The Early Years Foundation Stage is a term defined in Section 39 of the British government'sChildcare Act 2006. The EYFS comprises a set of Welfare Requirements and a set of Learning and Development Requirements, which must be followed by providers of care for children under five years old – the age of compulsory education in the United Kingdom. The Welfare and Learning and Development requirements are not specified in the act but in separate orders. The legislation took effect from September 2008. The Welfare requirements apply to the whole of the UK, but the Learning and Development requirements apply only in England. All childcare providers, including childminders, nurseries, kindergartens and pre-school classes, are obliged to register under the Childcare Act to operate legally. To become and remain registered they must comply with the Welfare requirements, and with the L&D requirements for settings in England. The Learning and Development requirements are unusual in principle in imposing compulsory educational targets
The Learning and development targets are controversial in not being generally accepted by experts in child development and education as being appropriate for this age group. They include literacy requirements that five-year-olds should:
readily use written language in their play and learning
use phonic knowledge to write simple regular words and make phonetically plausible attempts at more complex words
show an understanding of how information can be found in non-fiction texts to answer questions about where, who, why and how
begin to form simple sentences, sometimes using punctuation
There are similar levels of requirements for numeracy. There is a body of professional opinion that attempting to push under-5s into early literacy is ineffective or even counterproductive, possibly even producing reading difficulties in some children through the experience of early failure, and other problems including ADHD. It is reported that schools in Scandinavian and other countries, and Steiner schools, where children start school at six or seven years old, produce better academic results. Apart from the question of whether the L&D targets are appropriate for the age group, there is controversy over the prescriptive nature of the curriculum, burdensome nature of the assessments of children they demand and stress inflicted upon young children by the curriculum and assessment.
Exemptions
The Childcare Act makes provision for exemptions from the Learning and development requirements for
settings, under section 46
children individually, under section 46
The circumstances under which exemptions may be granted are to be stipulated in the Early Years Foundation Stage Order, which as of 20 June 2008 had not yet been laid before Parliament.
Consultation
The Department for Children, Schools and Families conducted a consultation on the EYFS Learning and Development Exemptions, between 1 March and 24 May 2007. Respondents were invited to give their views on the circumstances accepted as possible grounds for exemption and the process by which exemptions could be obtained. The proposed circumstances were: The DCSF response to the consultation considered the first and third circumstances only:
"Flexibility" of EYFS
In the consultation document, response form and their consultation response the DCSF asserts that "the EYFS is sufficiently flexible to accommodate a range of early years approaches".
Campaigns against EYFS
Despite the government's claims for the benefits and flexibility of the EYFS many educators and childcare experts have expressed concern about the impact of the EYFS and called for changes to it.
OpenEYE
The campaign gives as reason for its formation: The campaign was launched on 30 November 2007 with an open letter published in the Times Educational Supplement. Signatories included Tim Brighouse, Margaret Edgington, Dr Richard House, Dr Penelope Leach and Sue Palmer. The letter and petition express concern at the "harm likely to be done to young children due to the framework’s contestable assumptions and unintended consequences" and calls for an "independent review of the compulsory Early Years Foundation Stage policy framework, and the status of its learning and development requirements to ‘professional guidelines’". An Early Day Motion – No. 1031 – expresses similar claims and calls.
