Sir, The Children’s Minister Beverley Hughes makes the most of a pretty appalling hand in her valiant attempt to defend the Early Years Foundation Stage (EYFS) framework (letter, Dec 1), but she simply can’t camouflage the glaring inconsistencies and erroneous assumptions of her position.

First, far from the policymaking process having been open and democratic, the impression was created that exemptions would be allowed from the framework. Only very recently, for example, has the Steiner Kindergarten movement been informed that there will be no exemptions from the new compulsory framework for approaches which have a coherent and principled objection to it.

Next, where is the evidence that the Government has “the wholehearted backing of the vast majority of early years specialists”, as Hughes claims? In Open Eye, we believe that it is only now that a genuine, informed debate can take place about the efficacy or otherwise of the framework; and we intend to commission a detailed questionnaire survey of the field in order to test Hughes’s assertion.

We keep hearing the cuddly mantra “play-based approach” being used to describe the framework; yet the definition of play repeatedly advocated in the documentation is one of structured or directed play — that is, activity that is designed by adults to create outcomes that the adults think the children should be achieving. This is not only adult-centric teaching rather than child-initiated learning, but it is a fundamental misunderstanding of the nature of free, truly creative play.

The tensions and contradictions of the minister’s position emerge when we read first that the framework “allows children to learn and develop at their own pace”; then that children are “observed to make sure that they are developing normally”. In other words, we’ll let children develop at their own pace, but only as long as it is normal according to the State’s definition of normality.

Dr Richard House

Open Eye Campaign core group

Research Centre for Therapeutic Education, Roehampton University

Sir, Beverley Hughes writes that the EYFS was not introduced by stealth. This assurance is no comfort to us, parents who have chosen an alternative form of education for our children because of principled objections to the constant government interference and relentless target-setting culture imposed upon state primary schools. We were not consulted or given a choice as to whether to allow the State to follow our children into the environment we have chosen for them; we were not even told about it until the period for consultation was long past.

While the minister assures the press that the EYFS is flexible and non-prescriptive, our children’s teachers are being told that they must alter their way of teaching to accommodate its prescriptions, even though it conflicts with their, and our, chosen educational philosophy. In October they were told by representatives from the Department for Children, Schools and Families that there would be no exemptions from the EYFS, and that kindergartens which do not comply with its prescriptions will be closed.

However Hughes chooses to define it, the EYFS is to us an unwanted imposition and a breach of our right to choose.

John and Kate Dougherty

Stroud, Glos

and 30 others

Sir, Apart from its Orwellian overtones, this approach is, quite simply, misconceived. The reason that many middle-class children are ahead of those from deprived backgrounds is not because their parents put pencils in their hands at an early age. It is because the children are read to and live in an atmosphere where books and reading are part of everyday life. Trying to introduce deprived children to letters and numbers at this stage is to miss this point completely. It is the parents who need early training, not their children.

What is more, this strategy completely ignores the existence of learning thresholds. The ability to take in new ideas develops at different times in different children. Until a child is ready for the concepts involved in reading and writing or numbers, attempts to teach them will simply create blocks, sometimes lifelong. This is, no doubt, part of the reason why the Scandinavian approach delays these subjects until the great majority of children are ready. And it is why this scheme is certain to make things worse.

Dr Hugh Saxton

Stockbridge, Hants

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