The DVD from the recent OpenEYE conference is now available and can be purchased for £19 inc. p&p. It contains three fascinating and inspirational talks from the following speakers:

John Siraj-Blatchford produced an article for Nursery World that criticised the research reported by OpenEYE conference speaker, Dr Aric Sigman. John co-directs the Supporting Playful Learning with Information and Communications Technology (SPLICT) project. He also works as an independent educational researcher and consultant, and is the Research and Development Director of Made in Me - an online publishing children's media compan

We understand John's concerns, as he clearly has a vested interest in the area, but it is by no means only Dr Sigman who is highlighting the need for extreme caution in this area. The US government currently wants to forbid the screen use of children under 2 and the French and Belgian governments are prohibiting the use of screens until the age of 3. His accusations of 'pseudo-science' also don't appear to be shared by the peer-reviewed 'hard'-scientific journals which regularly publish Dr Sigman's papers. For example the Society of Biology is currently in the process of publishing his latest paper and they have a very rigorous evaluation process that simply wouldn't let through anything that wasn't grounded in sound scientific reporting.

The eminent Neurologist Baroness Susan Greenfield also shares Aric Sigman's concerns:

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/education/education-news/young-minds-in-hitech-turmoil-426326.html

and the Alliance for Childhood has published its own reports 'Fools Gold' and 'Tech Tonic'. This is the introduction from the former":

"Noting that computers are reshaping children's lives in profound and unexpected ways, this report examines potential harms and promised benefits of these changes, focusing on early childhood and elementary education.

Chapter 1 argues that popular attempts to hurry children intellectually are at odds with the natural pace of human development.

Chapter 2 presents information on the risks of using computers to children's physical health (including musculoskeletal injuries, vision problems, and obesity), emotional and social development (isolation, shifts toward computer-centered education, detachment from community, and the commercialization of childhood), creativity and intellectual development (impaired language and literacy, poor concentration, inability to tolerate frustration, plagiarism, and distraction from meaning), and moral development.

Chapter 3 urges families and schools to recommit themselves to providing young children with the essentials of a healthy childhood, including strong bonds with caring adults, hands-on experiences with the physical world, time for unstructured play, exposure to the arts, and literacy activities.

Chapter 4 discusses ways parents and teachers can help children achieve a technology literacy that also involves the capacity to think critically and use technology to serve personal, social, and ecological goals.

Chapter 5 focuses on the costs of technology and argues that the national infatuation with computers in early childhood and elementary education is diverting scarce resources from children's real unmet needs.

Chapter 6 concludes with recommendations, including a refocus on the essentials of a healthy childhood and an immediate moratorium on further introduction of computers in early childhood and elementary education."

John writes that "The key lesson to be learned from the case of television has been that any problems have stemmed not from the media or technology itself, but rather from the choice of programme", but a high and increasing volume of biological and empirical medical  research suggests that screen technology in all its permutations may be causing significant changes in cognitive and emotional development and ability.

The Telegraph devoted a page to author Nicholas Carr's concerns about the impact of the internet on cognitive development in his important new book 'The Shallows':

"The picture that emerges is troubling, at least to anyone who values the subtlety, rather than just the speed, of human thought. People who read text studded with links, the studies show, comprehend less than those who read words printed on pages. People who watch busy multimedia presentations remember less than those who take in information in a more sedate and focused manner. People who are continually distracted by emails, updates and other messages understand less than those who are able to concentrate. And people who juggle many tasks are often less creative and less productive than those who do one thing at a time."

This is an area that has developed at a rate that none of us could have predicted. We have a responsibility to err on the side of deep caution whenever anyone sounds an alarm bell. And at the moment bells are going off all over the place.

Read John's Nursery World Article

Read Nicholas Carr's Telegraph article 'How the internet is making us stupid'

Read the Observer article by TRACEY McVeigh and NICK PATON Walsh (2000) 'Computers kill pupils' creativity'

On Tuesday 6 July 2010 the Daycare Trust announced the results of its 2010 London childcare providers survey. They received almost 300 responses, representing at least 540 providers, including childminders, full daycare, nursery, sessional and out-of-school provision. The results were quoted by the Minister of State for Children and Families, Sarah Teather, on Radio 4, and have also been mentioned in the Evening Standard, The Times, Children and Young People Now and Nursery World.  

