How the Foundation Stage Has Emerged

Examine the history of provision for 0-5 year olds in Britain showing how the foundation stage has emerged and discuss its strengths and weaknesses.

Early year’s education, in Britain has traditionally been child centred, emphasizing the child's individual interests and experiences along with integrated learning (for exam-ple, the three ‘R’s) and free play. Historically, there has been very little government intervention in pre-school provision, however, in order to improve the quality and in-crease the standards of early childhood establishments government intervention has amplified considerably. As recently, the government has introduced a framework for an early year’s curriculum, a redefined child-centred educational form, and initiated reforms for improving standards. This essay is exploring the history of provision pro-vided for 0-5 year olds in Britain, focusing on the how the foundation stage; the cur-rent provision provided, has come to emerge. Discussing how provision provided has changed over time, the influences and reasons for these changes and also the strengths and weaknesses of the previous, present and future provision provided for 0-5 year olds.

Organised provision for the care and education of young children begun to appear in the late eighteenth century, generally on a charitable and voluntary basis, early pio-neers such as Rachel and Margaret McMillan (1869-1931) in the UK, Maria Montes-sori (1870-1952) in Italy, and Friedrich Froebel (1782-1852) in Germany among many others, shared a belief about the importance of the ‘early years’ for learning and development, and have all had their influence upon the provision provided for young children. The earliest example of provision for young children (catering for children between the ages of one and six) is Robert Owens infant school in New Lanark; set up in 1816. Owen based the schools curriculum on similar principles to that of the Jean Pestalozzi School which emphasized the importance of the children learning through experiences and deplored rote learning (Curtis and Boultwood 1962). The New Lan-ark School advocated free and unstructured play, and did not press for press for for-mal teaching, closely relating to the ideologies of Froebel who believed that education should be led by the interests of the individual child, and stressed the importance of structured and educative play. It is this example (of early childhood education), stirred interests into early childhood education and founding of infants schools in Britain.

Since the Education Act of 1870, five has been the school starting age in the UK; children are not required to start school until the term after their fifth birthday. Despite this, large numbers of young children, under the age of five, were sent to school in Britain during the latter part of the nineteenth century, to protect them from the ‘poor and unhealthy physical conditions of slum houses and dangerous streets’ (stated in Young). This was because the Education Act of 1870, and subsequently 1880, set five as the suitable age to begin compulsory schooling but did not set any lower age limits. Moreover, the starting age was not based solely on the importance of children’s learn-ing, but ‘was intended to provide a few years’ schooling before children reached the age when they could begin paid work’.

There was a rise in the percentage of children attending school between 1870 and 1900; however, in 1920 this percentage again dropped. The sudden drop in young children attending school in the early 1900s was largely the result of a report, by five inspectors from the Ministry of Education (1905). The report was on the conditions in elementary school classes, which were intended for children aged between three and four. The inspectors described the conditions in such settings as very unsuitable for young children, and recommended that provision for these children needs to be sepa-rate of that of older children and that different teaching approaches need to be used. Katherine Bathurst, an out spoken inspector of that time, advocated provision for the under fives should have ‘a playroom atmosphere, informal methods [of teaching]’ (Bathurst, 1905, cited in Blackstone, 1971, p. 29). She proposed a system of national nurseries, designed specifically for young children.

This paved the way for educationalists, as Margaret (1869-1931) and Rachael McMillan, who from the early 1900s onwards argued for the creation of an approach to the education of young children, which emphasised their physical care and devel-opment. In addition, they campaigned for, and were successful in introducing free school meals under the 1906 Provision of School Meals Act. Believing that undernorised and unhealthy children find it more difficult to achieve, the McMillan’s also introduced regular medical inspections for school children by opening