Understanding Early Years Policy

Damien Fitzgerald, Janet Kay

• Publisher: SAGE Publications Ltd
• Year: 2016
• Print ISBN: 9781412961899
• eBook ISBN: 9781473967984
• Edition: 4
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Elementary Education

Previously known as Baldock: Understanding Early Years Policy is in its Fourth Edition. This best-selling textbook continues to provide fully updated coverage of all the latest developments in early years policy such as the revised Early Years Foundation Stage (EYFS), SEND Code of Practice 0-25 years and the Children and Families Act 2014.

Exploring how policy is made, implemented, analysed and developed over time this book presents a complete overview of early years policy and an evaluation of its ongoing impact on practice.

This Fourth Edition has been significantly updated to include:

• Full coverage of the 2010-2015 UK Coalition Government.
• A comprehensive timeline of Early Years policy
• Guidance on how to research policy for yourself
• More international case studies, now including the US and Scandinavia.
• New materialon how to manage policy changes as a practitioner
• An expandedfocus of the devolved countries within the UK

This text is an essential read for early years students at all levels, and early years practitioners.

1 What is Policy and Why is it Important?

This Chapter Explores

• the role practitioners can play in influencing policy development and implementation
• the significance of policy
• three levels of policy-making: the basic assumptions about values and facts that usually underpin policy decisions; the broad objectives; and the detailed arrangements required to meet those objectives
• the characteristics of policies
• written statements of policy
• controversy in the debate on policy.

Working with young children every day is fascinating and demanding. It is easy to see why so many early years practitioners remain entirely focused on the task in hand and do not spend time discussing policy, which is typically seen as something produced by people in suits somewhere else that just has to be implemented. A common joke has the person in charge explaining: ‘There is no reason for it – it’s just our policy’. Those who are actually working with children and their families may feel they can do little but put up with the consequences of changes in policy. Thinking about them and their implications is for someone else to do.

This book takes a different approach. We believe that the policies adopted by those in power make an enormous difference to the way practitioners are able to work. We also argue that policies are not just conjured up out of thin air. People who make policies have reasons for what they do. We may not agree with them, but they are reasons, not mere whims. We need to understand those reasons in order to implement more effectively those policies that appear to be useful and to challenge more effectively those that do not. We want to argue against the sense of helplessness. Practitioners can do more than just cope, particularly when policies are not seen as appropriate or effective.

Among the sources of policy are what practitioners themselves have to say, and they can have a considerable impact on the way that policies are implemented. An effective practitioner will give time to thinking how he/she can help policy develop in useful directions. This can take varied forms, from responding to consultations at a national level to implementing policies at a local level in a way that takes account of the local context.

What is policy?

Levin (1997) points out that the word ‘policy’ is used in several different ways and identifies four of these. The examples given are not from Levin himself, but have been chosen because of their relevance to our overall subject:

• A stated intention – for example, in 2013 the government consulted on its intention to simplify the childcare registration system and strengthen the approach to safeguarding. This was confirmed in 2014 and led to a number of changes, including the updating of the Childcare Regulations (2014) and the amendments to the Early Years Foundation Stage (EYFS) with a new statutory version from September 2014.
• Action taken on an issue by those with responsibility – for example, the issuing of new guidance on the transition to the Special Educational Needs and Disability (SEND) system covering children and young people aged 0–25 years old. Sometimes the word ‘policy’ is used to cover all the actions the government or some other body has undertaken in a particular field. Thus, we speak of ‘the government’s SEN policy’, meaning everything it has done in relation to SEND.
• An organizational or administrative practice – for example, if the government sets up a funding regime for early years settings, there will be policies governing the type of setting that is eligible to receive the money.
• An indication of the formal status of a course of action – policies on, for example, childcare are to be found in documents that have some status, such as a government Green Paper or a manifesto published for a general election by a political party.

Although the word does carry different meanings and it is important to be aware of these, there are common elements. Levin states that any policy will entail:

• belongingness: a policy will belong to some body or another – a political party, a government department, an individual setting, and so on
• commitment: a policy entails a commitment to a particular approach or course of action on the part of that body
• status: the fact that a proposal or set of ideas is described as a policy suggests that it has been formally adopted in some way by the body that owns it
• specificity: a policy will entail specific ways of dealing with specific issues, although the extent to which it is specific on the detail will vary.

These four attributes of policy reflect the fact that policies are considered. People do not usually do things in a completely random way in their everyday lives. The same is also true of policy-makers. We define ‘policy’ as: an attempt by those working inside an organization to think in a coherent way about what it is trying to achieve (either in general or in relation to a specific issue) and what it needs to do to achieve it. And an organization can vary from a large government department (e.g. the Department for Education) to a professional association (e.g. British Early Childhood Education Research Association (BECERA)) or to a school or private nursery. Social policy is also set in an historical context, which has been influenced by successive governments since the inception of the welfare state and in an increasingly complex environment with devolved national and local governance (Blakemore and Griggs, 2013).

Such thinking is conducted at three levels (although any policy statement may focus on one or two of these):

• basic assumptions about the relevant facts and the values that should inform the approach to them
• broad objectives
• detailed arrangements required to meet those objectives.

