Dear Ofsted,
About the Early Years and the new Inspection Framework about to be published for consultation
I was recently invited to a meeting with Ofsted to discuss their work on the Early Years Inspection Framework (EIF). This is ahead of a full consultation when the draft is published in January 2019. These meetings operate under Chatham House Rules https://www.chathamhouse.org/chatham-house-rule and in this blog I am sharing the list of issues I prepared for the meeting. These came from ‘talking’ to a range of people – mainly on email and Twitter - and it gathers together what I think is important for Ofsted to reflect upon when both re-drafting the EIF and considering inspection in the future. Amanda Spielman has said she wants an “evolution not a revolution” in the inspection regime and some on this list are long-term issues. See the press release here: https://www.gov.uk/government/news/chief-inspector-sets-out-vision-for-new-education-inspection-framework. The consultation period has lengthened to what has been usual – I understand it is to last until summer 2019 - and Ofsted are very keen to get responses to the document in the New Year.
Please respond.
This blog needs to be read in conjunction with the slides widely circulated by Ofsted on the new Framework, which can be found here: https://www.slideshare.net/Ofstednews/working-towards-the-eif-2019-ofsteds-approach-early-years
Firstly, the slide show begins with this:
“Every child deserves the best possible start in life.”
So far so good, there can’t be many who disagree with that. We might support wholeheartedly a widely publicised move away from outcomes towards ‘quality of learning’. However my question is, how will this be enacted when inspecting? Related to this, are the training, qualifications and experience of inspectors. Will they all have an enough of an understanding of child development enabling them to recognise what ‘curriculum’ might look like 0-5 (and in particular, 0-3)? Under the heading of ‘child development’ I include physical development, language, cognitive and social skills, self-regulation as well as what is possible, appropriate and effective with children aged 0-3 and 3-5. This recent report from the Early Intervention Fund might be useful background reading:
And at the very least, the excellent recent television documentary on BBC2, “Babies, Their Wonderful World” should be compulsory viewing! https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b0bt7v16
Many materials produced for ‘early years’ are far too ‘schooly’ and overly focused on Reception classes.How will Ofsted ensure there is not an over-emphasis on what children of Reception age can do? Inspectors need to be clear about the range of development within the early years (it really is an age range) and in particular, what learning and teaching look like with our youngest children – i.e. the 0-4 year olds. Inspectors need an awareness of the work of Greats such as Fröbel, Montessori, Vygotsky and Isaacs, as well the giants of today, such as Julie Fisher, Tina Bruce, Ferre Laevers, Lilian Katz. Ofsted need to find a way of recognising what the curriculum for the 0-3 year olds might look like and to recognise this in the range of settings serving this age group; PVIs and childminders as well as schools.
Secondly, and leading on from this, is Ofsted’s move from a focus on outcomes to curriculum quality. Slide 7 re-iterates the importance of early years education, and yet ifinspectors do not have adequate background in early years, how will that work and how will inspectors recognise good practice? They need to recognise the roles played by play, adult interactions and children’s interests, to name three. This summary of Reception practice from Early Excellence’s The Hundred Review is useful:
“… there is evidence ofthe best Reception year classes managing to blend their pedagogy successfully, holding on tothe EYFS pedagogic and play-based practice whilst adding in more focused, teacher framedapproaches, especially around communication and language. Others are also activelypromoting the outdoors as a rich learning space”.
(Pascal, Bertram, Cole-Alback 2017, p27)
Ofsted will need to find a way of inspecting early years quality that does not rely on identifying a curriculum that is easy to spot, or worse, measure. The currently statutory Characteristics of Effective Learningwould be an effective way of inspecting effectiveness across the board:
· playing and exploring
· active learning
· creating and thinking critically https://www.foundationyears.org.uk/files/2012/03/Development-Matters-FINAL-PRINT-AMENDED.pdf
These are familiar to early years practitioners and one question worth investigating would be how these are enacted in settings and across all areas of learning.
However, there is a serious concern amongst many working in early years that there will instead be an emphasis on what has been termed ‘a knowledge rich curriculum’ (as yet undefined). See for example, Slide 6:
“Evaluating what knowledge and skills children have gained against expectations.”
