Early Day Motion (EDM) 1031, which notes the concerns of Open EYE and asks for an independent review of the EYFS, has to date been signed by 55 MPS from 7 different parties including the Labour, Conservative and Liberal Democrat parties, with signatories still being added. You can take a look at the EDM here. Please write to your MP and ask them to sign if they haven’t already done so!
April 2, 2008 at 2:51 pm |
I have run day nurseries for 20 years and find that the intrest of the children are being underminded by the intrest of the goverment. We are nursery nurses not teachers and reserch has show that children under 6years are not ready for the type of learning we are noe expecting them to achieve It is time we gave our children there childhood back and allowed them to learn just through play without the tick box approch
April 7, 2008 at 1:10 pm |
Here is a wonderful quote from Nellie, 31st March 08, on the TES Early Years Forum:
“Come and work with me. We will set up an alternative world with wonderful free flow play and teach them all to read wonderful stories and dress up without any learning objectives and have no Independent Activities and lots and lots of baking and small children washing up in that particularly wet way they have of doing it…….and sing when we feel like it and play outside with no number content at all…….we can burn all the planning, post its and all the profiles and we can also burn any advisors, consultants, head teachers and anyone else we do not like that particular day. It will be fun. we will do a small amount of number work everyday and synthetic phonics and dinners will be free and staffing levels will be sane. Any one who is grumpy or who does not like children will be sent outside in the rain until they see the light.”
Yes, let’s give our children their childhood back. And let’s not campaign against good simple child-friendly direct teaching of synthetic phonics. It is centralised interference in the detail of child care that we need to campaign against. Let people who love working with children play with them and care for them and teach them without worrying about being accountable to inspectors for the detail of what they do.
Please remember that some of those who passionately support the campaign against the statutory EYFS are not against synthetic phonics for teaching young children to read.
April 8, 2008 at 10:07 am |
Thanks for that lovely quote, Elizabeth!
And, just to be clear: Open EYE is NOT campaigning against the use of synthetic phonics (see our FAQs). Open EYE is campaigning for the EYFS learning and development requirements to be downgraded to guidelines, in which case practitioners will be free to use SP, or not, according to their own professional judgement.