. Part of that is about making sure that the work force we have know what they are doing and are highly skilled in the nought-to-five, nought-to-seven remit. It is about getting the settings and environments right for babies, toddlers and young children, acknowledging the massive difference in the nought-to-five, nought-to-seven age range. There are very distinct-very different-aspects to that. Those are the sorts of things that are rocking my world at the moment in relation to the work force and so on and how we might develop that more via this Committee and in other ways as well.

Chairman: We have two northern representatives here-two strong Yorkshire connections. Elizabeth, I welcome you from Exeter.

Professor Wood: I am a Yorkshire girl.

Chairman: People will be saying there is prejudice on the part of the Chair.

Professor Wood: I agree with everything that has been said by Pat and Di, and I do not want to repeat it, so I would like to take a slightly different perspective. I have worked at Exeter since 1991. We are a grade A provider. I have the privilege of working with students who come to us with first and upper second class degrees, sometimes masters and occasionally doctorates as well. So in the past 18 years, I have worked with some really outstanding young and mature students.

Over the past 18 years, I have seen many of those students track out into a wide range of roles, including HMI, local authority advisers, lead practitioners, some of them working at regional level for the national strategies and many of them becoming deputy heads and head teachers. Having skilled, highly qualified early years teachers in the system means that they can broaden their roles, and it also means that they will maintain that very important early years perspective in whatever roles they take on in different parts of the education system.

We know from research that primary schools have the best early childhood provision where there are senior managers who have an early childhood background. It is not just about the focus that the early childhood teachers bring to children's centres, reception classrooms and Key Stage 1. They bring a really important focus to all levels of education, right through to higher education institutions, and they bring that very strong advocacy for early childhood into many levels and many spheres of education as well.

The second point I want to make is this. I am sure you are all very familiar with the substantial body of international evidence about the quality of early childhood provision. There is very broad agreement that that level of quality is only sustained by highly qualified graduates in early childhood settings.

I have a quotation from a UNICEF report. It is the 2008 "Report Card" from the Innocenti report. It encapsulates much of what everybody in this Room would agree with. It states: "As a rule of thumb, approximately three quarters of the costs of providing early childhood services are accounted for by salaries. As there is substantial evidence that staff with higher levels of education and more specialized qualifications provide more stimulating and supporting interaction with children, the scope for cost-cutting is therefore limited if quality is to be maintained. Moreover, services that fall short of the required quality will not deliver benefits and may do harm; they are therefore a waste of money no matter how inexpensive they may be. Worse, from the point of view of the best interests of the child, they squander an opportunity that will not come again." So from the point of view of the best interests of the child, I think that we must maintain qualified teacher status for early childhood specialists.

Chairman: Thank you for that, Elizabeth. Sally?

Sally Yates: I am a Londoner, so I am representing the south, although my current role is Dean of Education at Newman University College in Birmingham and I am here representing UCET-the Universities Council for the Education of Teachers. I was a previous chair of the Primary and Early Years Committee, which has representatives from all university providers of teacher education. As such, it provides a forum for those training teachers to share together the requirements for Qualified Teacher Status and early years expectations.

Those providers of teacher training are also working in the universities alongside early years specialists offering other programmes. Therefore, right from the training of teachers, they are able to work in a multidisciplinary way, and we are modelling the ways forward. We are also working together with teacher trainers and other early years providers. We are developing innovative CPD for the continuing professional development that Liz has outlined to meet future work force needs. That is the perspective that I am bringing today.

 

Q2 Chairman: Thank you for that; it has warmed us up. May I start by saying to you that I have been Chair of the Committee for some time and it seems frustrating that when we look at early years and compare ourselves with other countries-particularly the Nordic countries-we find that our people who deal with early years seem to be much less trained and less well paid? They seem to be of a different quality and that resonates with something that Elizabeth-and all of you-has been saying.

You have all been saying that this is a marvellous opportunity, but it is a marvellous opportunity to do what? What are the real reforms that should take place now in the sector? What would you like us to recommend as a Committee because, from the briefing I have received, at the moment it all looks rather confused? It seems that either the Department, the Government or the experts out there are not quite sure whether we should patch up what we have got or adopt Nordic methodology-for example, educational pedagogues. What is the clear way forward, or should we just make do and mend, as we usually do in this country? What is the way forward-is there a bold way forward, Pat?

Professor Broadhead: I am sure that there might be a bold way forward. I do not know what it is at this moment in time, but one of the things we should not do is adopt the methods of other countries and cultures. We have grown some excellent provision, and we have some very strong heritage in early years in this country. When I first started teaching in the '60s and the '70s, people were coming to this country to have a look at what were doing in early years provision. People were coming to nursery schools that had been developed in the '30s in areas of significant disadvantage in the country. Such nursery schools were based on particular traditions, and on very strong traditions. People were coming here to look at what we were doing with children and families, and I think that we were getting it right back then.

 

Q3 Chairman: Who were we getting it right for, because this is a country that calls part of its Early Years Taskforce "child minders"? I do not know of any other country that does that.

Professor Broadhead: "Child minder" is a term that relates to caring for children in a home environment. For an awful lot of parents, that is a first-choice form of provision for very young children. Research has shown that parents would prefer to have the choice to have their child cared for out of their own home environment in another home environment. If we look back at Victorian provision, child minders might have emerged in our own culture for all the wrong reasons. Alternatively, perhaps it was for the right reasons, and it was because mothers had to go out to work and leave their children somewhere. It is important to understand our traditions and our heritage, but now the kind of child minders we have means that they are the first port of call for many parents.

We have huge amounts of complexity, and we have a very strong voluntary sector. The reason we have a very strong voluntary sector, as I am sure Committee members know, is that in the 1960s people-predominantly mothers-got tired of waiting around for the Government to open early years provision for their children, and they set about doing it themselves. They rolled up their sleeves, found themselves a church hall and became very successful-in the way we have in this country of becoming successful if we put our minds to it-at making that kind of provision. Even in the early days, I do not think that they expected that provision to become part of the mainstream, and they certainly did not expect it to be around in 2009. They always envisaged that it would be short-term provision until Government provision became available on a much bigger, stronger, broader basis, in the way we are doing now, with the kinds of entitlements we are getting for two, three and four-year-old children, which are relatively new. If you look at entitlements for young children in the Nordic countries, they have been embedded in their democratic processes and political systems for a very long time, for particular reasons, so the heritage and the culture are an important part of this.

I remember when Gillian Pugh started to write about integrated services. We were talking about a richness and a diversity in this country, and we were saying, "Let's respect that richness and diversity." The private sector became influential because, again, there were gaps in provision; there was nowhere for parents to take their children-there was no provision. An awful lot of the provision in this country grew up in predominantly Labour strongholds, where councillors, often strong-minded women, bullied their fellow councillors into opening nursery schools in the '30s for children in disadvantaged areas, for all the same reasons that are around today for children in disadvantaged areas-those reasons have not gone away. It does look chaotic and it does look a mess, but there is a history to it all-it is rooted in commitments that people have had to making provision for children and families.

 

Q4 Chairman: But if we are where we are now, and a lot of our early years work force is undertrained and underpaid, is it not about time we did something more dramatic and substantial?

Professor Broadhead: Yes, pay them a decent wage. Attract the right people into the job and give them the training and development that they need to fulfil the requirements of these very complicated posts.

 

Q5 Chairman: Let us move across our panel. What is the appropriate training? When we visit places such as Denmark, there seems to be general agreement that someone has to be trained to understand child development-the way the child's brain develops, creative play and much else-as well as many other things that seem to be common sense. So we are choosing things from some alien culture, are we? It is common sense that the curriculum for people who work with young children should have elements that include child development, child psychology and all those other child development issues, but we do not have that in this country, do we?

Professor Wood: Yes, I think we do. Do you mean do we have that curriculum within teacher education and teacher preparation programmes? Yes, I would argue that we do.

Chairman: But I have evidence showing that it is very patchy. Some of the courses for training teachers do not include child development at all.

Professor Wood: The reason why child development may have disappeared off the curriculum in teacher preparation programmes is that we are required to deliver specific outcomes for TDA, and those have shifted much more clearly towards subject matter knowledge. Subject matter knowledge is important for early childhood teachers-I would not take that out of our curriculum. However, that needs to be melded with contemporary child development theories, and not ages-and-stages approaches, because teachers and Early Years Professionals are coming out into 21st-century settings with 21st-century children. We have such enormous diversity in this country, and that is the complexity that they need to understand. If child development theory has gone out, I would lay the responsibility with TDA.

Sally Yates: I am bursting to come in there. I agree that you are perhaps not seeing a lot of courses called "Child Development", but that does not mean it is not there-the terminology may have changed. I think we are addressing the subject requirements of the curriculum through looking at how children learn and how children learn within particular subjects. Those elements of child development appear in teacher training programmes in a strand that is often called "Professional Studies", which is about how children learn, how teachers teach and what those roles are. They are also embedded in the subjects, so cross-referencing is there. Then, of course, students go out into schools and bring back that knowledge. Therefore, it is very much a part of teacher education. At times, it is squeezed by external constraints, which is why universities have such an important role to play in teacher education. Whatever external requirements there are for subjects and so on, that protection of what is important for a student to know in going out to work in an early years setting is embedded in the programme to meet those needs.

As for teacher training and the development of early years within schools, the important fact that, in this country, formal schooling has started so young has very much affected the development of early years provision in comparison with other European countries, North and South America, Australia and New Zealand, where formal schooling starts at six. The fragmentation of the early years provision in this country has been very much affected by the fact that we have four-year-olds in mainstream school. We have had to fight to ensure that there is appropriate early years provision for those children in a school setting as opposed to a day nursery-where it was in the past-in which there were very different training and preparation.

