A powerful lobby of education experts called today for an "urgent review" of the new national curriculum for all under-fives, warning it is a fundamentally flawed concept that will harm children's learning and trigger unforeseen difficulties.
The group, which includes London schools 'tsar' Tim Brighouse and Margaret Edgington, an early years consultant, is deeply concerned about the government's early years foundation stage (EYFS) legislation, which becomes law next autumn in England.
In a letter to the Times Education Supplement today, the childhood development experts say a more formal curriculum would inhibit the way young children learn naturally and precipitate problems later on.
"Legally enshrining a model of child development allows no space for very different but equally plausible developmental frameworks," says the group. Not only are the age bands and associated goals "arbitrary", they claimed. but also imposing them in a legal framework could have "profound civil rights implications". It risks substituting bureaucracy for care, they say.
The experts, who are highly critical of the government's drive to force three and four-year-old children to read, write and do maths, also include leading child psychologists Richard House, Penelope Leach and Dorothy Rowe, and the author of Toxic Childhood, Sue Palmer.
They are launching a campaign - Open Eye - to voice the opposition they say many feel towards the legislation but are unable to articulate.
The group wants to promote learning through a subtle balance of free play, movement, rhythm, repetition and imitation, rather than an overly formal or cognitively biased curriculum.
"An early 'head start' in literacy is now known to precipitate unforeseen difficulties later on - sometimes including unpredictable emotional and behavioural problems," they say.
EYFS would require all children to be continuously assessed according to 13 different learning scales, including writing, problem solving and numeracy. The framework would apply to all pre-schools, including state, private and voluntary.
The experts object to the new curriculum being compulsory, as well as the 'by stealth' manner it will be introduced. It will leave little choice for parents who do not want their children in formal learning early on, will "distort" the natural learning experience, and children will end up knowing how to decode print but not understand the words.
Liberal Democrat children's spokesperson, Annette Brooke, said: "The government risks damaging the next generation's education if it pushes through its prescriptive idea of teaching children at a very young age.
"There are serious concerns about the long-term effect of forcing children to learn how to read and write too early. Rushing children to pass tests while they are still so young may harm their educational abilities when they grow up," she said.
"Ministers must look again at their plans for early years education to ensure that children's chances, in this crucial time in their development, aren't wasted."
Text of the letter, published in TES, November 30 2007
We share a profound concern about England's early years foundation stage (EYFS) legislation, which becomes law next autumn. We believe it to be fundamentally flawed in conception, with net harm likely to be done to children due to the framework's contestable assumptions and unintended consequences.
Young children learn most naturally and effectively through a subtle balance of free play, movement, rhythm, repetition and imitation. An overly formal, academics and/or cognitively biased curriculum, however carefully camouflaged, distorts this learning experience; and an early head start in literacy is now known to precipitate unforeseen difficulties later on, sometimes including unpredictable emotional and behavioural problems.
Legally enshrining a model of child development allows no space for very different but equally plausible developmental frameworks. The age bands and associated age-related goals in the EYFS are also quite arbitrary, with little if any coherent developmental rationale; and to impose a compulsory legal framework on what are pre-compulsory school-age children may well have profound civil rights implications.
Caring for babies and toddlers is deeply personal, involving immeasurable qualities such as attunement and responsiveness. A one-size-fits-all framework that needs copious record-keeping risks substituting bureaucracy for care.
So we call on the government to commission an urgent independent review of EYFS, allowing diverse conceptions of child development to flourish without undue compromise, and to reduce the status of EYFS to professional guidelines, free of legal compulsion, so safeguarding the professionalism and freedom of practitioners who have principled objections to the framework.
Many feel unable to speak out against EYFS for fear of career resprisals; others feel helpless to influence government thinking. So the Department of Children, Schools and Families may be unaware of the level of opposition. We call on practitioners, academics, administrators, teacher-trainers and parents to join our Open Eye campaign for the very heart of childhood.
· For more details or to join the Open Eye campaign, email: firstname.lastname@example.org