The new Early Years Foundation Stage Framework by Alice Francis

Another brilliant idea by the government entangled in a web of confusion and increased workload

The decision to become an early adopter school was an easy one for us at Pinkwell. We knew that a year of ‘playing around’ and speaking to other early years professionals would be beneficial in order for us to get our heads around the new framework. 

As the government suggested the changes to the framework are being made in order to

• Improve outcomes at age 5, particularly in early language and literacy and especially for disadvantaged children
• Reduce workload and unnecessary paperwork so you can spend more time with the children in your care.

These aims sound wonderful! Just what we all have wanted for a long time in the early years. But, does this framework really allow for it? If so, how? 

This year we have had to change our mindset and focus on formal observations, ensuring that formal observations on our children are only captured when they have mastered a new skill or an emerging skill. For years we as early years professionals have had to prove our knowledge and assessment of the children in our care by endless paperwork, observations and assessments, but now we are having to trust our own professional judgements and judgements of our colleagues of our children in order to assess accurately and correctly. 

As the assessment bandings have increased for example from 8-20 months to 0-3 years, 3-4 years and Reception, we have had to shift our finite view of child development from a narrow to a more broad perspective. Trusting that we are able to competently be able to verbally explain the broad ranges of child development in each band. 

Now as a part of the Senior Leader Team at Pinkwell, I do understand the importance of tracking progress and attainment across the year, however, how can you track and measure progress if children stay within the bandings over the course of the academic year or a term? Does this mean there has been no progress? Of course not! But that is what it will show on paper…...unless you change the bandings and make them less broad…. Just like they were before!! This lovely cycle of reflection, change and adaptation we are so familiar with in education. 

Overall, would we change our decision to have been an early adopter school? No, why do you ask. Because without this time we have had this year to reflect, change and adapt it would be hard to support our trainee teachers and NQTs next academic year. 

Alice Francis- Assistant Principal EYFS- Year 1 Pinkwell Primary school 

“Why,” said the Dodo, “the best way to explain it is to do it.” - A blog by Sarah Edwards, Cavalry Primary School

The Elliot Foundation Academies Trust -  East Anglian Schools Create and Design Reflection.

The journey so far...

• How are you working as a trust to deliver Create & Design?

Through the appointment of an Arts Ambassador in every TEFAT academy in East Anglia, we are working as a Trust to deliver the inspirational and exciting ROH Create and Design programme based around the ballet of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland.  The Create and Design CPD training delivered by Sarah Waterman (Project Manager) and Ruth Paton (Designer) has provided the vehicle through which our schools are working hard to put the Arts at the very centre of our curriculum offer.  

Each academy is on an individual journey to achieve the various levels offered at Artsmark (Silver, Gold, Platinum) and the project has provided invaluable CPD opportunities including how to approach designing for the stage with children.   In addition to this, the 10 week unit has given teachers a model delivery sequence for their pupils; one on which future projects can be based. 

As a Trust a particular emphasis is placed on aspiration and how to develop this in all our young pupils.  All levels of this project offer authentic insights into the range of roles within the ROH company, promoting the many career opportunities within the arts.  In the eyes of our pupils and staff, it makes the impossible feel possible!

• What are the intended outcomes in working in this way?

The aim of this work is to develop an effective approach to collective working. We believe that by working together we can increase arts opportunities and develop cultural capital for children; engaging their families and developing teachers as arts leaders.  The work with Sarah and her team has meant we have felt supported every step of the way with the programme being reviewed and tailored to match the developing creative needs of each school.  Arts Ambassadors from the different East Anglian settings meet regularly for peer learning opportunities and to share the creative practice which is taking place in each academy.

• What are your early experiences of working on the programme so far? 

The programme has inspired the development of an Arts community within our Trust which is being used to provide an effective way to share resources, knowledge and expertise.  As the various units unfurl, teachers are (to borrow the words from Alice) going further and further ‘down the rabbit hole’, becoming more and more inspired to make cross curricular links within and outside of their classrooms. Colleagues have been so inspired by Alice’s Adventures that they are extending the theme into creative writing sessions, music, PSHE and dance to name but a few. 