 

Q6 Chairman: Reception classes have just gone earlier. When a previous Committee looked at early years, we warned that if we had nursery provision within schools, there was a real danger of reception shifting a year earlier. Is that not where we are now?

Sally Yates: I think that it is something more than that. It is an understanding of how young children learn. Reception was treated very differently, as a sort of early years provision, then pupils went on to more formal schooling. Understanding that children needed very particular provision to support their learning and provide a foundation for the rest of their education-by starting earlier at three-challenged what children would be doing in reception class. It helped the whole concept of child development because teachers were saying, "If children do this from three to five, what is my role with the five-year-olds who come in to reception?" I think that that has helped with looking at those developmental stages.

What has been missing is a real quantification of how many teachers we need. The DCSF, when it is making projections about allocations of teacher training numbers, engages in quite a deep analysis of the needs at secondary level. It knows exactly how many history or maths teachers it needs and the allocations are made in a very targeted way. As Pat mentioned earlier, in primary, we are just given general numbers. There is an allocation for early years, but there has been no analysis of exactly how many we need. There has been no marketing to get the best people in for those early years places, because the marketing is targeted at the secondary shortage. As there have been developments in the work force, we need to bring all of that together so that we have a clear idea of how many people we need in each sector of early years and how they can work together.

Q7 Chairman: This is what I am trying to get from you. If we gave you a blank sheet of paper and said, "Redesign the training of teachers for early years primary education," what would it look like? Would it be joined up? I am getting the feeling that you are reasonably content. Yet when we stumbled over this area in the past, when we looked at teaching children to read, we found that many of the departments that taught teachers did not know anything about teaching children to read, let alone understanding systems. Basically, we recommended that any system of teaching a child to read seems to work as long as it is used systematically and the teachers are trained to use the system. Evidence was given to the Committee that nobody trained the teachers in teaching children to read. What sort of teacher training is that?

Sally Yates: I think that that may have been a long time ago.

Chairman: No, it was not-it was recently. I am not talking about phonics or synthetic phonics. We are not looking for anything peculiar or innovative, but for traditional ways of teaching children to read, and we found that that was not in the curriculum for teachers.

Sally Yates: It is in the curriculum for teachers, and it is in every university that provides training for teachers. That is partly because we would insist on it being there, but it is also a requirement. We have had very close Ofsted inspection-literacy and numeracy are a primary focus for any Ofsted inspection. The fact that over 90% of students training to teach are in grade A or B providers or institutions, demonstrates a clear focus on the teaching of reading and literacy. The TDA's report for the last year said that we had the best ever teachers coming out. There is quite a fight in most teacher training institutions when tutors try to defend their other subjects and say that there is far too much of the core subjects. So much time for these students must be given to literacy and numeracy, as that is at the heart of what they do. If children are not literate, it will affect the rest of their learning. It is a very big part of teacher training.

 

Q8 Chairman: I thought that I was going to get a radical view from you, saying that we really need to do something dramatic. I am not getting that feeling.

Di Chilvers: I have listened to what everybody is saying. I am not sure that we need to throw everything out and start afresh. Pat has made an important statement about us having a long history in this country of early childhood and successful early years practice. I am not sure that we need to throw everything out and start again. It needs to be reflected on. This reminds me of the sort of approach that we find in New Zealand, if we go a bit further afield than Scandinavia. The early years document there has shaped the training of practitioners and the development of kindergartens and so on. It has shaped assessment and the way in which people work with families and communities. It is a very holistic way of working.

We are at a particularly good point: we could use the documentation that we have on the early years foundation stage to begin to underpin and focus training across the nought to five-although I would like to see nought to seven-age range, using the key principles and practice of the foundation stage to give clear messages about what is right for young children. The messages are that it is about learning through play, child development and knowing what makes children tick. We must know how to observe children effectively and how to build on their interest and develop their thinking and move that on. There are a lot of key indicators in that documentation which indicate that this is what we should look at when we train people out there to work with children and families. Perhaps it is a case of bringing it together and streamlining things a bit more.

 

Q9 Chairman: Am I pushing too hard Liz? I am trying to get a response by being a bit pushy on this issue.

Professor Wood: I think that you need to have a broader vision of the complexity of teacher education programmes. Because I have a long view of this, I know the way that we have had to continually change and adapt our programmes in relation to different kinds of policy drivers. For example, when Every Child Matters came on stream, we needed to map that into our PGCE primary and secondary programmes and look at the implications for how we worked with teachers in their initial teacher education year.

New technologies are coming into schools and society all the time, and teachers have to learn how to work with those new technologies. I had a teacher working with my students a few weeks ago. Her four-year-olds are doing animations on computers. I cannot do animations on computers. We have to adapt to new policy drivers. Some of those policy drivers are very positive and empowering, but some have been far too prescriptive and constraining.

We are also responding to things such as multi-agency working, and work with other professionals in early childhood and primary settings; how to use other knowledge bases, including those of psychologists, speech therapists and physiotherapists, and how teachers work within those multi-agency remits. You are talking about radical change, but we have constantly had to adapt our teacher education programmes to take on board all these different influences. I always use the metaphor of the Plimsoll line: if you put something else on the boat, you have to take something off, otherwise it sinks. We have been in danger of sinking, because too many things have been put on the teacher education boat, and on the early childhood and primary curriculum boats.

Chairman: Good, that has got us started. We are all warmed up.

 

Q10 Mr. Heppell: I am very interested in what Pat was saying about culture and history. I remind the Chairman that, while doing something on looked-after children, we went to Denmark-he likes talking about Nordic countries, except Finland, which he is not too keen on-where we saw a most innovative project, but we were told that much better work was being done in a place called "Gatishead". After a while the Member for Gateshead said, "You mean Gateshead, don't you?" She went all the way to Denmark to be told that the best project is in her constituency. I think, therefore, that there is some merit in what you say about us being different from other people.

I am worried that the roles of early years teachers and professionals seem to be a little clouded. The Chairman is right that if we went to a Nordic country, we would see a team that is not just teacher-led: there would be psychologists, pedagogues and all sorts. I worry that there is a tendency always to think that the teacher should take the lead-so much so that anecdotal evidence suggests that people become Early Years Professionals, then train to become teachers, because there are better conditions and salaries. That raises two things: it makes us think, "Will we end up with no Early Years Professionals, because it is looked on as second-class and people aspire to take it as a stepping stone to becoming a teacher?" Or could that work the other way around? If local authorities were looking at costs, they might decide, "Well, can't an Early Years Professional lead this particular project and we can phase out teachers." What is the view on that? Is that a real worry?

Professor Broadhead: It is a huge worry. In fact, I think that it has happened already in many authorities. The early years foundation stage has brought back a requirement for a teacher in a maintained nursery class. However, there are ways round that. It is a budgeting issue. I think that there is a huge danger that we will lose teachers from early years settings. Some would argue that that is because the education grant is not big enough to pay for the numbers of teachers needed and the numbers of early years settings now developing with the growth in children's centres.

There is also an issue about looking at the complementarity of the roles. That is hard to do at the moment, because the early years profession is a new role, whereas the teacher's role is an established one. However, the teacher's role is changing in those early years settings, because teachers who go to work in children's centres find that they need new levels of skills and skills development. I shall be briefly anecdotal: when I started my teaching career in Sheffield, many years ago, the local authority made a decision to put teachers back into nursery settings, all of which, at that time, were run by nursery nurses. The local authority had the power to do so, but it took the decision to put teachers back. When I arrived at my first nursery school, the head teacher said to me, "You're in that classroom over there, with Irene Dace, the nursery nurse, and she doesn't want to work with a teacher." That was the ethos in which one found oneself. To this day, Irene and I get on very well. We worked out a way of working together, and I learned an awful lot, as a beginning teacher, from a very experienced nursery nurse.

People need help, however, in understanding the complementarity of the roles and the ways in which that might manifest itself. The Early Years Professional needs to be seen as a high-status role across the range or types of jobs that places such as children's centres are doing. There is a huge amount of work to be done in such centres. They are very challenging places to work in, and we need complementarity in those roles. However, that needs to be addressed and made explicit. We are pushing it under the carpet, and it is creating tensions for Early Years Professionals and teachers. I was in a children's centre last week and I saw that. I was taken around by a very experienced Early Years Professional who has only just got her status, and she was looking after children in the birth to three area and doing a lot of the outreach work with parents. When we moved into the nursery setting, her demeanour changed. She became more defensive, she became less sure of her status and her position, and I think we need to bring that out into the open and start talking about the nature of professional engagement and professional roles and the complementarity of those roles.

 

Q11 Mr. Heppell: I am just wondering whether anyone wants to add anything to that. What would you advise? If you had a three-year-old child, which sort of setting would you want them to be in? Would it be in the children's centre or would it be in the nursery class in a school? What would you think would be the best practice?

Professor Broadhead: Research tells us that the nursery school is the best practice-the well-established traditional nursery school that may or may not have been making the transformation to a children's centre, that is staffed by a head teacher, qualified teachers and nursery nurses and is in a location with wonderful outdoor provision as well as wonderful indoor provision. If you were asking me where would I choose, if I could find a nursery school, my tradition and experience would take me to that nursery school. And the research evidence would say the same as well.

Chairman: Are you all nodding to that?

Professor Wood: Yes.

 

Q12 Mr. Heppell: What is the main difference between the training that a teacher would get-the initial teacher training-and the training for an Early Years Professional who was in a children's centre? What would be the difference in the training that they would get?