Key findings included 70 per cent of providers indicating they felt that the Early Years Foundation Stage has had a positive impact on childcare in general.  Borough network meetings and joint training opportunities are seen as key ways to share practice with other providers. Some 70 per cent consider their communications with local authorities as very good or good. However, 51 per cent felt that lack of time was the key issue in successfully implementing the EYFS.

OpenEYE welcomes such investigations but is very concerned about the obvious limitation of tick-box questions and, instead, would like to see more in the way of open-ended feedback from practitioners, with far more sophisticated qualitative research designs.

OpenEYE would also like to express a note of caution when statistics are quoted referencing the EYFS, because there is a great deal of difference, when looking at its impact on learning & development, between the EYFS as 'Guidance' and the EYFS as a 'Statutory Framework'. We cannot assume that both are regarded equally, whether positively or negatively, and greater clarity is clearly needed.

See the survey form here

Read the full report

In the 14th of July edition of Nursery World, editor Liz Roberts talked with the new children's minister Sarah Teather. These are some of the critical responses:

ST: I've asked Clare Tickell to see if she can reduce the burdens on the sector, because we as a Government want to make sure that there is a really diverse market in childcare providers. It's also a theme of the new coalition Government to try to help professionals to get on with their job. I've also asked her to make sure that what she does is based on the best evidence available, and particularly to make sure that early years provision is focused on helping the most disadvantaged children reach their potential and be ready to learn when they get to school

...it's about also making sure that children are leaving early years provision ready to learn when they get to school. And that's not just reading and writing and sums. It's about can they listen, can they say what they think and what they feel, and can they share with other children, can they sit down quietly sometimes, can they play - it's all those things.

I've asked Clare to think about which of those things are important and how we can make sure that the content of the curriculum, the way we run it, the way we assess it, the kinds of information that parents want as well, so that children are ready to learn when they get to school, is based on the best available evidence.

I haven't said I want a much more rigid system, or a less rigid system. I've said to her, look at the evidence and look at the experience of how it has worked and see what makes children ready to learn when they get to school. Any teacher, any parent knows that being ready to learn when you get to school is about all sorts of things.

...Some people may be feeling that they are following the curriculum and that their experience is very easy and straightforward, while some get bogged down in detail. Clare will need to work out where that pressure is coming from - is it coming from the EYFS, is it coming from the guidance, is it coming from inspection, is it coming from the way in which other people operate?

I'm sure that external factors are going to come out in the review.
NW: Why Dame Clare Tickell rather than an early years education expert?

ST: I wanted someone who has been very much involved in the children and families sector for a long time. She has experience with her organisation of running children's centres and specific experience of working with disadvantaged children. I wanted someone who was able to step back a bit. I also wanted someone whose experience and the way her mind is hard-wired prioritises evidence, and Clare is very pragmatic and very evidence-focused.

Read the full interview session

Alfie Kohn launched a scathing attack on the increasing focus on techniques for measuring/raising student achievement in his Education Week article (25/08/2010). He began with this Einstein quote:

and this was his concluding point:

"Distilling a large body of research, psychologists Martin Maehr and the late Carol Midgley reminded us that "an overemphasis on assessment can actually undermine the pursuit of excellence'". That's true even with reasonably good assessments, let alone with those that are standardized.  The more that students are led to focus on how well they're doing, the less engaged they tend to become with what they're doing.  Instead of stuff they want to figure out, the curriculum just becomes stuff at which they're required to get better.  A school that's all about achievement and performance is a school that's not really about discovery and understanding."

Read the full article

Both the Guardian and the Telegraph picked up the story about the new research on play. The State of Play, Back to Basics report interviewed 2,000 parents and 2,000 children aged five to 15 about their play habits. It concludes that play is in danger of becoming a "lost art" for British families, with 21 per cent of parents admitting they no longer remember how to play and struggle to engage their children in creative and imaginative activities that will help their development.

"The report identified a lack of communication between the generations around the types of games and activities they should play together as a key contributor to the problems faced at family playtime.

