About OpenEYE
The OpenEYE Campaign consists of a unique, multi-disciplinary team of early years experts who have come together through a shared concern about Early Childhood policy-making in the UK. They have the support of an increasingly large number of parents, practitioners and teachers. Additional support comes from a prestigious group of international researchers and authors. OpenEYE has always been an entirely voluntary group - all of whom give their time freely to the cause.
One of the core team, the early years consultant and writer Margaret Edgington, wrote this article about the campaign for Primary Leadership Today Magazine in 2009.
From January 2009 to May 2011 the writer and OpenEYE editor Wendy Ellyatt produced a regular newsletter that highlighted the issues and identified all the relevant media items together with research reports and papers. This was sent out to its list of 3500 supporters. You can see the newsletter archive here.
Reports such as the recent UNICEF comparison of child wellbeing are increasingly confirming OpenEYE's concerns and highlighting the urgency of the situation.
The History
Open EYE was set up in November 2007, in response to fears that the government’s new Early Years Foundation Stage was:
The Seven Points of Concern
The seven points outlined below represented the principal concerns regarding the implementation of the Early Years Foundation Stage (hereafter, EYFS) legislation.
(1) EARLY LITERACY
We are very concerned that the literacy goals are both compulsory and, we believe, developmentally inappropriate, including the compulsion to use a particular reading and writing scheme. It seems inevitable that these goals and practices will “filter down” to the under 5s – indeed, this is already happening in many settings. There are major concerns as to whether this kind of cognitive learning is developmentally appropriate for young children; and there exists convincing research which strongly suggests that it isn’t (see our website at www.savechildhood.org – “Articles” section).
It is our opinion that the literacy goals represent an acceleration of reading and writing skills before a suitable foundation for these skills has been established. Most importantly, disadvantaged children are the most likely to benefit from an unhurried preparatory experience as a foundation for formal literacy learning. The way in which the well intentioned goal of supporting disadvantaged children is being pursued is therefore misguided - for these are the very children who need a solid foundation in socialisation, listening and speaking skills, and fine motor skills, before proceeding to the demands of reading and writing. Additionally, the research on boys, summer-term birthday children, and the increasing incidence of speech difficulties would support the need for an extensive and strong pre-literacy foundation
(2) A PLAY-BASED EXPERIENCE
Much has been made of the “play-based” nature of the EYFS framework. We believe that the notion of play used in EYFS is one that has lost its true meaning, being narrowly “adult-centric”, and seriously neglecting the subtleties of truly authentic imaginative play with its attendant rewards. For many holistic educators, to speak of “directed” or “structured and purposeful” play is not to speak of play at all; rather, we believe that this is “playful teaching” with a specified learning objective, rather than true, imaginative, creative play. Authentic play typically reaches its peak between children’s fourth and fifth birthdays, and we are concerned that this important characteristic of healthy early childhood development will be seriously hindered by the demands of the EYFS targets. We call for a dialogue and debate on the definition and benefits of play, its contribution to emotional and cognitive intelligence, and its rightful place in the pre-school experience.
(3) AN “AUDIT CULTURE”
The shortcomings of an “audit culture” mentality, with its attendant distracting bureaucratisation and anxiety-generating practices, are beginning to be exposed across the public sector. We further believe that the early years constitute a very delicate and sensitive period in which the values of simple care, quality attachment and non-possessive love should be paramount. It is a flawed framework that imposes an indiscriminating blanket provision across a whole field in order to help – we believe in a misguided way - a minority of children who are especially disadvantaged, when the majority of children will be unnecessarily caught and adversely affected by the new legislation.
It will be extremely difficult, if not impossible, to retain the simple ‘relational’ values of care, attachment, attentiveness and love as core underpinnings to early-years practice if the overweening bureaucratic demands of the new EYFS are not, at the very least, significantly trimmed back. We believe that early-childhood experience is the very last place where “audit culture” values and practices should hold sway.
(4) ASSESSMENT-MINDEDNESS AFFECTING THE UNDER 5s
A mindset of observation and assessment saturates the new framework. It is claimed that it is only 5 year olds who will be subject to the assessment process; yet we all know from experience elsewhere in the schooling system that the very existence of an assessment or testing apparatus at a given age has direct consequences for children significantly below that age, as settings “drill” or prepare their children for the assessment procedure. This “filtering down” of assessment pressures alwaysoccurs, and there is no reason to believe that it will not happen with the EYFS profiling process.