Sally Yates: There are a number of differences. One of the key differences is that an early years teacher is not trained just-there is no value judgment in the word "just"-in nought to five provision. They have to train over two key stages, so they would train in the foundation stage and Key Stage 1, and they would have to have an awareness of the key stages around that. They would have to have some awareness of Key Stage 2, which means that they are looking at a continuum of development, and they would have had experience of teaching in those key stages even if they focus on early years. They look at child development, but they are doing a lot more. That means that even if they are doing an undergraduate early years specialism training, they would perhaps do less early years than someone who is doing a whole early years degree. They are looking in a different way at children's learning.

Traditionally, they had much less of a focus on care and some of the elements that they are having to address now in the early years foundation stage. But that has broadened out, so that the early years foundation stage and the early learning goals that had been in place have enabled them to address more thoroughly the fuller scope of early years, but they are doing it in the context of looking at the whole of the Key Stage 1 curriculum as well. They are also looking at managing other professionals in the field, and that is where I think the strength, as I said, of having an education alongside people who are training for another element of the work force is so strong.

Q13 Mr. Heppell: Are you telling me that the training for Early Years Professionals would not give them the training to be the lead in a team in a centre?

Sally Yates: No, there is a lot of leadership in the early years profession. Because there have been managers of early years settings for quite a number of years, that leadership role and leading a team is important. The difference is the responsibility a teacher has for the accountability of children's achievement within statutory curriculum requirements, but that has changed with the early years curriculum coming in. I think it is the broader role across the primary school that is very specific to teaching.

Professor Broadhead: I think I am right-I hope I am not wrong-about the situation for an early years teacher, following a one-year route. I am not thinking about undergraduates, who have a huge amount of school-based experience. However, if we make comparisons with the one-year PGCE course, the school-based experience of the PGCE student is greater than that of an Early Years Professional. It is about the amount of time that they spend in schools, taking responsibility for children's learning. That is what a teacher takes responsibility for; that is what they have to demonstrate through their competences when they are out on placements in school-that they can understand, support and deliver on the complexities of children's learning, the assessment of children's learning and so on.

 

Q14 Chairman: John is picking up on this, but I certainly am not. Could you tell us clearly how an Early Years Professional is trained and paid in comparison with a teacher?

Professor Broadhead: I am not sure that I can tell you very clearly.

Di Chilvers: I can tell you about how an Early Years Professional is trained, because that was what I was doing for my final year before I left university. There were different pathways, so it would depend on the experience and knowledge of the person which pathway they would take. For instance, if you have a children's centre teacher, who had taken a degree for three to sevens, but needed the underpinning knowledge and experience of the nought to fours, they would probably have to follow a six-month pathway for an EYP to be able to get that knowledge of nought to fours. It depends-some people will do a six-month pathway, some will do a 15-month pathway and others will do a full-time pathway. That is all dependent on the sort of experience that person has from the beginning, which is judged through their taking an initial assessment, called a gateway review. So they cannot proceed automatically on the pathway; it will depend on whether they get through that gateway review, which will review their competences and experience at that point. If they feel that they have not got that, then they will have to go on to a longer pathway.

A full-time Early Years Professional would have to have three placements-one with babies, one with toddlers and one with young children-as have to go across the age range. They could do something like 36 days in each of those settings to gain that experience. That would be for a full-time equivalent to a PGCE-type qualification. They would have to go into those settings and get that experience, then they would have a mentor and an assessor, and they would also have underpinning knowledge at the university, which would be through a whole range of things. For instance, at the university where I taught, they have to do two masters modules at the same time as doing the work in settings. There would be taught and practice elements, and they would be undertaking the two masters modules, as well as gaining the Early Years Professional status.

 

Q15 Mr. Heppell: I am a little confused. Are you talking about teachers at the moment, or are you talking about the TDA stuff?

Di Chilvers: About the Early Years Professional. Can I just say that for me, the two roles are quite complementary in many ways? What a teacher has to offer is very complementary to what an Early Years Professional has to offer. For instance, in a children's centre, the Early Years Professional would be leading practice, although they would be working directly with the children in that centre, across the nought-to-five or nought-to-four age range. The teacher would also be leading on that, but they would be leading across the multi-agency nature of the children's centre. The teacher would perhaps be working with health visitors.

 

Q16 Mr. Heppell: Why can a professional worker not do that?

Di Chilvers: They would do that as well, but initially, their remit is to lead on practice. The teacher would be there, and they would, in my experience, work more broadly across the locality, not just in the children's centre-they have a broader remit of working out there in the locality. They would be training in other settings, perhaps working with the schools and so on. But for me, it is about what we train these young people who work with young children to do. When you asked where I would rather have my three-year-old, I would rather have them in the setting where the people working there, the practitioners, are the best trained-have the best knowledge about young children and how they learn and develop and can be supported and so on-have the best experience and have benefits of continuing professional development. It is not just, "Right, here we are", we have trained this person, however long it has taken, but it is that these people are continually training and upskilling themselves, perhaps being involved in such programmes as Every Child a Talker, seed initiatives, CLLD and so on. They are continually building on their knowledge and experience, being very reflective. Wherever that is happening, whether with teachers or Early Years Professionals, that would be the bottom line that I would want for all children.

 

Q17 Mr. Heppell: Finally, when I am looking at what the standards are supposed to be for Early Years Professionals, standard 4 says that they should acknowledge and understand the "main provisions of the national and local statutory and non-statutory frameworks within which children's services work and their implications for early years settings." That is quite broad, but Early Years Professionals should, for standard 37, "demonstrate through their practice that...they can lead and support others to...develop and use skills in literacy, numeracy and information and communication technology to support their work with children and wider professional activities." That almost suggests that they are being told, "You've got to be able to widen yourself out." The only difference that I can see is that teachers can step over into five to seven and have some experience of that, whereas the early years practitioners cannot. It seems to me that there is maybe a better road for the Training and Development Agency and the Children's Workforce Development Council, who have done the stuff, to get their act together and figure out exactly what they want. You may understand it, but I am certainly still a little confused about what those roles are.

Professor Wood: That is a good point. The Early Years Professional is still a relatively new kid on the block. There is enormous scope for those roles to be clarified and harmonised in practice. For me, some of the distinction between an Early Years Professional and a Qualified Teacher is that the Qualified Teacher would have much more specialised knowledge of pedagogy in early childhood and of curriculum design, planning and delivery-it would be their responsibility to design the teaching and learning environment, to design some of the activities and to set the expectations of what adults and children will do in that setting. Those would be the educational-learning-expectations of what would happen.

I am not saying that learning is the only important thing, because all good professionals see children in 360° perspective, but we have got to a stage now where we have an enormously rich knowledge about appropriate curricula and pedagogy in early childhood settings. That very rich and complex knowledge comes through the route of teacher education, and not as much through the route of the Early Years Professional. Again, now that we have that body of knowledge, we should not lose it and we certainly should not be diluting it.

Professor Broadhead: May I add one quick point? If we take the children's centre as an example, it is likely-but not in every case-that the teachers working in children's centres would be experienced professionals. They would not be newly qualified teachers. But Early Years Professionals may go out when they are newly qualified to work in children's centres. There are issues around that.

 

Q18 Chairman: How many Early Years Professionals are there now? Do we have the figures here somewhere?

Professor Broadhead: I think that we were told outside the room that there were something like 2,500 now, or 2,800.

Di Chilvers: It is 2,800, of which 40% have QTS as well.

 

Q19 Chairman: And how much do they earn compared to very good teachers?

Professor Broadhead: A lot less, I think would be the answer. Local authorities can pay them as they please. There is no statutory wage scale on which they are paid.

 

Q20 Chairman: Is this an attempt to undermine the teaching profession and pay less or is it, for all your protestations, a way of getting educational pedagogues in by the back door, without calling them educational pedagogues?

Professor Broadhead: I think the term "pedagogue" was used a few years ago and there was a huge resistance to it within the profession. The term "Early Years Professional" subsequently emerged. My personal view is that with the expansion of provision for children and families, somebody somewhere realised that it was going to cost an awful lot of money to have teachers in all these settings. There is a concern that it is the development of a status and there are no requirements for local authorities to pay people anything other than what they choose to pay.

Di Chilvers: One of the main points is that Early Years Professionals are there to meet a need that is not being covered by teachers, because there are not enough early years teachers-they are thin on the ground and there are not that many of them. Early years are there to raise the game in the PVI sector. This is a where the big gap was.

Chairman: For Hansard, "PVI" means "private, voluntary and independent".

Di Chilvers: There was a massive concern about the quality of provision in the PVI sector and the fact that there was a high turnover of staff, the fact that they were very young and not that experienced and so on. The quality of those settings was not as good as it should be. The need was met. Someone said, "Let's get a graduate in here." That built on the research that said wherever there is a graduate, the quality of the setting is raised and the children have a better experience. The EYP is there to raise the quality of settings in the PVI sector, not in teaching, because they are not in the maintained sector.

The funding that goes with that-the graduate leader funding-is there to enhance their pay, to give them opportunities for further CPD and to undertake training, so that they will not have to pay for the training for EYP and so on. In fact, the full-time EYPs get a £5,000 bursary to do that. We have a clear distinction. The role of the EYP is very much about raising the quality in need PVI sector, which is crucial.

Sally Yates: Di outlined a very positive model of training EYPs, which included masters level work-it was very commendable. However, I think that this is very new and it will need very careful monitoring. I have been in dialogue with the local authority about meeting proposals in their children's plan for getting graduate leaders, and they were talking about conversion from a foundation degree just to get the minimum credit accumulation transfer scheme points for a degree, to be able to meet the requirement to be a graduate leader without going on to a full honours degree. That is just about meeting requirements, without really thinking, "What is the best way of producing the best professional to be able to deliver?"