In many statements of policy, the underlying values and principles about what are described as the facts of the situation are presented almost as factual, as though there can be no argument about them. This is because such statements usually come from people in charge and, however much they may have consulted people before issuing the document, they now want to get on with things. It should become clear, in the chapters that follow, that the facts of the situation and the values people bring to bear on them are constantly changing and are often matters of controversy. It is also the case that the distinction between values and facts is far from clear much of the time and people may state as matters of fact things that merely reflect their personal beliefs. In short, we should not take for granted the basic assumptions about values and facts that usually underpin policy decisions, even when there is wide consensus on these, perhaps especially when there is consensus.

In the same way, we need to look critically at the second level of policy-making – the broad objectives. Objectives have to be defined clearly, otherwise the policy-makers do not know whether they have been successful and cannot think clearly about the further measures their objectives might imply. However, clarity is not always in evidence in actual policy documents.

Policy-makers will often argue in favour of a policy on one set of grounds while also having other considerations in mind. For example, both the Coalition and Labour governments from 1997 to 2015 often adopted policies that have restricted the powers and autonomy of local councils. There is an inevitable tension between central government, which wishes to set policies for the nation, and local authorities (LAs) that have to implement policies (especially as the political party controlling a local council may be the one in opposition in Parliament). Yet, it is difficult to identify a situation where a government has stated explicitly that restricting the autonomy of local government is one of its major aims. Instead, governments are more likely to argue that proposed policies are designed to secure greater fairness, effectiveness or efficiency in the delivery of services.

Clarity can also be undermined by ambivalence on the part of policy-makers. For example, a policy designed to give more families access to affordable childcare may look to give parents greater freedom of choice or to reduce dependence on benefits by assisting parents to return to work (so that it is expected most parents will take up these opportunities). Yet it may be the case that the policy is not described consistently in terms of either of those alternative objectives in spite of the fact that they can be in conflict with each other.

In a large organization, such as the national government, there can also be actions in different areas of policy, which may or may not lead to coordinated actions in different areas of the education system. For example, at the time of the 2015 general election, the Conservative Party, who secured a small majority and formed the subsequent government, had policies (enacted through the parliamentary process) intended to promote:

• the expansion of funded childcare provisions in England for families with working parents to 30 hours (for families where a parent does not work or with high income levels, the level of funded provision will remain at 15 hours for 38 weeks of the year); as childcare is devolved, measures in other countries of the UK are dealt with by devolved government
• the provision of more and clearer information on childcare provision in each local area
• the intention to speed up the adoption process for children and the expectation for local authorities to work more effectively together to remove geographical boundaries
• further devolution of powers from central to local government through elected mayors, mainly in city areas, but with potentially extended boundaries across traditional local authority areas.

At the same time, it intended to fund the growing demand for post-16 education among young people, partly by depending more on employers as trainers and employers of this group through apprenticeship schemes, as announced in the July 2015 budget. A case could be made for each of these policies, but there is often tension between them, as discussed further in Chapters 8 and 9. For example, the majority of work is organized on a local authority basis but there is clear evidence of these barriers being eroded in some areas (e.g. adoption). There are also changes in governance at a local level with local devolution, including the election of mayors with substantial powers over many aspects of local services, focused on large cities in the north of England.

The third level of policy-making is that of the detailed arrangements that need to be made if the broad objectives are to be achieved. The law may have to be changed. Organizational structures may have to be put in place. New funding may have to be found. Particular efforts may have to be made to secure support for the broad objectives. Chapter 5 gives many examples of these and other aspects of implementation of policy.

There are always choices to be made in determining what kinds of arrangements will best meet the stated objectives. For example, if it is decided to make it easier for parents to afford childcare, this can be done by:

• measures (such as Child Tax Credit) to support family income and support parents to find the money for childcare
• subsidies paid directly to independent childcare providers or subsidized provision by local authorities or other parts of the public sector.

Whichever of these is chosen (and governments often adopt measures that have elements of both approaches), the arrangements are likely to be connected with the way in which broad objectives are conceived and with objectives in other fields (such as general economic policy).

Policy-makers might also want to offset possible disadvantages in one set of arrangements by creating others without changing the first. For example, the recent Conservative–Liberal Democrat Coalition Government sought to increase access and improve the quality of childcare in England by:

• raising the status of the workforce by introducing new qualifications and enhancing the standard of level 3 qualifications (e.g. through Early Years Teacher (EYT) and Early Years Educator (EYE) status)
• making the EYFS a statutory requirement and putting a greater emphasis on learning and development (which is increasingly expressed in terms of school ‘readiness’)
• focusing on the quality rather than the quantity of practitioners through amendments to required staffing ratios in early years settings
• improving the regulatory regime by simplification of the Ofsted registration function and focusing on child outcomes more explicitly in inspection judgements
• offering more parental choice in choosing childcare.

So far, this chapter has focused primarily on a discussion of government policy, but if policy is the attempt to think coherently about objectives and the means to achieve them, then policy-making is something that will occur at every organizational level.

Politicians in government will have their own policies, but the UK is not a tightly controlled hierarchical organization where the prime minister decides what he wants to happen and everyone does as he wishes. As described in Chapter 4, the policies of gover...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Publisher Note
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• About the Authors
• Acknowledgements
• Preface
• Glossary
• Useful Websites
• 1 What is Policy and Why is it Important?
• 2 The Development of Early Years Policy Pre-1997
• 3 The Development of Early Years Policy from New Labour
• 4 Influences on Early Years Policy Development
• 5 Implementing Early Years Policy
• 6 Early Years Policy in Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland: The Impact of Devolution
• 7 The International Dimension of Policy-Making
• 8 The Impact of Policy
• 9 Analysing Policy
• 10 Conclusion
• References
• Index