There is an alarming emphasis on ‘knowledge’ at the expense of learning,thinkingand understandingin both these slides and within Ofsted releases generally. Are we to assume this is the emphasis that Ofsted will be pursuing?
HMCI has said:
“There is and will be no Ofsted curriculum. What we will be interested in is the coherence, the sequencing and construction, the implementation of the curriculum, how it is being taught and how well children and young people are progressing in it.”
Are inspectors clear about what might contribute effectively to developing thinking and understanding? For example, that it is interaction, positive relationships and ‘sustained shared thinking’ (Siraj-Blatchford et al 2009) between adults and children that builds understanding and support cognitive development, rather than a focus on vocabulary acquisition (which is easily tested); and yet I worry about slide 9: https://ro.uow.edu.au/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?referer=http://scholar.google.co.uk/&httpsredir=1&article=2223&context=sspapers
Mathematics. There are already problems we can foresee. Against all advice of every early years mathematics specialist, the Early Learning Goals currently being piloted until July 2019 omit measures, shape and space and problem solving, and over-emphasise “automatic recall”:
Inspectors be made aware of how critical early experiences in shape, space, measures, problem solving and reasoning are for later mathematical development. The Erikson Early Math Collective is an excellent source of research: https://earlymath.erikson.eduand reasoning (over fluency) has been pinpointed as a greater predictor of later mathematical achievement in longitudinal research led by Nunes et al (2010). https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1348/026151006X153127.
Looking at slide 9, how will Ofsted ensure inspectors do not under-emphasise (or fail to recognise) understanding? We really need to move away from the idea that acceleration through a curriculum raises standards. Having high expectations of children means working at depth, not teaching place value earlier; an unfortunate example provided in the ‘Bold Beginnings’report: https://www.early-education.org.uk/bold-beginnings-blogs-and-responses
Are all inspectors clear what appropriate provision looks like? That children in the EYFS will mostly be taught mathematics through playful interactions?
Maybe some questions to ask in settings would be:
· Is there mathematics going on outdoors and what does it involve?
· Does mathematics for these children involve spending long periods sitting at a table or on a carpet?
· What mathematics is happening at odd moments? In the ‘cracks of the day’?
At the foot of this blog I attach the Early Childhood Mathematics Group’s pedagogy statement. The Early Childhood Mathematics Group (ECMG) is a voluntary group of educators well informed about the development of early years mathematics and it’s teaching and who are cognisant of evidence and best practice. Which brings me to my third point.
Thirdly, evidence. Currently, these slides seem to indicate a strong influence by cognitive learning theory and yet research and evidence into this is with older students. You have stated that you have a clear commitment to evidence-based practice and that the new framework will be based on a solid evidence base relating to educational effectiveness. How are you expressing this in terms of early years? What type of research, and with which age groups? Susie Owen HMI said recently at the Westminster Early Years’ Forum, that there is not enough research into early years; thus on what evidence are you basing the new framework?
In fact, there is a large corpus of international research into early years education, stretching back many years. How is recent and past research about learning and early cognitive development feeding into the EIF?
For example, see The Hundred Review(Pascal et al 2017) for a summary of evidence for the Reception year: http://earlyexcellence.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/10_100-Review_CREC_March_2017.pdf
Currently, the slides do not appear to link to anything we know about how learning happens in the 0-5 age range. The EIF must include evidence and research from early childhood education and equivalent age ranges in other countries, where children at this age are in different types of educational settings to ours. In particular, if this is to be an evolution rather than a revolution, how will future research inform the work of the inspectorate?
Slide 20 states: “Research continues on the curriculum.” Details of your research, where, when and by whom and into exactly which curriculum, need to be published and transparent.
Fourthly, professional development. If you are inspecting the quality of the curriculum, you have to ask these two questions in all settings:
“When did you last provide high-quality maths CPDfor your staff?”
“What did it consist of and who provided this?”