If you do not want the honours part, you would perhaps not engage with a dissertation and learn about inquiry-based learning or do some research yourself, which would impact on how well the role was going to be fulfilled. Teacher education has been very tightly regulated. We know that we have good early education teachers because we have had very careful scrutiny and we are very accountable. We know that we have a loss of large number of A and B providers and I think the Early Years Professional status is going to need very careful scrutiny if those best models are going to be used across the sector. Things could be very variable, particularly with the level of funding that is going into it.

 

Q21Fiona Mactaggart: We have heard a couple of times about the shortage of early years teachers. As I understand it, the Training and Development Agency still does not publish data on the number of early years trainees and teachers. Do you know why and whether there is any chance of that happening?

Professor Broadhead: The TDA says that it is looking at it.

Sally Yates: The way in which allocations are given seems to be a little arbitrary for early years. We are given set numbers of early years trainees that we can take on, but I do not know that it is particularly related to vacancy. There is not necessarily a huge understanding about what the difference is. We have many routes into teaching to facilitate anyone who wants to teach-whether they are mature people coming from employment, or whatever-to get into teaching, but that can be very confusing. Because of the specialist terminology that we use-primary, infants, junior, Key Stage 1, Key Stage 2, early years-people do not always understand what it is that they can be applying for.

So we have to do a lot of work in demonstrating exactly what it is to be an early years teacher and the benefits of early years training. Some people think that they are going to be held back in their careers if they do early years focus training. They do not realise that once you have qualified teacher status, you can teach anywhere and someone will employ you, even though your training has to focus on two key stages. I think that we have to do a lot more ourselves in order to make sure that that is understood, but the marketing of teacher training really needs to focus on the early years as well.

Professor Broadhead: There were concerns linked to the point that Liz was making a little earlier about the downward pressures on initial teacher education courses to deliver on subjects and subject knowledge. I think that there were concerns in some institutions that they could not do that with early years courses. In fact, they were losing too much of the things that they believed in. There were concerns at some point-I do not know whether there was ever any monitoring of this-that early years courses in higher education establishments were closing. They are actually quite expensive to staff-you need a lot of expertise among the staff to deliver. They are also generally quite small courses, compared with primary courses, in a lot of institutions. We are concerned that a number of them were lost, but I do not think that there has been any research into those kinds of closures of early years courses and the transference of numbers in primary routes.

 

Q22 Fiona Mactaggart: I was interested in one of the things that Di said earlier, when she described a vision of a nought-to-seven training route. I find that attractive, but I notice that in TACTYC's evidence, it said: "It would be potentially difficult to staff a course if it incorporated two age phases birth-3 and 3-5, as courses are often linked with Key Stage 2 provision for placements etc." I cannot quite understand why we cannot have a nought-to-seven route with some flexibility within it. I want to understand properly what the problems and the advantages are with that. Di, you have already said something about the advantages, so let us give Pat a go on the problems.

Professor Broadhead: Sally was just saying that we do have them, to some extent, but I do not think that they are marketed as birth-to-seven courses. They would be marketed as three-to-seven courses, with some opportunities for students to look, perhaps in modules on undergraduate courses, at issues around birth to three as preparation for the changing role of teachers out in the workplace.

There has been some expansion and some loosening at the edges for courses in terms of opportunities to develop. They are not marketing them as birth-to-seven routes, but they are including modules for students, which are looking at the birth-to-three issues for them.

Sally Yates: They are not marketing them as birth to three because the TDA requirements at the moment are very specific in saying that you have to work in two key stages. The current requirement says that this does not mean that you have to address nought to three. That is about to change, but that was very specifically outlined in the requirements, so they will become nought to seven. This is where we have a partnership because in teacher training we do not have a whole load of staff who know about the nought-to-three curriculum, but that is where we liaise with our early years partners in the institutions and bring those students together, to model that co-working across the sector.

Di Chilvers: The issue would be about who would teach the nought-to-four bit. That is a specialised and really important area. In this country, we do not give our under-threes the credit that they deserve, in terms of their potential and the creative thinking that they engage in. We can learn from other countries about the way that they work with their under-threes. But it is not just a case of going in and spending a few days with the under-threes and thinking, "Oh well, that's fine. I can do that now." We have to get professionals who really understand babies and toddlers. That, for me, is one of the areas that we should be focusing more on; whether you are a teacher or an EYP, we should be focusing on that nought to four. We are now running the Every Child A Talker programme, which focuses very much on children's development of talk, with a lot of early years professionals leading on that, because it is becoming part of their CPD. There are also teachers on that. Part of that programme is about developing your knowledge of children's talk alongside speech therapists and bringing the agencies together to help with that. It is a very specialist area with babies and toddlers, and if we are going to do that, we need to get the people in there to teach it properly.

 

Q23 Fiona Mactaggart: From the responses that I have heard from all of you, it seems that settings led by people with early years training provide a better experience for the youngest children, whether it is a school where the head teacher has had early years training or whatever. I feel that the curriculum drift pressure, particularly in school settings, is all up, rather than down; it is all towards the older ages and towards the subjects, and away from playfulness and children experimenting, making a mess and spending time learning how to get their shoe on the right foot-all the stuff that is an inherent part of the experience of the earliest years. I suppose that I am asking you four what one recommendation that we could come up with in this inquiry would anchor the best quality in early years provision through training.

Chairman: Let us start with Elizabeth and work our way upwards.

Professor Wood: You want one recommendation that would-

Fiona Mactaggart: One that would really help through training to nail better provision in the early years and to stop it drifting into other things, where the risk is.

Professor Wood: That is very difficult because of the impact of the national strategies and the downward pressures from assessment testing and the national curriculum. It has been consistently difficult for early years teachers to practise what they have learned in their teacher education programmes, because there is this constant tension, as Pat alluded to at the beginning, between what we know about very high-quality early years curriculum and pedagogy and the ways in which early years teachers are sometimes required to teach-sometimes in the private sector, and certainly in reception classes and upwards. The interim report of the Rose review is heralding some very positive messages, not just for early childhood, but for primary education as a whole, because the words "flexibility" and "creativity" appear quite a lot. It also places much more emphasis on using and applying knowledge-not just on delivering it, but on ensuring that children, right from birth to seven, can use and apply what they are learning, not just in school settings, but in their home and community settings as well. For me, one of the most powerful messages would be much better integration of the early childhood and primary curricula and a much stronger upward extension of tried-and-tested early childhood pedagogies into primary education.

Chairman: That sounds sensible.

Sally Yates: I would pick up the words that appear in some of the documentation, such as "enjoy" and "achieve". If we ensure that children achieve-that they do well-that keeps the enjoyment in there. Really outstanding practitioners can achieve both those things together. The constraints that Elizabeth talked about can get in the way of enjoyment, but children are natural learners, and if we can achieve, but also include the enjoyment, so that children are motivated to learn, we will have high-quality provision. But if we just focus on achievement without that enjoyment, yes, we will get drift down. I think we can achieve both, with vision and expertise.

Di Chilvers: What I would like, which is quite an exciting prospect-it is for me, anyway-is for all our early years practitioners, regardless of whether they are teachers, EYPs, nursery nurses or others, to have a really good understanding of what it says in the early years foundation stage.

If you actually take that on board, read it, unpick it, discuss it, chew it about with each other and so on, and focus on the clear principles and practices in there, you can see that there is good, sound pedagogy-there is pedagogy about play and about observation-which can be used for assessment and so on. Where we start to waver and lose the way is when people tend to decipher it in different ways or tend to water it down, or perhaps tend to bring national curriculum pedagogy into it, which skews it a bit.

The reason that happens is because people are not secure enough with the principles; they are not secure enough with the practice. If they were, and they were empowered by that and were able to put it into practice through their training and through continual CPD, I think that it would mean that they would not necessarily feel that they have this top-down pressure, that they have a key stage in their own right that is actually from nought to five, not from five to nought. Do you see what I mean? I think it is about training the people who work with children to understand inside out those key principles.

Professor Broadhead: My answer connects with all the points that my colleagues have made. When I was appointed as a professor at Leeds Met, the title I negotiated for myself was Professor of Playful Learning. That might give you an indication of where I am going to go with this. For me, the anchor-the embedding-is an understanding of children's playful learning, and the playful pedagogies that accompany it. If we could see that, begin to unpack it and help early years practitioners, teachers or whatever they are to understand how children learn through play, then I think we could transform the profession. That is not simple, because there is not a lot of research out there showing how children learn through play in educational settings. For me, that would be the anchor.

 

Q24 Mr. Chaytor: May I pursue the question of the interim Rose review? You all referred to it in a positive light. What is there in the review that was not in the report of the Plowden Committee 40 years ago?

Professor Broadhead: I am sorry. What is there in where?

Mr. Chaytor: What is there in the interim Rose review that was not in the report of the Plowden Committee 40 years ago? Are we just reinventing it, or is there something in it that is new and distinctive?

Sally Yates: I think some of the vision that Plowden had is there, but within a framework of expectation of achievement. At the moment, that is still a bit heavy. It is not that we do not want children to achieve, but we have all seen the cartoons with the elephant in the room with SATs, which is getting in the way.

The understanding of how children learn is there, but in Plowden it was very strong that it should be left to the individual teacher, but we are in a growing phase with accountability and the individual teacher does not have the same power. It would be good to get some of that back, because I think that we lose some very good trainees who find that a bit constricting; they come in because they are bursting with excitement to work with children, and just find it a bit too constraining.

I started at the beginning by talking about the visits that you had made to other countries. When we have visiting teachers from other countries talking about their teaching, they are very surprised at how little autonomy a teacher has in this country. We need to trust the professionals to interpret what Rose said. That is the big difference. With Plowden, there were the ideas about clustering and understanding what the children bring in, and about the very particular nature of the way in which children learn, but there was no framework to ensure that there would be an equality of attainment. I think that that is what we have, but we just need to soften it a bit.

