Childcare or Education during their Early Years: what’s the difference?
When it comes to children younger than five, we tend to think more about childcare than education. When parental leave ends, we plan who will ‘care’ for the child in our absence, not who will ‘educate’ them, opting for anything from informal support from relatives to day nurseries, au pairs and nannies. Our main concerns are usually (and understandably) the overwhelming cost of childcare and finding an option that suits the whole family. But in focusing on these matters are we inadvertently overlooking our children’s education – and does it really make a difference?
Language matters
The little funding that’s available for three and four-year-olds is called “free childcare” on the government’s website, not “free education”. And because we’re used to hearing the word ‘childcare’ applied to the 0-5 age group, it’s only natural to look for a childcare option where your child will be happy, safe and cared for. If it’s successful, we tend to keep that arrangement until four or five, when school becomes compulsory and education apparently becomes more important.
Yet in the extensive research that’s been conducted into early childhood, nothing significant has been revealed about the age 4-5 that suggests it’s suddenly the right age to shift from care to education.
In fact, there’s a strong consensus that at four or five years old children are both:
too young to start formal learning (in the sense of spending much of the day at a desk reading, writing and having their time predominantly directed by an adult)
too old to start learning (in the sense of laying the foundations for academic success, and a happy and fulfilled life)
In a nutshell, the research tells us this: “The future success of every child is in many ways determined before he or she turns eight. During those early years, how that child learns and develops – mentally, emotionally and socially – is critical. This isn’t a theory. It’s a fact, based on decades of research on the positive effects of quality early-learning experiences on children’s lives.” – NationSwell, 2014
The reasons why compulsory school begins at age 4-5 in the UK have nothing to do with research outcomes and everything to do with our cultural and political heritage. The decision was taken in the 1860s, based on typical Victorian values: the younger children could start school, the sooner their mothers could work in factories, and the sooner the children themselves could finish school and also work in factories. A joyful picture! Around the world, most countries (66%) decided that six was an appropriate starting age, and a few (22%) opted for the age of seven.
All of this isn’t to say that ‘childcare’ isn’t important. The need for most parents to find a childcare solution absolutely remains. And care – in the sense of children being well looked after, safe and happy – must always come before education. Indeed, the brain feeling safe and secure is a pre-condition for learning.
But simply thinking in terms of childcare, to the exclusion of education, leads to a huge lost opportunity for children of preschool age.
“Early childhood education is the key to the betterment of society.”
The early years influence our future
High-quality education in the preschool years is crucial for mental health, life satisfaction and well-being in adult life, as well as academic success throughout the school years. During this period, a child’s brain undergoes rapid development more profound than at any other time in their life. Humans are born curious, with powerful educative instincts, and we can optimise this particularly sensitive period of development by applying special pedagogical principles in the early years.
The Early Years Foundation Stage in the UK identifies three prime areas of learning and development: personal, social and emotional development; communication and language; and physical development. They are critical for influencing success later in life and they are time-sensitive. If these skills are not securely in place by the age of five, they will be more difficult to acquire and their absence might hold the child back in other areas of learning.
Early years research has established that language development before school forms the backbone of later literacy development. Most language learning occurs between one and four years, with children acquiring the majority of necessary basic phonology, syntax and vocabulary during this time. Before learning to read or spell, children need a securely developed understanding of spoken language, vocabulary and listening comprehension skills. These are best picked up in a language-rich environment via songs, nursery rhymes and stories, as well as plenty of time with adult-child and peer-to-peer interactions.
It’s not just language that is established in the early years: children’s understanding of number during preschool is consistently associated with their mathematical achievement in primary and secondary school, too. Mathematical achievement in turn is consistently found to be the strongest predictor of children’s overall school achievement – and their success in entering the workforce. A few key areas of preschool mathematics stand out as having particular predictive importance. These are:
Understanding the value of numbers to 10 (not beyond)
Comprehending number symbols and understanding the relative values of numbers
Recognising small numbers of things without counting
Counting out the number from a group
Pattern awareness
The research is solid
Since I’ve made numerous references to studies, it's worth pointing out that the field of early childhood education and care is a well-established area of academic research. Studies are peer reviewed and meet international standards of scholarship. Where I’ve referred to claims about the long-term impact of early years education, these are based on longitudinal studies, where the same groups of children are observed repeatedly over long periods of time – well into adulthood. If you want to read more about the research approaches used in early childhood education and care, the OECD has a good summary.
Perhaps the most important area of learning in this age group is related to the development of the executive functions of the brain. This includes a child’s ability to hold information in their mind, focus their attention, regulate their behaviour and plan what to do next. We know that early advances in executive function skills lead to superior academic attainment, and are remarkably accurate predictors of cognition and performance at GCSE level. In short, assuming there are no traumas, once a child is ahead they will stay ahead.
