Save Our Early Years? We NEED an Education Revolution!

It's The End of Tick-Box Bureaucracy! 

You're a parent, with one of the most future talented astronauts, doctors or police officers in your house hold and all you request is an easy, peaceful and good transition for your child as they swiftly move into a Preschool. Yet, you notice a stumbling block... You notice that, yes that's right, your child may never actually manifest beyond the point of tick-box bureaucracy and a text book approach to educational process. This is because the very key person that is out there, who can assist your child in designing that life, is prevented from even wanting to do an Early Years Diploma let alone being hired by the Preschool itself.

Why is this? Is this because of all of Ofsteds regulations? No, actually, Ofsted do a beautiful job of piecing together the appropriate policies and practices for your child's, not only safety but emotional and educational development for the years to come. However, The Department for Education in the United Kingdom, as well as any governing body that supports them, have made not only a completely interesting logical fallacy but undermining tick-box approach to who settings can hire in the work place. If you are currently (and well done if you are) going through the notion of a Level 3 Diploma for The Early Years work force, quite rightly, you can do so. The problem that occurs, however, is once you've passed your course, you then hit the most baffling, most illogical and actually quite upsetting stumbling block of not being counted in ratio, if you do not have your GCSE Math or GCSE English.

Now, well done to those who do have those 'almighty and most superior' qualifications but isn't this really just the tick-box mentality? Do practitioners really need GCSE Math and GCSE English to be a well-mannered, hard-working, always studying practitioner of Early Years in a Preschool Setting or beyond? 

The highlight here, is of course, good literacy skills, good communication skills and good mathematical skills are needed so that a practitioner can teach the children in relation to the Early Years Foundation Stages Framework. In which, nobody of course would ever, with even one ounce of their soul, dispute. The problem occurs when you have a multi-talented practitioner, who has a vast ocean of ideas, complimenting their skills with different talents such as Neuro-linguistic programming or Non-violent communication; not to mention their hours of Tedx Talks on YouTube SO THAT THEY can not only compliment the Early Years structure but to communicate more effectively, introduce appropriate British Values and Equality in such a way that is fun, engaging and challenging; to only be ever so 'humbly welcomed' by this earth-shattering and rather doomed to succeed policy of "you must have your GCSE Math and GCSE English" (of course you can imagine somebody saying that in a Micky Mouse voice, can you not?) which only applies to a certain age group of practitioners (talk about equality). 

Are parents required to have their GCSE Math and GCSE English to have children? 

Are all practitioners going to be forced by regulation after regulation to ensure that they can teach three year old's the interesting sparkling cocktail of linguistics such as lexical ambiguities or the rather lovely mathematical ideology of computation?

And do all Ofsted inspectors and tick-box government MP's have their GCSE Math and GCSE English, along with years of experience in settings and schools? 

Let's welcome an education revolution. Perhaps, lets even model Finland's education system, which if you look at the statistics recently is going up and up and actually competing in the charts with many global countries which had seriously high success (and they're doing so approaching some interesting holistic ideas). 

We must start looking at ways that actually work, not at ways that make nobody even feel good on paper. There is, in no debate a realistic argument for having this red-tape, alarming restriction on Early Years practitioners. This type of thinking is illogical fallacy and somebody needs to call them out on it. 

Wouldn't it be interesting to promote equality and creativity and individualism to Preschool Children (which is written into the very positive frame-work of the EYFS and rights all across the Western World for children) YET their very own teachers and key people have to follow the opposite approach as a presupposition? Isn't that the highest form of paradoxical irony (talk about ambiguity)?

This is where #SaveOurEarlyYears come in (yes, the hashtag is there on purpose, follow them on Twitter @SaveOurEarlyYrs and follow their campaign at #SaveOurEarlyYears).

This campaign is not alone, this campaign is supported all across The United Kingdom by apprenticeship companies, parents and preschools who collectively want their voices heard around this specific issue. They say this, yes our children need to learn life skills and yes they need to learn good literacy and good mathematics but no that doesn't mean we want our children's liberty, our children's individualism and our children's life threatened and dictated by tick-box bureaucracy. A three year old isn't going to learn about algebra, a three year old is going to learn reciting numbers from 0-10; so shouldn't the focus be on TEACHING Early Years Practitioners 1. good communication skills 2. EYFS related functional skills and 3. how to promote individualism.

This campaign is about repealing and replacing the regulation of GCSE requirements for Early Years Practitioners. It is about promoting the Early Years Foundation Stage and how to communicate that creatively and effectively. The real question here is this, are the government going head-to-head with many authors, many psychologists and many Early Years Practitioners who know their job well, who have done their job for many many years with so much neuro-scientific evidence and psychological theory; to tell them, they are wrong and that they need GCSE requirements to do their job?  

The message is clear, ordinary decent practitioners have been let down by the tick-box bureaucrats and they are right to stand up in their integrity and challenge this requirement. The interesting aspect to this story however is this; that actually, the British Government, Ofsted and The Department for Education are on our side in this battle. They may have made a simple policy error but the error perhaps, if we look deeply into the emotional need area of this, came from a positive loving place.

For many years Preschools are associated with this "Nanny" ideology and that the children go to play. And that of course is a fundamental and solid aspect to their brain development and development as a whole; but it was, let's perhaps suggest, undermined? The challenge was, how can the government and governing bodies support education in a way that promotes the practices in which work but still promote staff pay, promote what they do as a hard-working British Value and do this in a way, which is equal and official like other job roles?

There is no doubt in many peoples minds that this was the correct compassionate response, but it was when looked upon realistically, not the correct policy to promote. You can promote equality of work, you can promote policies and legislation without undermining people in that way, without forcing people out of jobs or even preventing them from one. -- And there are so much better, more innovative and fundamentally correct ways to ensure the children have the right start in The United Kingdom and beyond, than just ensuring practitioners are counted into ratio by their GCSE  Mathematics and GCSE English. 

It's time for change and the simple angelic question is this... How can The Department for Education along with all the appropriate governing bodies, ensure practitioners are secure in their job role and positively promoting Early Years for all parents whilst they invoke a real spirit of individualism and continue meeting the Early Years Foundation Stage for all children attending settings in The United Kingdom? This campaign believes, GCSE Requirements do not fulfil that question or that task and this needs to be repealed and replaced to save our jobs, save our individualism and SaveOurEarlyYears.

We urge this to manifest to ensure that the children of this Great Nation are apart of Liberty and Individualistic spirit because their very own teachers have their own Liberty and Individualistic approach.