Professor Wood: I would argue that Plowden was much more strongly ideological than the interim report of the Rose review. We have got a far better and much more extensive theoretical and research base about how young children learn and develop, appropriate pedagogies and an exciting curriculum. The Rose review reflects a much more socio-cultural approach to teaching and learning; the Plowden report reflected a much more Piagetian ages and stages readiness approach to teaching and learning. Rather than waiting for children to be ready, powerful teachers know how to provoke and inspire a willingness to learn. They do not just take a watching and waiting approach. I think that there have been some powerful theoretical shifts between Plowden and Rose.

 

Q25 Mr. Chaytor: Can I ask about the link? I am picking up on something that Di said earlier. You quoted New Zealand, saying that the quality of teacher preparation there is influenced by the national policy statement on early years. Presumably, the Plowden report had some influence on the nature of teacher training in the following years, and presumably you are hoping that the Rose review, when the final version is published, will also have some influence. How does it influence? How is the content of teacher training courses shaped by a report such as the Rose review? Is there some formal mechanism whereby the new emphasis on enjoyment, flexibility, creativity, experimentation and play will feed through into all teacher training departments and the different providers of teacher training up and down the country?

Sally Yates: Can I come in there? The Rose review is one of two primary reviews that have presented their findings in rather different ways. Certainly the Rose review is provoking debate, and that debate is being related back to the research that Elizabeth mentioned, but the Cambridge review has been feeding research papers from its inquiry over the last couple of years, and those have informed in a deeper way the development of programmes. What we are always trying to do is that although we have our lists of requirements and standards, whether we are dealing with teacher training or with the early years professional status, underpinning that is all the research that we do ourselves, which informs those programmes. Ensuring that we have that sound basis to inform the way that we move forward is what will be a strength.

There are some commonalities between the two reviews. Both of them look at breaking away from just subject disciplines into ways of delivering the curriculum that reflect the realities of how children learn. It will be in that informed way that we take on curriculum change.

 

Q26 Mr. Chaytor: More specifically, how are the QTS standards changed? What is the process for reviewing them? Is that not the logical consequence of what you are saying? If the Cambridge review has been feeding through and disseminating its research, sooner or later that will influence the thinking of those responsible for establishing the QTS standards. Is there a process of osmosis or a formal procedure?

Sally Yates: The standards were revised in 2007 for 2008 implementation, but they have been written in quite broad terms. They refer to delivering within statutory documentation so that if the requirements for the primary curriculum change, we can adapt our programmes quickly. Of course, the standards are also written to reflect what we are already doing, just as what Jim Rose put in his report is not new. It is happening in lots of schools already, because good practitioners have adapted their practice to reflect what children need. In a way, we can work within the standards as they are. When they are next up for review, we will ensure that we suggest changes. Already in terms of early years, for example, the current standards talk about teaching lessons and sequences of lessons, which does not really reflect early years practice. We interpret that. We have annotated copies ready for suggesting a further review.

 

Q27 Mr. Chaytor: If that were the case, there would be consistency of quality across all teacher training providers. We are focusing on early years at the moment. Some of the written submissions that we have received suggest that one issue is the great variation in quality and variation in style and approach. Di, you referred earlier to those who are not fully taking on board the messages of the foundation stage and are not secure in their understanding of it. How do you deal with the issue of the great variation that there seems to be in the quality of those of who are coming out, or in their understanding of the principles?

Di Chilvers: I cannot comment about the TDA, because I have been out of uni for a year. I do not know fully how it all happened and whether it just evolved, but the EYP standards evolved out of lots of different things, such as what the research-EPPE, REPEY and SPEEL-was saying. It evolved out of the fact that needs had to be met in the private, voluntary and independent sector. Bits of quality were missing in that sector.

When the standards started to be put together, it went out to public discussion. Higher education providers and various people were all called together to have quite interesting think-days, when we were asked what important things were to be included in the standards. A raft of people were asked to those days.

Through all that collating of research, the bringing together of key providers and people in the field and other ways, although I do not know all the ways in which it was brought together, we ended up with those 39 standards, which are much more specific. The QTS standards are very generic because they have to cover all the key stages. Therefore, it is hard. Here are these EYP standards that focus very much on the nought-to-five agenda. It is perfect. It is a dream because it is everything that you feel should be there for early years professionals and practitioners, but then the QTS standards have to be across all those key stages, so it is difficult for them to be specific to early years. Is that something that we need to be a bit more directive about? Do we need to say that the standards need to be more specific?

 

Q28 Mr. Chaytor: In terms of variability, what does Ofsted say? Ofsted has responsibility for inspecting teacher training, but I have not picked up from our briefing documents what the most recent judgment of Ofsted is about teacher training for the early years. Did it say anything striking?

Sally Yates: Not so much in terms in early years, but in terms of the sector generally, it has been very positive. As I said, most providers have an A or B status. They are doing very well. Where there has been variability, we have to look at the time scales. Not so long ago, we were desperate to get people training to be teachers. There were a few years when we were balancing getting bodies in front of children. We are not in that position now. In my institution, we could have nine applicants for each place on a primary course for early years. That is a change because we had more in the past. The rigour at selection is something that will help. We know from Ofsted that we have consistent programmes and we are looking at really refining our entrants. That is important, because we have outstanding people applying to early years, and we have had lots of examples of that, but we also have some people who think, "Well, if I do early years, the sums might not be so hard, and that won't be quite so challenging for me," so we have to really filter and make sure that those who are applying for early years programmes have had experience in the field, have a deep understanding of what they are doing, and are not applying because they think it is easier, but realise that it is one of the most challenging jobs in education. I think that that is what is ensuring that we are producing high-quality people.

 

Q29 Mr. Chaytor: Could I move on to CPD and maybe ask Pat about the availability of early years CPD for teachers and head teachers? What is the state of play?

Professor Broadhead: I cannot speak about the position nationally, but based on conversations and visits I have had I think it has been relatively limited. It is focused predominantly on issues around literacy and teaching children phonics. I think with the introduction of the early years foundation stage there is a statutory requirement for local authorities to offer training to early years providers, but I am not sure that they are getting a lot beneath the surface. I think we need a culture shift to really start to offer it. I do not see many courses around that are talking to early years practitioners, be they teachers or early years professionals, and I think there is a real issue about whether we are allowed to train them together on our CPD courses, but I do not see many courses that are around developing understanding of playful learning and playful pedagogy, or assessing children's learning through playful approaches.

I think the shift will come-I hope the shift will come-and I think that the Rose review could bring a sea change in the nature of the CPD opportunities. I do have a big concern about the masters in teaching and learning and the ways in which it will or will not be applicable to teachers in early years settings. I know that it is starting to unfold in its piloting, and I am sure that it will change and develop, but it is very practice- oriented. That is good-it is important for teachers to focus on their practice-but I really do think, when we look at what changes teachers' thinking, it is when they can link the theoretical ideas and understanding with their deepening understanding of children's learning processes. It really is about the learning processes and starting to understand those. So I have some concerns about the masters in teaching and learning. I would love to see early years teachers and practitioners looking at a masters in teaching and learning about playful learning, in their own settings-"What is that; what does it mean?"-and focusing on those kinds of areas. I am concerned it does not remain subject-focused, as opposed to more generically focused around children's learning processes within early years settings.

 

Q30 Mr. Chaytor: But the masters in teaching and learning is due to start this autumn?

Professor Broadhead: Yes, it is being piloted.

 

Q31 Mr. Chaytor: What is holding back the injection of the kind of ideas you are talking about? You are saying that the curriculum has now been decided and that is it; that is the end of it. There are no optional modules as part of it.

Professor Broadhead: I do not know how-I do not know if anyone else does-the ones who are piloting it at the moment will report on it, but my understanding is that it is being piloted in primary schools and secondary schools, and not specifically in early years settings.

Sally Yates: It is primary schools in the north-west and secondary schools only across the rest of the country, but the big issue is that the MTL should meet the needs of the particular teacher and therefore be context-driven. It has a broad framework, but then it is determined by the context. It would be able to be adapted to the early years context, and there are coaches in school. None the less it is a funding issue; it is TDA-funded for teachers, just as we have existing funding for PPD in schools.

There are many of us who are developing CPD, which can go across the sector. We have a masters in professional inquiry being delivered, with some common modules, such as safeguarding children. It is brilliant to bring people from different disciplines together for that. I do not know whether to say this, because it is almost shooting myself in the foot, but the TDA funds teachers for that programme, but other early years practitioners would have to pay full fees, so that makes it very difficult.

I think that the other thing that has slightly held things back has been putting so much of the funding for CPD into schools. The school will then decide on its priority, and it may not be early years, whereas, when it is external bodies or the local authority, they have that power to bring people together. I know that local authorities are able to do that much more with the work force, but that funding is crucial to this.

Professor Broadhead: There is another thing that we are not quite certain about. Quite a number of students on our courses are doing masters-level modules. I teach one with PGCE students on play for learning and play for pedagogies. However, we are not absolutely sure that those masters credits can be carried forward into a masters in teaching and learning by those students as they become qualified teachers. Uncertainty remains, therefore, about the nature of those relationships.

Professor Wood: A real distinction needs to be made between CPD that is always focused on delivering the latest strategy, policy or whatever, and CPD that is genuinely focused on educational inquiry and giving teachers and early years professionals independent, free spaces in which to inquire into their own practice. That would not necessarily be filtered through the lens of the strategies.

 

Q32 Mr. Chaytor: Is it time to accept that teacher training is not a three-year BA process, but should be seen as a five-year process with CPD built in almost as soon as the teacher enters the classroom or early years setting? Should we be rethinking the length of time that it takes to produce a properly qualified teacher?

