Amanda Spielman’s speech at the Nursery World Business Summit this year marked the first time she had addressed the summit since 2017. It provided an opportunity to reflect on the turbulence and unique challenges that the early years has faced since then.

While Spielman did acknowledge and thank early years educators for their hard work, and commitment to children and families during the pandemic, she might also have reflected on the consequences of all this hard work and commitment.

The impact of the pandemic on EYFS

Evidence suggests that many experienced early years educators felt exposed and vulnerable during the pandemic. Early years provision has been open to all families since June 2020, including during the significant surge of late 2020 to early 2021 that saw much of the education sector close to all but key worker families and vulnerable children.

An Early Years Alliance survey, carried out in January 2021, found that 80 per cent of early educators had felt stressed about their work “somewhat often” or “very often” because of an issue relating to the pandemic, with 70 per cent experiencing anxiety and 59 per cent reporting insomnia.

Vulnerable educators

Many early years educators who were near retirement age, were vulnerable to the virus themselves or lived with someone who was, chose the leave the profession in favour of work that left them less exposed to coronavirus. This has exacerbated the already challenging recruitment and retention situation across the country.

A survey for the Early Year Alliance’s Breaking Point report, published in October 2021, found that 84 per cent of early years providers were finding it difficult to recruit suitable new staff and 62 per cent were aware of staff who had left their setting in the past six months, who had now left the sector completely. Worryingly, 35 per cent of those who responded to the survey said that they themselves were considering leaving the early years sector.

The forgotten EYFS

Perhaps this is what Spielman was alluding to when she acknowledged that the early years sector is often disregarded. She said: “I do know that, at times, you feel overlooked and undervalued and unrecognised for the work you do. It’s absolutely fair to say that early years doesn’t get the attention you’d expect given the size of the sector and the importance of your work.”

If this was her way of calling on the government to address the widespread calls for a fundamental review of the way the early years is approached and funded, then it is to be welcomed by the sector and the Early Years Alliance would gladly work with her to help bring about change.

Individual needs

The speech also included a valuable reminder that early years providers should not be led by the revised Early Learning Goals, as the early years foundation stage 2021 “makes it clear, that those goals are an assessment point at the end of the stage and the EYFS separates this from the curriculum”. This statement should give early years educators confirmation that their curriculum should be built around the educational programmes. Instead of the Early Learning Goals, they should focus on the characteristics of effective learning and be responsive to the needs of each individual child.

This statement should also empower those teachers in maintained nursery provision and Reception classes, who, all too often, report that their provision is required to be structured as a linear journey, focused on achieving the Early Learning Goals.

Focus of inspections

Spielman also addressed early years inspections and restated the approach that emerged under the Common Inspection Framework and was strengthened by the Early Years Inspection Framework. She said that inspections are not about files, documentation and recorded tracking data: “I’m repeating that message to give you and your practitioners confidence that Ofsted inspectors are not looking for files full of assessment evidence on individual children.” Instead, Spielman says that inspectors will focus on observations and professional discussion with educators to get a sense of how well they know each child, their interests, where they are on their learning and development journey and how the curriculum is responding to and extending these.

Also to be welcomed was Spielman’s reference to the importance of physical development and the concerns about obesity data, which shows an increase in the number of overweight 5-year-olds during the pandemic. Early years settings have a role to play in developing positive engagement with nutritious food.

Mental health concerns

But what would have been even better would have been a greater consideration of the mental and emotional impact of the pandemic on young children. This is now creating challenges for early years educators as we begin to see the ripple effects of two years of disruption. Spielman made only a passing reference to some examples of separation anxiety but this needs to be paid far greater attention by Ofsted. It should be given the same level of importance as their understandable concerns about the impact on communication and language development.

New strategy?

One of the most intriguing points made was the reference to Ofsted’s new strategy, which Spielman said will have a specific focus on the early years in the next five years. She said: “We think it’s the area in which our work can have the most impact.” It will be interesting to see what this means in practice. In the five years since Spielman last spoke at the Nursery World Business Summit, we have witnessed a growing gap between the focus of inspection for PVI providers and maintained settings.

Many in the early years sector are concerned that Ofsted does not currently view the EYFS as a single framework from birth to 5-years-old, instead seeing the early years as two separate phases, depending on what type of provision a child is attending. This can most clearly be seen in the very different inspection criteria presented in the Early Years Handbook and the Early Years section in the Schools Handbook.

The importance of EYFS

This was central to the controversy over Ofsted’s Bold Beginnings review in 2017, which was seen by many in the sector as foreshadowing the move towards the more formal approach to the early years seen in the EYFS 2021. Many believe that the new EYFS sees the early years, primarily, as preparation for key stage 1, rather than the most fundamentally important stage in a child’s life.

It is quite right that Ofsted should focus more on the learning and development that takes place in early years provision. As Spielman said, early years inspection used to be more strongly oriented towards childcare. With the Early Intervention Foundation, we now have a rebalanced look at education, as well as care. She said: “We’re now putting due weight on the substance of early education, reflecting the seven areas of learning.”

What remains unclear is which approach to learning Ofsted will expect to see. It will be our task to ensure that the reference to inspectors wanting to “observe a rounded experience for children” hold true across all early years provision. We look forward to working with Spielman and her colleagues to make sure that this commitment becomes a reality.

Michael Freeston is director of quality improvement at the Early Years Alliance