A national curriculum for babies

Telegraph ^ | 11/9/05 | Sarah Womack and Liz Lightfoot

[beaversmom]

Every baby attending a day nursery or who is in the care of a childminder will be taught a new national curriculum devised by Whitehall, it was announced yesterday.

Childminders and nurseries will be under a legal duty to teach the Early Years Foundation Stage to children "from birth" until the age of three.

Inspectors from Ofsted will check that the children are developing in four "distinct curriculum headings". This will include becoming "competent learners", for which they will be expected to have mastered such skills as comparing, categorising and recognising symbols and marks.

It is the first time that the Government has prescribed what children should learn under the age of three, when they enter the Foundation Stage of learning which lasts until the end of their first year at school.

Teachers and parents expressed alarm at the regulation of child development. One group called the new curriculum "absolute madness".

The National Confederation of Parent Teacher Associations said: "We are in danger of taking away children's childhood when they leave the maternity ward."

Margaret Morrissey, its spokesman, said: "From the minute you are born and your parents go back to work, as the Government has encouraged them to do, you are going to be ruled by the Department for Education."

The plan was announced by Beverley Hughes, the children's minister, as the department published its Childcare Bill. She said it would provide "a coherent framework that defines progression for young children from nought to five".

The curriculum had been drawn up after research showed that education at an early age helped children develop faster socially and intellectually, she said.

"We are not talking about sitting very young children in chairs and making them learn numbers and letters where that is inappropriate."

The framework will have the same compulsory force as the national curriculum, which lays down what children learn at school.

Miss Hughes said that young children's learning deserved "parity" with that at primary and secondary level but denied that this would be at the expense of play.

The department said the curriculum would be based on the four stages of development contained in Birth to Three Matters, an advisory document published two years ago which nurseries and child minders are not required to follow.

"It contains commonsense ways to observe a young child's development, not saying that babies should learn maths," a spokesman said. "It is just good practice to say that nurseries should be observant to how the children are forming words and make sure that they are developing as they should."

The curriculum will divide a baby's development into four broad areas: heads up, lookers and communicators; sitters, standers and explorers; movers, shakers and players; and walkers, talkers and pretenders.

There will be four aspects, each containing a check list of components: a strong child, a skilful communicator, a competent learner and a healthy child.

Competent learners must be able to make patterns, compare, categorise and clasify. They should be able to imitate, play imaginatively with all the senses, make their own symbols and marks and recognise that others might use them differently.

The guidance on which the curriculum will be based says: "Creativity, imagination and representation allow children to share their thoughts, feelings, understanding and identities with others, using drawings, words, movement, music, dance and imaginative play."

Inspectors will want to see if pupils are meeting the four components of "a healthy child", including being able to express "joy, sadness, frustration and fear, leading to the development of strategies to cope with new, challenging or stressful situations".

The Professional Association of Nursery Nurses said the new curriculum, which aims to integrate child care and education, must be flexible.

Under the Childcare Bill, local authorities will also have a legal duty to ensure that there is enough child care in the private, voluntary and maintained sector to meet the needs of working parents, particularly low-income families.

However, councils will not receive any more than the present £600 million.

[clee1]

It's a Brave New World, where incompetent gooberment bureaucrats will now start screwing up your life in the cradle.

[thecabal]

Next Step: your baby goes straight from the hospital into the Socialist Borg Nursery. And don't even think of trying to have your baby at home, you terrorist. You and your kids are property of the State.

[Giant Conservative]

Is this for all of Great Britain?

[aardvark1]

I'm sure they will have to teach AIDs related stuff, homo tolerance, and how to put on a baby condom, probably milk flavored.

[weegie]

No.
Only England and Wales. Northern Ireland tends to follow the English model but has no obligation to do so.
The Scottish education system is fiercely independent

[KateatRFM]

Well of course there's an easy way around the Brave New World for Baby -- if you decide to have a baby, make plans with your husband that you will stay home and bring it up yourself. Having babies is a choice these days, and if you don't want your baby raised in a hatchery, you will have to grow up enough to make alternate arrangements.

And I'm not talking about the whiney "direct grants to parents" that the Canadians are demanding -- subsidies from their childless neighbours (and even their neighbours with five children of their own) to bribe them to stay home and bring up their kids. I'm talking about budgets and the sacrifice of daily lattes, gym mmbership, the third car and one of the boats.

[Rakkasan1]

cradle to grave...

[Hegemony Cricket]

yikes

[metmom]

"We are not talking about sitting very young children in chairs and making them learn numbers and letters where that is inappropriate."

"It contains commonsense ways to observe a young child's development, not saying that babies should learn maths," a spokesman said. "It is just good practice to say that nurseries should be observant to how the children are forming words and make sure that they are developing as they should."

Curriculum is about teaching not observing. These folks are dancing around the issue and lying through their teeth in an attempt to make it palatable to the parents. This would require "school" to "teach" these youngsters these "skills" so you would then have mandatory school right out of the hospital. Just another ploy by the socialist/educators to get their hands on peoples kids at their most impressionable age so they can brainwash them. And just what do they plan to do if the parents refuse to co-operate or if the child "fails"? Brave New World indeed. It's good to read that there is some common sense left in those people who are objecting to it.

[KateatRFM]

The things I'm concerned about them teaching these kiddies are the things they taught in Brave New World. Elementary Class Consciousness, Sex Education, "Ending is better than mending", etc. Get a baby at "age nought" and teach him to love living with his friends in a dormitory and call life at home with Mom and Dad (or two moms or a mom and three dads or whatever) to be nasty and isolating and boring ... teach her that "everybody belongs to everybody" ... teach him that these are 'our' toys and clothes, and ownership is evil ...

It's the last thing in the world to worry about whether they are being taught to read and write. You are talking about molding young minds from birth to follow your path through life. If you'd rather leave the State to do that than do it yourself, you no doubt love what's happening in France right now.