"Nearly one in three parents choose to play computer games with their children thinking that's what their kids will most enjoy," said Byron. "However, nine out of 10 children said computer games were something they would rather play on their own, while three-quarters said they would prefer to spend time with their parents enjoying more traditional pursuits, such as challenging each other at board games or playing outdoors together."

Read the Guardian article

Read the Telegraph article

Sally Goddard-Blythe had this published in the Daily Mail Letters on the 3rd September:
 
Figures reported last week showing that one in five children failed to reach writing standards expected for their age, one in six failed to attain expected reading level, one in ten were behind in maths and boys trailed behind girls in every subject tested despite record investments in the early education and the recently implemented early years foundation stage (EYFS), suggest that there is more involved to acquiring literacy and numeracy than simply the teaching of basic skills.
 
"Readiness" for reading requires that all systems involved have received sufficient stimulation in the early years.  This includes development of balance, coordination, postural control and fine motor skills to facilitate writing; control of eye movements and the ability to hear and say all of the sounds required for reading and spelling.  These basic skills are nurtured not through direct teaching of reading and writing in the pre-school years, but through physical and imaginative play, singing, conversation, being told stories and being read to on a regular basis.
 
Increasingly, the lacking ingredients in a child's early years are physical interaction with the environment and social engagement with adults.  Children growing up in areas of social deprivation are particularly at risk, as are boys who are naturally later at developing the fine motor and language skills needed to support reading, writing and spelling.
 
Until successive governments focus attention on developing the whole child instead of trying to treat the symptom, we will continue to see similar depressing statistics.
 
Sally Goddard Blythe MSc, FRSA

Catherine Gaunt's article in Nursery World (11 August 2010), revealed that, according to a survey carried out by the previous government, just one in five private, voluntary or independent full daycare settings employs an early years professional.

The New Labour Government had set a target for every full daycare setting to be led by a graduate with EYPS and for there to be two EYPs for each setting in deprived areas by 2015.

"The report said, 'Overall, 22 per cent of full daycare providers had at least one graduate with EYPS, and 4 per cent had at least two. There was no difference between the 30 per cent most deprived areas and other areas...

However, the survey also found that in non-maintained settings where there was no EYP, about half (49 per cent) had at least one member of staff working towards EYPS...

The survey found that the shift from sessional to full daycare is continuing. There has also been a fall in the number of childminders. Between 2008 and 2009, the number of children attending all childcare and early years provision declined, except for full daycare settings, including children's centres that provide full daycare on-site...

After-school childcare was the worst hit, with a drop of 10 per cent in providers, the first time this type of provision had fallen in number since 2003."

Read the full Nursery World article

Download the Childcare and Early Years Providers Survey 2009

The Government presses ahead with Early Years Single Funding Formula

A Government spokesperson said, 'The new Code of Practice will come into force in September, to ensure that local authorities are working to a clear common framework in implementing the extension to 15 hours. However, we will be looking to streamline this guidance next year.'

The Government also announced that the Early Years Single Funding Formula is to be made statutory from April, but a requirement has been added that all local formulas must include a deprivation supplement, which may eventually become a Pupil Premium for the early years.

A consultation on the best way to operate a Pupil Premium for school-aged children, including what deprivation indicator should be used, was launched on Monday by education secretary Michael Gove and children's minister Sarah Teather. The Pupil Premium is aimed at helping children from disadvantaged backgrounds to improve their school performance.

The consultation also asks whether the policy of funding at least 90 per cent of a local authority's three-year-old population should be changed to one based on actual take-up of free entitlement places.

Read the full article

Read James Tweed's interesting analysis on Childcare Matters

The campaign by Early Years Childcare, which has nine settings in Sussex, Hampshire and south-east London, says that underfunding the free entitlement means that providers could be forced to make cutbacks that will impact on the quality of their provision. The nursery chain has set up a campaign website and petition at www.freechildcare.org.uk.

Kate Peach, managing director of Early Years Childcare said, 'We work with five different local authorities and on average, the funding that we receive covers around 80 per cent of the cost of providing the free place.