Thus, children under 5, who are particularly open and vulnerable to what exists in their environment, will be exposed to assessment anxieties. One consequence of this is the premature “waking-up” of children into adult-like consciousness well before it is appropriate; and this acceleration into needless awareness of adult expectation further generates anxiety. This will be particularly so in environments when imaginative, child-initiated play has been curtailed, with its constant opportunities for self-determined learning and the self-esteem which arises from discovering that “I can do it” rather than “I might fail”.
(5) THE EFFECTS OF THE EYFS ON EARLY-YEARS PRACTITIONERS
Related to the preceding points, a utilitarian approach dominates the EYFS guidance throughout, which verges on a kind of “developmental-obsessiveness”, and which is anti-time, and quite contrary to any reverential or spiritual dimension to early-childhood experience. The open, flexible attentiveness of the early-years practitioner is paramount, but there is a real danger that an awareness of the profile assessment and LEA targets will come to dominate and influence practice and the mood of practitioners, and actually undermine the principles of the Unique Child, Positive Relationships and Enabling Environments. Any resulting stress arising from the auditing culture about to be imposed on the early-years sector will inevitably transfer psychodynamically to the children, manifesting in the form of needless and corrosive anxiety at an age when children are not yet developmentally equipped to process and manage it.
(6) STATE-DEFINED ‘NORMALITY’ IN CHILD DEVELOPMENT
In the new EYFS framework, the state has defined its own paradigm for what is “normal” child development, and then compulsorily enshrined its model in law – a quite unprecedented development in modern political life, and one which raises very grave concerns, not least about just where the boundary between the public and private spheres in education should appropriately be drawn. The question of the “undue authority” of the state in this act of legislation needs urgent attention.
(7) HUMAN/PARENTAL RIGHTS
The new EYFS legislation is arguably directly compromising of parents' rights to choose the pre-school, pre-compulsory school-age environments that they wish for their children, which, under European law, constitutes a major infringement of parental and, therefore, of human rights.
One of the core team, the early years consultant and writer Margaret Edgington, wrote this article about the campaign for Primary Leadership Today Magazine in 2009.
From January 2009 to May 2011 the writer and OpenEYE editor Wendy Ellyatt produced a regular newsletter that highlighted the issues and identified all the relevant media items together with research reports and papers. This was sent out to its list of 3500 supporters. You can see the newsletter archive here.
Reports such as the recent UNICEF comparison of child wellbeing are increasingly confirming OpenEYE's concerns and highlighting the urgency of the situation.
The History
Open EYE was set up in November 2007, in response to fears that the government’s new Early Years Foundation Stage was:
- overly prescriptive
- potentially harmful to the development of children
- a breach of the human right of parents to have their children educated in accordance with their own philosophies
The Seven Points of Concern
The seven points outlined below represented the principal concerns regarding the implementation of the Early Years Foundation Stage (hereafter, EYFS) legislation.
(1) EARLY LITERACY
We are very concerned that the literacy goals are both compulsory and, we believe, developmentally inappropriate, including the compulsion to use a particular reading and writing scheme. It seems inevitable that these goals and practices will “filter down” to the under 5s – indeed, this is already happening in many settings. There are major concerns as to whether this kind of cognitive learning is developmentally appropriate for young children; and there exists convincing research which strongly suggests that it isn’t (see our website at www.savechildhood.org – “Articles” section).