Professor Wood: It is heading in that direction already. We already have the PGCE year plus the newly qualified teachers year. The masters in teaching and learning in my institution is extending that training to three to five years, if students complete their dissertation. As with many things, therefore, it is already happening, patchily, in different places and in different ways.

Sally Yates: Our evidence is that it is happening quite hugely. We have three and four-year undergraduate programmes, and the PGCE itself builds on undergraduate studies. That is already part of it. We always look at the degree relevance to primary or early years teaching. The fact that we have embedded masters modules in both undergraduate and postgraduate routes-and we are starting to introduce them into employment-based routes-means that we are sending out students with an expectation that they will continue studying. Often, they want to come back to where they had their initial training to do that. They keep professional profiles, throughout their programmes, where they have to take responsibility for their professional development and work to targets, and we send them off into the profession with targets to continue working on. We emphasise that this is initial teacher education, and is called that because it does not end.

In universities, we very much model our own continued professional development. We are all engaged in research. Quite often, tutors on teacher training courses are second career researchers. They have to have a lot of experience in the field to be effective tutors, whether in teacher education or other early years programmes. Often, they are studying themselves for masters or doctorates and continuing their research. That informs the learning and teaching with students. We are very much modelling that continuum in their training anyway.

Professor Broadhead: I also think that if we had it, we would retain more of our teachers. We would not lose them after those first five years. We would not have such a great loss of teachers.

 

Q33 Chairman: Is it not something that you chaps or-in the American sense-guys do in universities? Do you put people off? You train them and they last less than five years.

Professor Broadhead: They are out of our hands by then.

Chairman: Come on. So you are washing your hands of responsibility for the fact that 20% of our qualified teachers, within five years of leaving you, leave the profession?

Professor Broadhead: We know that-there is longstanding research on this-in the first year after qualifying, a teacher's main concern is whether they can control their children. That is what they are most focused on in the first year. They need help to make that transition so that they feel able not only to control the children, but to teach them. During that period, CPD would help them to make that transition from just control and behaviour to recognising that if they make lessons interesting, stimulating and engaging, they do not have to think about behaviour anymore. The children will engage with it. CPD can help teachers to make that transition, because it can help them to think. Teachers who make that transition are the ones who stay in the profession-and they will stay for life.

 

Q34 Chairman: You do not have to convince the Committee about the value of CPD, but some of the research that we have seen in the United States suggests that masters degrees do not improve teaching quality at all. Is that a worry about CPD or a good masters degree?

Di Chilvers: I think it depends what sort of CPD you are talking about. It does not always have to be a masters or whatever. Let us go back to what was said at the beginning about aspirations and building people's confidence. One of the ongoing issues with early years practice is that those who work in it are not the most confident people. CPD keeps building on and developing their knowledge and thinking, and whether that is for three, four or five years, you hope that those practitioners-even after 20 years-are still thinking about and reflecting on their practice.

I want to say two things about this. First, in initial training-whatever that is-we need to ensure that students and people see that CPD is just a normal part of their work. When they go out there, they will always be looking at their practice, reflecting on it and perhaps doing informal CPD, as opposed to more formal stuff with the university. They would continue to do that.

The other point is about how people can build CPD into their work so that it keeps them stimulated and raises the quality. Let me go back to the Every Child a Talker programme, which is very high on the agenda at the moment. That is about getting practitioners at all levels to see that this is an action research process and needs to be done to raise the quality of practice with those children. We keep saying to people, "You are researchers, you are in the process of research", but they do not see it as that. It is practitioner research, which I think makes a lot of impact. It builds confidence, aspirations and knowledge, and people want to do more.

The other helpful thing is when universities link up with the sorts of strategies that are taking place. In Yorkshire and Humber at the moment, I have links with Sheffield Hallam. When strategies come out such as Making a Big Difference, the buddying initiative, the nought-to-seven partnerships, or Every Child a Talker, you can see how the links are made with the university for giving that credit. What we then do-almost by stealth-is get those practitioners to go back to the university for further support and training. It is the way it is done. We do not have to overtly say, "This is a masters and you need to do this next," and so on.

Chairman: Paul has been very patient. He is the only qualified teacher on the Committee.

 

Q35 Paul Holmes: Sally, a little while back you were talking about some people who apply for the early years initiative as they think that they will not have to do such difficult maths. Are you looking forward to welcoming the Government's new scheme on unemployed bankers and six months' training?

Sally Yates: Yes, well, we read that with great interest, but of course, that is not new for us. A lot of the students that we already have on our courses are career changers who have given up amazing careers in the past. For some, it was because they wanted a new challenge. My institution is in Birmingham, and we had the closure at Longbridge. We supported people coming in from all levels within Longbridge.

We already have a lot of experience of welcoming people in, but we are concerned that we draw on the existing training programmes. There are so many routes in, some of which are designed for people who are in paid employment and cannot drop everything and come. In the graduate teachers programme, for example, people are paid as unqualified teachers and learn while they are working. There are routes for people to come in. It worries me that a particular group of people might get the suggestion of doing six months' training, because that should apply to all those coming in. It is not just a question of if someone has a lot of knowledge, they can do it in a shorter term. It is about learning the culture of schools. There are a lot of transferable skills, but for the particular skills that we have been talking about, such as understanding how children learn and how to fit into the whole context of school, six months is not very long.

 

Q36 Paul Holmes: Is it possible in six months?

Sally Yates: It could be, but not for primaries, certainly. I would worry about secondary. We already have fast-track routes through and the variable assessment that is tailored to individual needs in employment-based routes, for example, if people are bringing in a lot of previous experience with schools. But I think we have to be very careful about those decisions. With most initiatives in teaching, we would have a pilot going on somewhere to see what the implications are. I would be very worried about just opening it up wholesale and then looking at the long-term effects. Once someone has trained for six months, they are in the profession for 30 years, and we ought to make sure that we do not just fill gaps at the moment and regret it later.

 

Q37 Paul Holmes: The Universities Council for the Education of Teachers, in its submission, was quick to point out-as it would-that teacher training through higher education institutions, which is 77% of new entrants, gets much better ratings from Ofsted than employment-based or schools-based. Presumably, you agree with that, since you are all linked in with universities. But would that not mean that a six-month course would be watering down the quality?

Professor Wood: What you would need to know and think about is the knowledge bases that you need for teaching, whether you are working with five, 15 or 25-year-olds. Those knowledge bases are quite extensive-I think that a lot of people do not understand the nature of knowledge that you need: procedural knowledge about how to teach, pedagogical content knowledge about what to teach when, what sequences and how to build progression. If you are going to condense that into six months, what are you going to take out? What kinds of decisions are you going to make about how you prioritise what those people need to know?

I think that one of the many reasons why graduates are of a higher quality than teacher education programmes in university is that they are often exposed to a research culture. Certainly, in the PGCE at Exeter, students are taught to critique the nature of knowledge, policy frameworks and key messages. We have been comparing the two primary reviews and looking at the outcomes from the Government-funded teaching and learning research programme.

If you want good teachers, you have to invest in them, and that investment is time as well as money. I am not convinced that ex-bankers would make morally or ethically good teachers-let alone their mathematical competence to teach.

 

Q38 Chairman: Not all bankers are bad, are they?

Professor Wood: Some bankers are clearly very bad.

Professor Broadhead: I was just thinking about your typical PGCE course, which in actual fact, is about 10 months overall. Again and again, the students say to us, "It is not long enough. I barely feel prepared. I can manage the class and organise it. I know what I am doing and I have passed the course. But I barely feel prepared." The more you learn, the more you realise how little you know about teaching and learning. I think that when you get to the point, as a practitioner, that you do not know as much as you think you do, you have the real basis for ongoing professional development.

One of the best courses that I have ever taught on was when I was at Leeds university. We had the two-year articled teachers scheme for early years teachers, which the Government funded for two-year periods. In the first year of that scheme, the students did a "traditional" PGCE course, and in the second year, they developed a subject specialism and leadership within that specialism, within the early years. The subject could be playing, if they wanted it to be.

Liz was talking earlier about the roles and responsibilities that people go on to from early years. I see those, predominantly women-there were some men on the course-in high-flying courses and in places now, influencing, I am glad to see, the future of early years education, flying the flag and protecting and nurturing what we know and understand about the importance of those years and all those roles. So I cannot see anything in favour of a six-month route into teaching. I think that it would disadvantage those candidates quite considerably.

Chairman: We have to go and vote. We will come back for the last 10 minutes of the session. We will be back as quickly as we are able.

Sitting suspended for a Division in the House.

On resuming-

Q39 Paul Holmes: There seemed to be agreement that a six-month crash course was not the best way to train teachers, which I would certainly agree with. A lot of the written evidence that we have received, including from TACTYC and from the Early Childhood Forum, suggested that one of the problems with teacher training now is that you are too preoccupied with training teachers to deliver programmes of work, to deliver Government requirements and to deliver what Ofsted want to see, as opposed to educating them to be teachers. Would you agree with that? Pat is nodding her head, but then she would, because her organisation said it.

Professor Broadhead: Yes, I am nodding. The most effective teachers are those who can think, who can make decisions, who can reflect back on the day, and who can think about how things have gone, whether they would want them to go like that again, and what they could do to change them. I think those are the sorts of teachers that we need to be producing in the future. Again, you need time to build those reflective capacities in any individual-teachers are no different-and time to give people the opportunity to reflect on what they are actually doing in the classroom, the work that they are doing with children, and the insights and understandings that they are getting from their work in the classroom. I think if we could move on teacher education-you will notice we use that term, and I know we said in the TACTYC submission that we prefer the term "teacher education" to "teacher training"-you would be actually taking the whole person and teaching them to think.