On-going professional development of early years practitioners is critical and yet many do not have and have not had access to this for mathematics, ever. We know – and you know - that many early years educators feel under-confident in teaching mathematics. How are you going to influence the development of this? At the recent Westminster Early Years Forum it was announced that there is a £20 million commitment from DfE to improve children’s early language, literacy, and numeracy through high quality evidence based professional development support for early years practitioners. Who is providing this and how will this be accessed and assessed? Allocating funding through the NCETM Maths Hubs will not do the trick. The Maths Hubs are school-based collectives who target Reception and older, and are not able to provide appropriate, high-quality professional development for 0-4s. Asking the question and pointing out this lack might help DfE act positively in the future.
To summarise,there is of course, with all such things, both the content of the new EIF and the willingness and ability of inspectors to understand and deliver on it. A move toward ‘quality of learning’ might leave schools more at the mercy of inspectors’ confirmation bias regarding what a school should look like. Ofsted have a commitment to independent inspections, “without fear or favour”. Many inspectors are serving school leaders with only a few days each year to inspect, and this together with short inspections, may lead to an inherent risk that inspectors will feel reassured in schools that feel familiar and insecure where they do not. How will Ofsted mitigate against this factor?
This factor will be compounded by a lack of transparency in the Ofsted complaints procedure.Complaints are managed ‘in-house’. Addressing transparency (a commitment, see slide 3) of the complaints procedure could come some way toward helping mitigate confirmation bias.
And finally, two points … Firstly:
The current Early Years Inspection Handbook, p35, defines teaching as follows:
“Teaching should not be taken to imply a ‘top down’ or formal way of working. It is a broad term that covers the many different ways in which adults help young children learn. It includes their interactions with children during planned and child-initiated play and activities: communicating and modeling language, showing, explaining, demonstrating, exploring ideas, encouraging, questioning, recalling, providing a narrative for what they are doing, facilitating and setting challenges. It takes account of the equipment adults provide and the attention given to the physical environment, as well as the structure and routines of the day that establish expectations. Integral to teaching is how practitioners assess what children know, understand and can do, as well as taking account of their interests and dispositions to learn (characteristics of effective learning), and how practitioners use this information to plan children’s next steps in learning and monitor their progress.”
This is an important definition that needs nailing over the door of every early years setting. Please do not loose it.
However, do please ditch‘Outstanding’, in fact, ditch all labels, particularly the word ‘ability’, from everything you publish.
Secondly, I would like Ofsted to be clearer about the difference between practicesand procedures. Procedures are easy to spot and measure, whilst practices are much more complex and require more nuanced and knowledgeable inspection:
A final question: at the moment in early years we have Baseline, the ELG review and this review – is everyone talking to each other?
Early years mathematics pedagogy:
exploration, apprenticeship and making sense
The Early Childhood Mathematics Group
February 2018
All children are entitled to a strong mathematical foundation before they start school, enabling them to show the Characteristics of Effective Learning* in mathematics.
This is underpinned by practitioners’ understanding of children’s possible mathematical learning trajectories and a belief that all children are effective mathematical learners, although their previous experiences may differ.
It is achieved during both child-initiated play and adult teaching through meaningful contexts, so that all children have daily moments where they explicitly engage with mathematical concepts and language.
Adults
Provide:
• outdoor learning- ‘do it huge & outdoors’
• routines – snacktime, tidying up
• games –tracks, targets, hiding and counting
• number rhymes, books and stories – linking symbols and fingers
• exploration with shape, space, measures & numbers, eg construction
• familiarity & investigation with adult tools eg calculators, timers, scales
Engage children with:
• ‘Low floor, high ceiling’ problems to solve creatively
• a repertoire of mathematical language & recording
Use teaching strategies:
• being playful with mathematical ideas- making deliberate mistakes, testing ideas with ludicrous suggestions
• ‘sustained shared mathematical thinking’ with children- eg ‘What if..’
• ongoing observation and assessment of learning trajectories
Are disposed towards:
• being enthusiastic and interested in maths
• being curious about children’s reasoning & expressions of their thinking
• supporting children to be resilient and take risks, spot patterns and make connections
The Early Childhood Mathematics Group February 2018
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