If you are a parent, a teacher, a nursery worker, a childminder, a grandparent, an aunt, an uncle, or you just like children and think childhood is a good idea, please sign up to the openeye petition on the petitions site.
It reads:
We the undersigned petition the Prime Minister to commission an urgent independent review of the compulsory Early Years Foundation Stage (EYFS) policy framework, and to reduce the status of its learning and development requirements to ‘professional guidelines’.
and the supporting information is
We recognise the government’s good intentions in its early-years policy-making, but are concerned about the EYFS legislation, which comes into force in England next September.
Our concerns focus on the learning and development requirements, as follows:
1. They may harm children’s development
2. They will restrict parents’ freedom of choice in childcare and education
3. Their assessment profile requirements may place an unnecessary bureaucratic burden on those who care for young children
4. Recent evidence suggests that government interventions in education generally may not be driving standards up and may be putting too much pressure on children
The request I received (after I’d signed up (with a typo in my name 😳 )) is:
When signing up to the petition please state your interest i.e mother, nursery
teacher, trainer, child-minder, grand-parent etc, etc. It will help the Government
see how widespread concern is about this legislation.
Thank you
Anna Firth
Open EYE Campaign Coordinator
Please spread this request around blogs, forums, mailing lists and anywhere else you can think of – the drive is on to get this publicised and as many ppl as possible signed up as fast as possible. Let’s let the government know that they can’t mess with our children’s lives without us fighting back.
ETA does anyone here read alphamummy and feel up to getting the readers there involved? Or Mumsnet? I’ve pretty much given up on forums recently (can’t think why) but from what I remember appearing and starting a thread doesn’t always go down as well as it might, whereas forum regulars starting a thread about this kind of thing will get more buy in.
Feel free to leave a comment linking to any of the mentions you make so that everyone else can come along and join in!
Oh, and tag your posts with things like Open EYE – let’s get this up the search rankings for Open EYE and EYFS.
Campaign site can be found at Open EYE
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