It is our opinion that the literacy goals represent an acceleration of reading and writing skills before a suitable foundation for these skills has been established. Most importantly, disadvantaged children are the most likely to benefit from an unhurried preparatory experience as a foundation for formal literacy learning. The way in which the well intentioned goal of supporting disadvantaged children is being pursued is therefore misguided - for these are the very children who need a solid foundation in socialisation, listening and speaking skills, and fine motor skills, before proceeding to the demands of reading and writing. Additionally, the research on boys, summer-term birthday children, and the increasing incidence of speech difficulties would support the need for an extensive and strong pre-literacy foundation
(2) A PLAY-BASED EXPERIENCE
Much has been made of the “play-based” nature of the EYFS framework. We believe that the notion of play used in EYFS is one that has lost its true meaning, being narrowly “adult-centric”, and seriously neglecting the subtleties of truly authentic imaginative play with its attendant rewards. For many holistic educators, to speak of “directed” or “structured and purposeful” play is not to speak of play at all; rather, we believe that this is “playful teaching” with a specified learning objective, rather than true, imaginative, creative play. Authentic play typically reaches its peak between children’s fourth and fifth birthdays, and we are concerned that this important characteristic of healthy early childhood development will be seriously hindered by the demands of the EYFS targets. We call for a dialogue and debate on the definition and benefits of play, its contribution to emotional and cognitive intelligence, and its rightful place in the pre-school experience.
(3) AN “AUDIT CULTURE”
The shortcomings of an “audit culture” mentality, with its attendant distracting bureaucratisation and anxiety-generating practices, are beginning to be exposed across the public sector. We further believe that the early years constitute a very delicate and sensitive period in which the values of simple care, quality attachment and non-possessive love should be paramount. It is a flawed framework that imposes an indiscriminating blanket provision across a whole field in order to help – we believe in a misguided way - a minority of children who are especially disadvantaged, when the majority of children will be unnecessarily caught and adversely affected by the new legislation.
It will be extremely difficult, if not impossible, to retain the simple ‘relational’ values of care, attachment, attentiveness and love as core underpinnings to early-years practice if the overweening bureaucratic demands of the new EYFS are not, at the very least, significantly trimmed back. We believe that early-childhood experience is the very last place where “audit culture” values and practices should hold sway.
(4) ASSESSMENT-MINDEDNESS AFFECTING THE UNDER 5s
A mindset of observation and assessment saturates the new framework. It is claimed that it is only 5 year olds who will be subject to the assessment process; yet we all know from experience elsewhere in the schooling system that the very existence of an assessment or testing apparatus at a given age has direct consequences for children significantly below that age, as settings “drill” or prepare their children for the assessment procedure. This “filtering down” of assessment pressures alwaysoccurs, and there is no reason to believe that it will not happen with the EYFS profiling process.
Thus, children under 5, who are particularly open and vulnerable to what exists in their environment, will be exposed to assessment anxieties. One consequence of this is the premature “waking-up” of children into adult-like consciousness well before it is appropriate; and this acceleration into needless awareness of adult expectation further generates anxiety. This will be particularly so in environments when imaginative, child-initiated play has been curtailed, with its constant opportunities for self-determined learning and the self-esteem which arises from discovering that “I can do it” rather than “I might fail”.
(5) THE EFFECTS OF THE EYFS ON EARLY-YEARS PRACTITIONERS
Related to the preceding points, a utilitarian approach dominates the EYFS guidance throughout, which verges on a kind of “developmental-obsessiveness”, and which is anti-time, and quite contrary to any reverential or spiritual dimension to early-childhood experience. The open, flexible attentiveness of the early-years practitioner is paramount, but there is a real danger that an awareness of the profile assessment and LEA targets will come to dominate and influence practice and the mood of practitioners, and actually undermine the principles of the Unique Child, Positive Relationships and Enabling Environments. Any resulting stress arising from the auditing culture about to be imposed on the early-years sector will inevitably transfer psychodynamically to the children, manifesting in the form of needless and corrosive anxiety at an age when children are not yet developmentally equipped to process and manage it.
(6) STATE-DEFINED ‘NORMALITY’ IN CHILD DEVELOPMENT
In the new EYFS framework, the state has defined its own paradigm for what is “normal” child development, and then compulsorily enshrined its model in law – a quite unprecedented development in modern political life, and one which raises very grave concerns, not least about just where the boundary between the public and private spheres in education should appropriately be drawn. The question of the “undue authority” of the state in this act of legislation needs urgent attention.
(7) HUMAN/PARENTAL RIGHTS
The new EYFS legislation is arguably directly compromising of parents' rights to choose the pre-school, pre-compulsory school-age environments that they wish for their children, which, under European law, constitutes a major infringement of parental and, therefore, of human rights.