One of the concerns I have-again I think this is part of the culture, understandably, although I feel we need to move away from it-is the notion that you can put everything a teacher needs to learn on a DVD and show it to them, and then they will understand the nature of teaching and learning from watching it. There is a real danger that we put some very bad practice on to those DVDs and actually give very bad exemplars to teachers, and then seem to be endorsing the view that this is good practice when, in actual fact, it is quite questionable.

I think this is also about creating a climate and an opportunity that links back to CPD, in which teachers do not have complete freedom. I am not saying, "Do away with the national curriculum," or, "Do not offer a curriculum guidance in terms of subject knowledge and what children might learn," but I think we have to give back the autonomy and the trust we were talking about earlier for teachers to make informed decisions, in conjunction with their colleagues, and to be accountable for those decisions. I am talking not about teachers not being accountable, but about them being able to think and reflect on what might be good for children at a particular point in time. I do not think we want to go back to the days when teachers fell out of bed in the morning and thought, "What shall we do today?", although that might be a good thing every now and again-some creative thinking might come out of it.

I did a research project with teachers many years ago in which I asked them to reflect on when they thought their practice was good. Many of the examples that they gave me-I have still got them-were the days when they listened to what the children were interested in and built something around those interests. They felt that they had the opportunity to do that for a whole day if they wanted to, or even a whole week. I think one of the things that prevented teachers from thinking outside the box and thinking creatively was the notion that we have fixed lessons or sequences of lessons that we must follow, regardless of anything else. I think what will make the biggest difference for teachers is going back to good early years practice, listening to what children are interested in and the knowledge and experience that children bring with them, and letting that find a place in the classroom. That should not drive the whole of the day and all learning, but it needs to be able to find a place in the classroom.

Paul Holmes: Any others on this?

Sally Yates: I think that we could be at risk of just producing people who have been straitjacketed by the standards and where we have just ticked boxes, but one of the strengths of university-based training is that we do not do that, and that is just as not all schools are plodding through a given curriculum, but are finding creative ways of interpreting it. Our job is ensuring that all of those training to teach understand the current requirements at the point at which they train for what has to be done in the classroom.

However, we contextualise that-we show them something bigger. We also show them a whole range of experience. If a group of 20 students goes out into school and then comes back, they all have the same curriculum document, but they have seen it interpreted in 30 slightly different ways. There is a richness in that, and in reflecting on the research that has informed it as well. They are developing as critically reflective by seeing those differences. They are required to submit reflections and to do their own inquiry-based learning on the next placement.

Many of us build in weeks where they all do something different-a week where they are not assessed but they are working against their standards, perhaps engaging in some innovative practice in school. For example, in my institution, we have inclusion week, where the whole school is zipped up by the teachers trying something different with the students. The students are doing something really exciting and they all say, "I'm going to teach very differently in my next placement"-or first job, or whatever-"because of what I have done there." I think that there is some very creative thinking going on in schools, which relates to the point that Barry made earlier about their not staying in teaching, because they are when they have learned like that. If we induct them just into what the current policy is, that can lead to disaffection when it changes suddenly. We talked about the Rose review on early reading. A few years ago, they were learning something slightly different. I feel that the teachers we are producing are ready to reflect on new policies and to implement them in a very well-informed way. It is possible to do that.

 

Q40 Paul Holmes: A lot of the written evidence that we have received is rather more pessimistic than that. When we were doing the national curriculum inquiry last year, I remember a very high-flying and able 29-year-old deputy head sitting in exactly the seat you are in saying, "But how would we know what to do if the national curriculum didn't tell us?" That appalled me, as a teacher from long ago.

Sally Yates: There is a parallel there. When I started teaching in the '70s, I was given a set of books. If I had what was then year 1-first year juniors-I had book one and my plan was to do the next page. That was what was going on in my first school, but my training had led me to challenge things, so we broke out of that. Perhaps it was very empowered and informed training-I think that can be an excuse.

Many resources are produced to support the primary strategy, for example. Although that is very good, there are shelves of them and a teacher can hide behind that. One requirement we have of students is to go beyond that and break out of it. They must interpret and plan for themselves to given objectives, but in a way that is relevant to the particular children they are teaching. You have to work hard at that. They are staying in teaching because they are the ones supporting our current students and getting excited about it.

 

Q41 Paul Holmes: Again, a lot of the written evidence we have received has suggested that people are quite unhappy with the variability of the monitoring and support that trainee teachers get when they are in school. Do you all think that that is a problem or not?

Chairman: Do you mean monitoring or mentoring?

Paul Holmes: Mentoring from support teachers.

Sally Yates: Mentoring would be part of monitoring.

Chairman: Okay.

Sally Yates: I think it depends on how well your school partnership is developed. In Exeter, we have an Exeter model of teaching that is used in the school of education and all our partner schools. There is a shared theoretical framework of understanding of how teachers learn to teach and learn to become teachers. A lot of training on using that model goes on with the mentors and the university visiting tutors. The students use it too, so there is shared understanding. The extent to which you work with your partner schools is important. It must truly be a partnership and not just the university saying, "This is what we want you to do." I guess that, like anything else, that is quite variable across institutions. That would also be reflected in the Ofsted ratings for departments.

Paul Holmes: Any different views?

Sally Yates: We work very hard on educating mentors. In the West Midlands, all the institutions providing teacher education recognise each other's mentor training, so there is consistency across the region. If a school has a student from any of the institutions, we will recognise the training they have had. This is one of the hardest elements of quality assurance for us. We have tight quality assurance processes for what we deliver in the university, but inevitably, if you have 150 students in the programme going out to different schools, it is very hard to ensure consistency.

There is triangulation because the student will have support from a mentor in school and from a university tutor who visits them. The tutor is there to support the student and the teacher in school so that there is constant support and monitoring. There is moderating across that with additional people going out. There should be much greater consistency there.

As UCET said in its written evidence to the Committee, the big issue is that although those training teachers have a requirement to place them in school for a minimum number of weeks, schools do not have a requirement to take students. I think that it is amazing that they do, particularly as their standards are being watched so hard. Even the best of our students may not achieve as much with a class as an experienced teacher. But that does mean that we could have outstanding schools that are really good at supporting students saying, "We are not having students this year", because of other things going on. That makes the training of teachers very difficult.

 

Q42 Paul Holmes: With early years teaching, one of the usual things for teacher training is that some trainee teachers go into non-school settings. What percentage do so, and is that a satisfactory way of training people to be teachers?

Professor Broadhead: If I understand it correctly, at the moment the requirements are that there has to be a trained teacher on the premises in order to supervise students in their placement if it a non-education setting. If it is something other than a school, there still has to be a trained teacher overseeing it.

In a sense, that is a difficulty to be overcome. What we can allow our students to do, and what many universities do, is to let them have experience in settings other than schools. It will not necessarily be part of their assessed placement experience, but it will be part of their overall portfolio of experience, and they will be demonstrating achievement of quite a number of the standards by being able to be in that place.

It also gives them a chance to think much more realistically about what inter-professional relationships might be, and with whom teachers might have inter-professional relationships. For some students, it can also open their eyes to the quality of the experience children might be getting in a voluntary or private sector setting; they do come with preconceptions and stereotyped views about what children's experiences might be in settings outside school, because of their lack of experience.

As far as I am aware, they cannot at the moment have an assessed placement in those out-of-school settings unless there is a teacher around to supervise their progress and development against the standards. I am sure that someone will correct me if I am wrong.

Professor Wood: That is right. We only place students in settings where there is a qualified teacher. In fact, we only use maintained settings.

 

Q43 Paul Holmes: Is that always balanced against a placement in a school? Forgive my ignorance, but when I did a PGCE 30 years ago, we did two main placements, as well as a couple of short visits to other places.

Professor Wood: Students have to cover two key stages, so they have a three-to-five placement and a five-to-seven placement.

Sally Yates: And they have to go into at least two schools. On a PGCE, it would be difficult to find the time to have a lot of additional time in a school setting because of that requirement. Those requirements do bind us, but they ensure quality. On undergraduate initial teacher training, there is greater flexibility and often you can fit in more than the minimum number of weeks in school, so you can fit in a placement that is additional to those weeks-and perhaps a range over the three or four years of the programme. That is a particular strength, I think.

 

Q44 Paul Holmes: BEd courses are in a slow but steady decline; the number of teachers that go on them and are produced by them is reducing. Is there still a place for the BEd? Should it be finished or is it more suitable for training people in early years, because the courses are longer and they are look more at child psychology and child development?

Sally Yates: There are not many courses called a BEd; they are often BAs or BScs with QTS, and there are very many of them. They are not in decline in terms of wearing away, but the TDA has allocated fewer numbers over the years to undergraduate training.

It used to be that most of those entering primary and early years education came through the undergraduate route. Now, it is about 50:50 going through the PGCE or the undergraduate route. The undergraduate routes are important as a way into primary and early years teaching. They produce teachers who are committed to going into teaching. They attract a lot of people who are the first in their family in higher education and, at the moment, entering a three or four-year programme where you know that your employment at the end is very attractive.

We can fit in a great deal more in that period of education; they will have far more of the wider range of subjects in the curriculum. They have a specialism within it-not all of them, particularly the three-year programmes-but many have a specialism. That is important for developing quality within schools and championing subjects, even if it goes to subject areas. Having someone who is a real expert in the school is vital. A postgraduate could have a first-class honours degree in mediaeval history but not come out as a literacy expert in a school, whereas someone on a four-year programme would perhaps come out as someone able to take a lead-for example, in early reading. They play a vital role and are very valued. We have some high-calibre entrants. The points scores that you see in prospectuses belie the reality of the levels coming in, because the average score is about 280 points, which often compares well with other programmes. We have some very high-quality outcomes too.