'We fully support the idea of the free entitlement, but this is not free. The PVI sector is subsidising it. If the Government cannot provide a more realistic level of funding then it should allow nurseries to charge top-up fees.'

They hope that they will be supported by a significant number of other providers who are also concerned about how their businesses will be sustainable under the new system.

Read the Melanie Defries article in Nursery World (25/8/10)

Scott Barry Kaufman provided an interesting article on the importance of 'executive functions' and the benefits of preschool in Psychology Today (28/07/2010):

"Maybe it's the lack of executive functions in preschool that proves the advantage. In a recent article in Current Directions in Psychological Science called "Cognition Without Control: When a Little Frontal Lobe Goes a Long Way", Sharon L. Thompson-Schill and her colleagues argue that while "the prefrontal cortex is crucial for the ability to regulate thought and behavior", the fact that young children don't have a fully formed prefrontal cortex may, on balance, be advantageous, with the positive consequences of that developmental trajectory outweighing the negative.

They provide some nice examples of how cognitive control can impede lots of real-life learning and how the slow development of the prefrontal cortex may be an evolutionary adaptation that allows children to learn about the social world and learn linguistic conventions. They explore the implications of the late development of executive control for ADHD, autism spectrum disorders, creativity, and sleep. 

So maybe the thing that really separates preschool from the rest of schooling is the spontaneity and openness to experience that comes from not having fully developed executive functions yet, and good preschool teachers are good at getting children to open their minds, so to speak.

Well, whatever is going on, there clearly is something going on in preschool, independent of the kinds of skills that are measured by standardized tests, that is having such long-lasting effects.

I can personally attest to this "something-other-than-IQ" effect: I did abysmally on tests when I was young (IQ tests and school tests), and was sent to a "special" school for students with learning disabilities (although, ironically, that school environment more resembled my preschool and I was very disappointed when I had to return to public school after one year). Yet I somehow ended up with a Ph.D. from Yale, where I was a pre-doctoral fellow at the Edward Zigler Center in Child Development and Social Policy and where I learned about the many long-lasting "non-cognitive" effects of the Head Start program. Clearly, other cognitive skills allowed me to navigate all that knowledge and come up with new ideas in graduate school.

But we don't just have to stick with anecdote. The exciting thing is that there is now appearing to be a better appreciation of the important long-term effects of preschool that extend beyond test scores as the outcome measure. This opens up many exciting possibilities for understanding what's so special about preschool."

Read the full article

"What we emphasise in education is generally what we get. When
we emphasise achievement above all else, then we are likely to
produce achievement above all else. High achievement is desirable.
But at what cost? When education becomes focused on production - namely, evidence of demonstrable achievement - then we have lost what it means to be educated.
 
Teaching and learning are not just about achievement or
quality-assured products. They are about care, compassion,
love, hope. Joy, passion, grace, relationship, and more ... They are about people and how we nurture and are nurtured 

on our learning journeys"

Ex Play School presenter Toni Arthur joined fellow presenters Floella Benjamin, Brian Cant and the musician Jonathan Cohen for a discussion on the Radio 4 programme The Reunion. The on-screen talent, together with the woman who devised the show, Joy Whitby, all expressed strong views about the impact of their work, and both Arthur and Benjamin make impassioned pleas for greater clarity and caution when making shows for the youngest viewers.

Vanessa Thorpe at The Guardian picked up the story, quoting the author Philip Pullman and the the psychologists Aric Sigman and Oliver James all as having concerns about the amount of time children are spending watching television and the content of the current programming for children's TV.

Floella Benjamin has now been elevated to the House of Lords and
says she is determined to make her views known:

"I am going to make sure that government starts seeing things through children's eyes. We shouldn't give children what they want; we should give them what they need,"

Listen to the programme

Read the Guardian article

THE UNIQUE CHILD (UQC) NETWORK



The Unique Child (UQC) Network is a new networking site that was launched by Wendy Ellyatt three months ago. It aims to unite people worldwide who are concerned about the limitations of current approaches to learning and education.

It already provides a substantial resource for those seeking to keep up-to-date with the latest thinking in the field and hopes to encourage ongoing dialogue and debate into 21st century solutions.

Membership is free and you can access the site here.