The creative and flexible nature of this programme has meant it is very easily accessible to all pupils. Differentiated outcomes have provided low-threshold, high-ceiling learning opportunities and, as a result of this, awe-inspiring creative designs are flowing from our young people. 

In conclusion, this amazing journey into Wonderland has provided our children with the opportunity to become ‘curiouser and curiouser’ when it comes to the Arts. Watching the children’s excited reactions to receiving the commission letter for the set design brief from Kevin O’Hare, listening to the ballet music tell the story for the first time or standing proud independently presenting their stage model to their peers is absolutely priceless!

Sometimes cracks let in the light

19th December 2020 - The autumn term came to an end and once the structures and routine of work fell away it quickly became apparent that I wasn't very well. Three weeks previously I had discovered some fairly sizeable cracks in a house we bought just 4 months prior. This led to me experincing a difficulty breathing, which quite literally floored me and took me 20 minutes to pull myself around from. Later I discovered that this was in fact a panic attack. I arranged for a builder to come and inspect them (we'd already had a full structural survey) but I immeadietly started catastrophsing. Rationally I couldn't reason why this affected me so much. I'm not some sort of wall fetishisht who couldn't bare the thought of imperfect walls. I had every confidence in the structural survey we'd comissioned. Yet none of this was enough to prevent me feeling like it was the end of the world. 

20th December 2020 - Very quickly it became apparent that I was in crisis. Throughout the night I had alternated between holding my breath to contain the panic and further panic attacks. At 5 am I got out of bed, rang my GP and a mental health hotline. By 9 am I had a plan. 

23rd of March 2021 - Fastforward three months and I'm feeling much better. A combination of medication, Cognitive Behavioural Therapy, phenomenal support from colleagues, friends and Michaela (my wife) and the fact that I'm sheer bloody minded when I set myself to something, means I have managed to change my thinking. 

With time and space to reflect, I realise now that this had almost nothing to do with the cracks. It was just the last problem in a long line of problems which led to me not coping. Priortising the wrong things meant that I had neglected myself and my wellbeing. Consequently my resilience was virtually non-existent. 

Without the cracks I would have never have glimpsed the light. I wouldn't have realised that it was possible to behave differently, to think differently, to feel different. At first, I kept pondering when I would feel like my old self again. Then one day I felt good. Really good. Better than I had done in six months. Maybe longer. But not like my old self. And then it hit me: I was never going to feel like my old self. But that was a good thing. I'd been through a crisis and it had changed me, for the better. It wasn't a pleasant experience, in fact at times it was genuinely terrifying. However if I can apply what I have learnt as a result of it, it will have fundamentally altered me for significant long term benefit. 

Our education system has been through a crisis. The cracks are visible to anyone who has spent the pandemic inside a school. Despite this enormous stress, we've adapted, sought support, supported our communities and coped remarkably well. However I'm terrified for myself, for my colleagues but most of all for the children that we're striving to get back to where we were. For school to feel like it did. If that's what we aim for, I have no doubt that we can achieve it (we're a very determined sector). However that would be a further tragedy.

Through hard work we have strode bravely in a new direction. We have embraced technological and pedagogical change in weeks and months that might have taken years under normal circumstance. All around the country all teachers have been engaged in discussions about curriculum, relationships between school and home hae been strengthened or where necessary forged anew. We're becoming increasingly comfortable with being uncomfortable due to the rate of change we've endured.  If we lose this then we will have lost our best opportunity in many generations to reform our practice. Not just what we do tomorrow, or next week. But that we look to the horizon and embrace the technological and pedagogical developments that best support or learners. 

The stress of the situation has revelaed and widened the cracks that were (mostly) already there. However they've also let in the light. We've glimpsed how different it can be. We've glimpsed what it is like when the reach of our learning transcends the traditional structures that have typically defined what a school is. Let's not resort to filling the cracks. Instead lets look to build new structures and systems that are inherently more resilient, reach further than our school drives, that are firmly embedded in our wider communities and as a result are less likely to crack in the future.