Primary Education Shake-up in England

Americans aren’t the only ones expecting national-level policy changes in early childhood education. In England, schools are preparing for what could be the biggest shake-up in primary education in decades, according to news reports. In early December, Sir Jim Rose, an advisor to English Schools Secretary Ed Balls, issued an interim report on the state of English primary education. His recommendation: Shift away from teaching about discrete subjects and introduce more opportunities for children to play and develop cognitive and motor skills.

The final recommendations of the Rose Review, as his report is called, are not expected until later this year and, if accepted by the government, they won’t be in place until 2011. But, the new ideas have already caused a stir in England. Not only do they represent a major shift away from the National Curriculum of 1988, a set of concepts that are supposed to guide the instruction of all English students beginning in preschool. These changes come with a concerted emphasis on early education and early education alignment. On that last point, especially, U.S. policymakers should take note.

Many of the recommendations in the Rose Review focus on children aged 5 and 6 — the two years known in England as Key Stage 1. The report recommends scrapping the current curriculum that specifies 12 subjects for mastery, such as history, geography, music and art, and replacing it with six more broadly drawn “areas of learning,” including “human, social and environmental understanding” and “understanding the arts and design.” This change would mean that Key Stage 1 would look less like the Key Stage 2 curriculum, which is for ages seven to 11, and align it instead with the curriculum for the public preschool program, called the Early Years Foundation Stage (EYFS). The preschool curriculum features more play-based learning and is also built around six areas of learning and development, which are similar to the six “areas of learning” proposed by the Rose Review.

What is driving these changes is growing evidence (found in this report from the U.K.’s National Foundation for Educational Research and elsewhere) that a child’s transition from preschool to the first year of formal schooling can be abrupt, unsettling and foreign to young children who are suddenly expected to sit still for longer periods of time and offered less time for play. The Rose Review says schools can ease this transition by extending play-based learning into the upper grades.

The Rose Review makes another interesting suggestion regarding the early education continuum. It suggests that writers of England’s national curriculum consider the primary grades in two-year phases, clustering 5 and 6 year olds, 7 and 8 year olds, and 9 and 10 year olds. While it is hard to say how this would look in practice, the intention is to promote a smooth, progressive inter-grade curriculum. It is an initiative similar to preK-3 alignment efforts and “early education academies,” which have been shown to improve elementary student achievement in the U.S.

Another recommendation in the report: Better communication between preschool and Key Stage 1 classrooms. English preschool students receive assessments of their academic and social skills (called “Profile” assessments), but these are passed on to Key Stage 1 teachers only half the time, and few teachers find them useful. Rose’s fix? Find ways to increase usage of the profiles, encourage more contact among preschool and Stage 1 teachers, and have preschoolers visit Stage 1 classrooms to minimize apprehension about the transition.

The preschool-to-kindergarten transition is a big issue in the U.S., too. In 1998, the National Education Goals Panel prodded educators to smooth the transition to help achieve its goal of having all children kindergarten-ready. Some states and school districts have developed their own transition programs. They include calling parents ahead of the first day of school, holding open houses and distributing flyers. Yet these efforts are often too little, too late. Many are hampered because children come to kindergarten from a diverse array of preschools and registration continues late into the summer. Teachers often do not know who their students are until a few days before classes start, if then.

Alignment should apply to foreign language learning too, according to the report. English students should start learning foreign languages earlier, it says, beginning as early as age 7 instead of 11, as is current practice. Examples of elementary-school instruction for languages like Spanish and Mandarin can be found around the U.S., and some of these classes are even offered in preschools. Yet often these lessons occur infrequently, like once a week, or they last just one year. Young children can absorb foreign language skills like sponges, but they can lose them just as quickly if these skills are not reinforced throughout their academic career. While schools should be allowed to choose which and how many languages they teach, the report suggests that children study a single language over four years so that “there is a very clear expectation that children will make significant progress in their ability to communicate in the language.”

Officials from both sides of the political aisle in England have qualms about Rose’s recommendations, according to media reports. Conservatives worry that re-aligning parts of the curriculum with preschool years could erode standards, and Liberals want teachers to have more freedom to set their own priorities, though the report does appear to give them control over how they teach. Could a similar debate be kindled here in the United States as we find new approaches to linking preschool to elementary education? Until we know how proposed reforms will look, it’s hard to say, but “building up” from the early years is a strong step in the right direction.