 

Q45 Paul Holmes: So you are saying that the criticism that we have in some of the written stuff-that they are typically D or E entry requirements-is not what really happens?

Sally Yates: But they are not only appointed on their A-level scores. We are looking for such a range of qualities. Most providers of initial teacher education are setting high expectations at interview-presentations, extensive previous experience in schools. It is a whole raft of things that we are looking at. You could have someone with four A*s at A-level who is not going to make a good teacher if they do not have the other qualities.

Usually, if someone was coming in with lower grades, it may be that they had extensive prior experience-they may have been a teaching assistant, with a great deal of experience, or perhaps a mature entrant, who has worked hard to get there and has a great deal of potential. We track all entrants and are gathering data all the time on which qualifications are leading to high-quality outcomes with our trainees, so that we are refining that all the time. However, there is a lot of competition for places, so we can set those parameters quite high.

Professor Wood: What we have also seen in the past few years is the huge growth of undergraduate programmes in early childhood studies, childhood studies, and childhood and youth studies. All those programmes take a multi-theoretical, multi-disciplinary focus, so you might have people tracking out into teaching, social work, youth work or the Prison Service-all kinds of different professions. I wonder whether that is a much stronger future direction, bringing disciplines and theoretical knowledge together at undergraduate level, as a preparation for teaching.

Chairman: Those courses have an even lower qualification.

Professor Wood: No, not all of them.

 

Q46 Chairman: We have just had a seminar on the training of social workers and one of the complaints from your exact opposites on the social work side-in the educating of social workers-was that they were really the bottom of the pile, the lowest-quality applicants for their courses. You get much better quality?

Professor Wood: If you look at some of the early childhood studies programmes, they are getting quite high entry applicants now.

Chairman: So it is like teacher training; it is very differential, with very poor courses in some universities and very good ones in others.

Professor Wood: There is always wide variability across the sector.

Chairman: So there is wide variability in your sector, in education.

Professor Wood: No, I think the variability is not as wide since we have had tighter Government control over standards, competencies and Ofsted inspections.

 

Q47 Chairman: But the social work professionals-exactly your opposite number, from the universities, said it-have wide variability. Some almost explicitly said that they would close down some courses in some universities. You do not have any of those problems in the education sector?

Di Chilvers: In terms of the early childhood studies degrees, they are regulated by QAA inspections, not Ofsted.

Just to go back, when I was talking about aspirations and building people's confidence and so on, sometimes some of those people come into early childhood studies degrees with lower grades of A-level and so on, or maybe no A-levels at all. They might come into those early childhood studies degrees with a diploma in nursery nursing or something like that, but in actual fact when you have given them the chance to have a go, sometimes they are the ones who come out at the end with absolutely glowing degrees-they have really shone and have been given that confidence.

To give you an example, what happened when I taught the early childhood studies degree for many years was that they would come in at 18-mainly young women, some men-again not very confident. You would talk to them in a lecture and try to get them to engage in the discussion, which was really difficult. It was almost like they would just sit there, "Tell me what I've got to think and tell me what to do."

Throughout that three or four years, you had to get them to start thinking for themselves, being more confidant, questioning things, having a dialogue and reflecting. Those things turn them into responsive, reflective practitioners. Once you started to do that, along with all the other stuff that you were delivering, you had students coming out at the end. I have seen them and the delight that I have now in my job is going back into local authorities to look at how well they are coping with the early years agenda. I go in and visit these schools or children's centres, and there are students who I had and saw coming in to study who were not very confident and at quite a low level who were leading the foundation stage unit and leading on practice.

Chairman: I am sure that is true. Paul, you have a couple more quick ones.

 

Q48 Paul Holmes: Two questions: just to round off what you have just been saying, is the future for BEds that they carry on or will they be replaced by the BA in early childhood studies followed by a PGCE? Which is the best route?

Chairman: I ask you to answer briefly because we are running out of time.

Sally Yates: I think that there is room for both. They are two different routes in, and I think that there are strengths in both. It would be a great loss to lose one or the other.

Di Chilvers: It would be interesting to map the courses across to see what all the courses offer and map them across to the big agenda about early years from naught to five, looking at youth and family services, looking at all the programmes, at what the data are telling us about what children need in terms of progress and so on, looking at how they meet the needs of parents and families, how they work in the communities and how they map across to working with other professionals and so on, and see if the courses meet the needs.

 

Q49 Paul Holmes: Finally, the majority now go through the PGCE route. You have already rejected six-month crash courses for redundant bankers. Is the one-year PGCE-10 months in practice-the correct length or does it need to be longer? Should there be credit accumulation for the PGCE through continuous professional development that builds to an MA while you are working? Should it be a two-year PGCE? What would you do for the future if you could write a new route?

Professor Wood: I would keep the one-year PGCE, but it would be one year plus three years of M-level CPD working towards masters accreditation. Then you could project beyond that and perhaps make the EdD-the doctorate in education-a qualification for management leadership, so you could look beyond M-level towards D-level.

 

Q50 Paul Holmes: So, would the three-year CPD be a compulsory part of the PGCE, effectively, or would it be optional to go to an MA standard?

Professor Wood: I think that I would like to see it being compulsory so it became an M-level profession.

 

Q51 Paul Holmes: How would you overcome the issue that you were talking about and they were talking about in Canada-about the trouble with continuous professional development being that the schools all do their own thing and do not take any notice of what the universities think they should be doing?

Professor Wood: Then you would ensure that you had a model that retained the influence of good higher education institutions.

Professor Broadhead: I was very taken with the articled teacher scheme, but I think that it would need to be developed. I think that the second year of that scheme could be work at masters level for candidates taking that course. There are cost implications, but what comes out at the other end is a work force that we would retain. They would go on to do EdDs or PhDs and see themselves as life-long learners.

Chairman: My colleagues have been very patient, but David wants a quick go.

 

Q52 Mr. Chaytor: I have two questions really. First, there is some suggestion that the Teach First scheme will be extended to the early years phase. Is there any objection to that? Is that generally a good idea?

Sally Yates: Teach First is based on the graduate teacher programme model of one year learning in a school and, in fact, is managed by university providers of teacher education in bids across the country. On the one hand, the employment base route is a useful route in, and the Teach First philosophy of getting high-calibre people in is good, but we are doing that anyway. My concern with moving towards too much school-based training is that that takes up a placement for a year, and one of the problems we have in quality early years programmes is the pressure on Key Stage 1 placements in schools, because early years trainees have to go into the Foundation Stage and Key Stage 1, and primary trainees have to go into Key Stage 1 and Key Stage 2.

At the moment, we can manage it. A school will balance things and have people at different points in the year. The more school-based training there is that ties up a whole class for a whole year, the more pressure there will be on places. The sheer logistics of that need to be looked at, quite apart from anything else.

The other interesting thing about Teach First is the particular philosophy of it. RE is a subject that has not recruited well in Teach First. If you are high-flying and ambitious in the RE world, perhaps you aspire to be an Archbishop or a Pope, rather than a teacher. I would be very interested to see how the philosophy of Teach First and early years would mesh.

 

Q53 Mr. Chaytor: My other question is about diversity and the work force. Correct me if I am wrong, but did we say earlier that there is no national register of employees in the early years sector? The TDA knows how many teachers there are, of what kind and where they are, but with regard to the wider early years work force, there is no national record of how many staff there are, what their qualifications are, where they are working and who they are. Is that-

Di Chilvers: Do you mean across the sector?

Mr. Chaytor: Across the sector, yes, in all early years settings. There is no mechanism for gathering this information about the work force profile.

Di Chilvers: Local authorities should be monitoring-

 

Q54 Mr. Chaytor: But is there a national record or is the only way of finding out by aggregating the individual local authorities-

Di Chilvers: Local authorities would be able to tell you what their-

 

Q55 Mr. Chaytor: Do they have a record of private and voluntary sector providers as well?

Di Chilvers: Yes, they will do.

 

Q56 Mr. Chaytor: What is the pattern of recruitment there? Do we see the same problems over diversity in early years as we would find in primary schools-that is, a distinct absence of men and under-representation of minority ethnic groups? Is that the same?

Di Chilvers: To a certain extent, yes.

 

Q57 Mr. Chaytor: What is the solution?

Di Chilvers: That is a difficult one.

Sally Yates: There are things we can do ourselves. Men can feel very isolated because there are fewer of them. Some very good research has been done. Janet Moore's research raised a number of issues-for example, the use of near-peer tutoring, whereby recently qualified male teachers would support those coming in. That is very helpful and has helped some of us develop policies about placements-for example, ensuring that a male student would be placed in a school with another male. Some schools do not do that and they can feel very isolated.

There are those issues and obviously there are the issues of recruiting and targeting our recruitment, but there are some things that it is beyond our ability to address. One of those is the current context in the society in which we are operating. We sometimes lose male applicants or male trainees because, they say, they go for a drink with their friends and say they are training to be a primary school teacher and people will say, "Aren't you afraid that people will think you're a paedophile?"

We are operating in a very particular context. We have been losing the number of males coming where we had been increasing the number. We can do an awful lot to try to attract males in and keep them once we have them in, although they get promoted very quickly out of the classroom, but we are operating in quite a restricted context at the moment.

Chairman: This has been a very good session for us. I was very rude earlier when I said my colleagues had been patient, coming back after the Division. You have also been very patient, especially as you did not quite realise where we were going when we ran out of the room. My apologies for that, but it has been an extremely good session.

We have only just started on this inquiry. Will you remain in touch with us? When you think of things that we did not ask you, or that you wanted to say but did not have a chance to say, will you communicate with us? If you think there are particular things we should look at or places we should visit, will you suggest them? Thank you.