And these executive function skills are not just important for academic success. Various reviews point to the predictive importance of self-control and self-regulation in childhood for many domains of adult life, including mental health, life satisfaction and wellbeing, income and labour market outcomes, and physical health. Self-regulation helps children behave in socially acceptable ways, make friends, express emotions appropriately and become more independent.
In short, self-regulation is probably the foundation of all the most important things we wish for in our children’s futures, both in school and in life. And the critical period for developing self-regulation? The early years.
But the importance of education in the early years doesn’t mean we should rush children into formal schooling. To be effective, our approach needs to be tailored to this age group. This is the time to lay the foundations for academic and holistic skills, not to jump ahead.
“Childhood is not a race to see how quickly a child can read, write and count. It is a small window of time to learn and develop at the pace that is right for each individual child. Earlier is not better.”
Early years is not a competition
As parents of babies and toddlers, we know that within a certain range there’s no long-term merit to our children reaching certain milestones sooner rather than later. There is no evidence that a child who starts walking independently aged 11 months will be a more physically competent adult than one who takes their first steps at 17 months. It would be laughable to think of a teacher trying to teach a group of one-year-olds to walk, a group in which some are already walking, some haven’t mastered standing independently and some have only just started crawling.
We need to trust the evidence when it comes to getting ahead with teaching reading, writing and mathematics skills, too. There is no suggestion that early gains in these areas have a long-term benefit and, perhaps more importantly, most children don’t yet have a secure foundation in all the prerequisite areas. Writing, for example, combines many skills and relies on development in areas not specific to writing, like fine motor skills (enough strength and control of the muscles in the fingers and hands), the ability to concentrate for periods of time, memory to generate ideas and remember what sounds look like when written, and the language to express themselves.
A skilful teacher will notice that a child they are working with is ready and interested to learn to write, and will capitalise on that with the individual, teaching the correct pencil grip and letter formation. But for the most part, they will focus on laying secure foundations for writing with all children, for example playing with playdough to strengthen finger and hand muscles, and role playing writing shopping lists to develop the motivation to write.
“Play is the highest expression of human development in childhood for it alone is the free expression of what is in a child’s soul.”
Play is the key
Research on successful early years outcomes, both in the short-term and for later success in school and as adults, has identified that young children learn best when they are playing. Whether children are initiating their own play, actively supported by adults or participating in focused activities with adults guiding the learning, children need to see what they are doing as play. Play has been proved time and again to be the most powerful, intrinsically driven vehicle for learning in an early years setting.
When children initiate their own play, the role of the teacher is to observe and reflect, making skilful decisions about when to intervene to support or extend what they are learning, and when to hold back for fear of interrupting. It is also the role of the teacher to ensure an enabling environment, providing resources and play opportunities that are appropriately matched to the children’s individual interests and needs.
As well as being given the opportunities to lead their own play, children at this age benefit from opportunities to learn through first-hand experiences, alongside being shown how to do things, having conversations, and taking part in activities planned by adults to introduce or practise particular skills. Such adult-led activities are not play, but they are most effective when they are playful, with elements of choice, hands-on experience and connections to children’s interests.
An effective early years teacher, as well as being positive, warm, playful and building secure connections to provide care, also needs to be an expert in early childhood development who can apply their knowledge to make decisions in the moment that best support each child. That’s a lot to ask for.
“Learning and teaching should not stand on opposite banks and just watch the river flow by; instead, they should embark together on a journey down the water. Through an active, reciprocal exchange, teaching can strengthen learning how to learn.”
Early years education is a balancing act
Extensive early years research has identified a number of statistically relevant characteristics that equate to ‘high quality’ for preschool learning environments. The first is a setting that integrates education and care, aiming to develop the whole child. The others are:
Well-qualified teaching staff
High adult-child ratios
A largely play-based, well-planned learning approach
Parent involvement
The Effective Provision of Pre-School Education project was the first major European longitudinal study of a national sample of the development of 3-7-year-old children. It concluded that settings that have staff with higher qualifications have higher-quality scores, and their children make more progress. Quality indicators include warm, interactive relationships with children, having a trained teacher as manager or headteacher, and a good proportion of trained teachers on the staff.
Despite this well-established relationship between staff qualifications and quality of early childhood education and care, and in spite of cumulative reforms, qualification levels still vary across the sector. The fundamental problem is well expressed by Steve Barnett, the director of the National Institute for Early Education Research in the U.S.A: “Good early care and education requires a lot of adults – so there are not too many kids per teacher – who have a good education and are also reasonably well compensated, in order to get the quality you want. You put those things together, and it’s expensive.”
In the absence of a system of universal, high-quality preschool education in the UK, each family can only do its best. Use any funding entitlement you have access to and find a setting near you that has as many of the characteristics of high-quality early years education as possible while still being within your budget. For many people, unfortunately, the funding entitlement will not offer enough support.
This was my motivation in the foundation of Two Hands Preschool, where we offer both the highest quality preschool education and care in line with the latest early years research, as well as reserving 20% of our places for those who cannot afford the fees.
