My PowerPoint for the discussion about system leadership in the early years with the primary umbrella group (PUG)

1. Should Early Years
Teachers stay in their
silos?
How a school-led, self-improving system might promote collaboration
across sectors and agencies in the early years.
Julian Grenier, Headteacher, Sheringham Nursery School and Children’s Centre
East London Partnership Teaching School Alliance www.eleysp.co.uk

2. Where are we now? Quantity over quality?
• There has been a substantial increase in the amount of early years
provision, but the highest quality provision is in decline
• Year on year reduction in the numbers of maintained nursery
schools
• 401 are still open, but 205 have closed since 1980 (Merrick, 2015)

3. Where are we now? Quantity over quality?
• Concern about proposals to remove the requirement for qualified
teachers in maintained school nursery and reception classes; concern
that “30 hours” will widen the gap between the most disadvantaged
children and the rest (Sutton Trust, 2017)

4. Where are we now? Metrics over quality?
• Assessment proposals
• Return of baseline assessment for reception, despite significant
amounts of evidence that it will be unreliable, especially for Black
and Minority Ethnic children (Roberts-Homes and Bradbury, 2016;
Grenier, 2014)

5. Where are we now? Metrics over quality?
• Has the current Early Years
Foundation Stage Profile led to an
increase in “teaching to the
assessment framework” at the
expense of early years teaching
which lays strong foundations for
future learning (Characteristics of
Effective Learning) and for the
subject areas in Key Stages One and
Two? How high a priority is Science
in the Early Years?

6. Time to retrench?

7. The EYFS is a single phase experienced in
different places
• Rapid expansion of free places for disadvantaged 2 year olds means
that many are now placed in private nursery settings (PVIs)
• “Nearly one-third of eligible two-year-olds still do not take up their
place, while many of the available places for two-year-olds are not in
the highest quality settings.”
• “One third of staff working in group-based care still lack either English
or Maths GCSE or both”.
• Sutton Trust, 2017

8. Good enough?
• Ofsted (2017) report that they judge 93% of early years providers to
be good or outstanding.
• The Family and Childcare Trust report that local authorities mostly
focus their support on settings rated less than ‘good’ by Ofsted; they
‘are not able to offer wider support to settings who may be at risk of
declining quality between Ofsted inspections’. (Butler et al., 2016)

9. Good enough?
• The implication: fewer than 1 in 10 settings will now receive any
support from their local authority team.
• Many PVI settings experience significant difficulties trying to access
Professional Development: costs, cover arrangements, and a lack of
capacity to plan in the time to support and develop change are all
significant barriers in Newham, for example.

10. Good enough?
• The Communication Trust (2017: 24) found that amongst
respondents in the early year workforce, ‘seventy percent felt lack of
budget was the most significant barrier [to accessing training] with
63% also feeling lack of time was a challenge’

11. • The EPPSE Research found
that there was no
correlation between a
disadvantaged child
attending a school rated
Good by Ofsted, and better
outcomes.
• BUT EPPSE did find a
correlation between
disadvantaged children
attending a school rated
Outstanding by Ofsted, and
better outcomes.

12. Benefits of collaboration between schools
and early years settings?
• “The Teaching Schools Council reported a range of benefits as a result
of collaboration, including improved assessment of children’s early
development, better transition between early years and school and
more frequent and meaningful communications between early years
settings and schools.”
• DfE, 2017: 36
• So we are getting to know what works – but we are still in the early
stages

13. EEF Early Years Toolkit
• Considerable
information
synthesised to
show “what
works”
• But little is known
about how to lead
this type of change
across the diverse
Early Years system

14. The challenge of the self-improving system
“Time has to be found”
• Collaborative practice, especially when it is rooted, as it should be, in
a culture of classroom observation, learning and development,
requires organisational investment … time has to be found for
teachers to work together, to reflect on the detail of their teaching
and pupils’ learning and then (which takes even longer) to shift
deeply embedded practice. (Gilbert, 2012: 13)

15. The challenge of the self-improving system
• Ang and Ince (2017: 17): ’constraints of time, workloads and other
competing demands often got in the way in participants’ engagement
in the programme’.
• If maintained nursery schools continue to face cutbacks and threats
of closure, they clearly will not be in a position to develop new ways
of working.

16. The challenge of the self-improving system
• We need to see the EYFS in a coherent way, cross-sector
• The phase should offer a rich, broad and balanced curriculum…and
not be constrained either by narrow baseline or summative
assessment systems
• Early help in high quality settings will be essential to enable the most
disadvantaged children to access that rich, broad and balanced
curriculum
• …and that means working together across traditional sector
boundaries