Talking Early Years with June O'Sullivan

Slow Pedagogy 

During Covid, the LEYF staff running our 15 nurseries for key workers had a call with me at 3pm every day.  I looked forward to our chats and it wasn’t long until they we talking about  how the reduction in numbers of children, time to play, less curricular demands and  fewer wider issues was positively impacting on the children and they in turn were slowing down the pedagogy to allow the children time to just enjoy being children.

Let’s think about slowing down early childhood in the world of fast living and undesirable excess  is the message.  Let’s ignore the government or business ethos of targets and consumerism. It isn’t working!  No one is satisfied! 

Have a listen and tell us what you think. 

Baby, It’s Time  

Do you think babies are a focus of care and education policy enough?  Do we have a baby policy blind spot?   We think so!  

This is the subject of my conversation with Sally Hogg, Senior Policy Fellow at the Centre for Research on Playing Education, Development and Learning better known as PEDAL. 

Why has this issue become so important now?  Well, because of the speed of the childcare expansion. From September, babies from nine months will be able to access a nursery place. Getting it right from conception to two years is more crucial than at any other stage of learning. The brain development in babies is startling. Just imagine the baby brain as a firework of synaptic connections, fizzing across brains and forming strong cerebral pathways.  

 If you are interested in the Under 2's and what makes great practice, listen to my conversation with Sally Hogg and share it widely.  You know the  drill! 

It’s fitting that this podcast is being aired on International Children’s Day because Sir Al is a huge advocate for children over his very busy and noteworthy 50 years.  His message is powerful, and he pulls no punches about his frustration over the failure of our country to take seriously the importance of children, and particularly those in the Early Years. 

“Every child should be given the resources to achieve her or his full potential. Now, why don't we have that being articulated, let alone actioned? It is utterly dire in my view.” 

He despairs at the serious erosion of the basic humanity of the caring services and his new purpose is putting compassion back into compassionate care that we provide for people, especially children.  

“There is a mismatch between our wonderful science and all of our services and the dismal failure of politicians to recognise the importance of children “.  

“…chiselled in letters of stone over every Department of State should be this. We need healthy, educated, creative, resilient and happy children, with the life skills to become the productive adults of the future and the competent parents of the future.”  

Reflecting on Every Child Matters which he describes as the world's best policy programme for children (one for which he proudly shared across the world) – it was the brainchild of the Labour Party,  then destroyed by a triple whammy. The Coalition government dismantling it without any serious debate, then austerity followed (and its dreadful impact on families), followed by COVID. Effectively, it was the destruction of the world's best policy programme for children which he despairs does not appear to be top of the Labour manifesto.  

We discuss the low birth rate, the old age dependency ratio between working adults and the elderly, fertility rates, immigration, the science of attachment, brain development, synaptic connection, his book The British Betrayal of Childhood and much more… 

  
Listen to his call to action and get involved.  Start by listening and sharing this podcast… 

In this podcast with Prue Leith, we discover that Prue’s approach to life is summed up by her autobiography, “I'd Try Anything Once” and the more she talks the more you believe it! From posh white girl in South Africa  to judge on Bake Off,  food dominates Prue’s career. Her passion is undimmed as is her patience with the stupidity of politicians. She provides an entertaining but thoughtful summary of her efforts to put small children's health and access to food right at the centre of modern politics. We might even end up with a Masterchef for Nursery cuisine. 

Listen to Prue’s stimulating take on what we should do!

“I see myself as the Benjamin Button of Education” In conversation with Dr Ger Graus. 

The power of play is recognised within the Early Years sector as essential to children’s development. Playing is a child’s right and is our main teaching tool.  As Friedrich Froebel said so eloquently back in 1837, “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.” 

Yet today, we are limiting children’s opportunity for play more and more.  I still hear people’s stories of how children as young as three are told to ‘Finish your work and then you can go and play’ or ‘you are behind with your work, so you miss playtime’. 

My podcast guest is Dr Ger Graus OBE who was the first director of KidZania, which went on to be one the fastest growing global educational entertainment brands, with 28 locations around the world.  I first met him in 2016 when I visited KidZania to see how we could adapt the experiences for children aged three and four. We were defeated by the safeguarding implications of letting children have the freedom to explore without adult supervision.  

For Ger, Early Years is not a place to drop off a child for a few hours to get a reprieve for parental responsibility but a place of education and care, with staff doing their best to educate children. A child is everyone’s responsibility! He argues that our job is to create an education which helps children navigate the technological revolution. To do that, Ger is keen that we agree what 10 experiences every four-year-old should have. 
What do you think? 

According to Barnardos, it is estimated that there are up to 310,000 children every year with a parent in prison in England and Wales. And for those children, this can lead to poor physical and mental health and significant trauma, especially as some of them will have witnessed some of the criminal activity or even the arrest of their parent.  It is not unheard that no one collects a child from school because they have been convicted at a court hearing earlier in the day.  Can you imagine the impact on a child?

These conversations led to an introduction to Andy Keen-Downs, CEO of PACT.  He described the125 year-old children’s charity within the prison service as a well-kept secret! In this podcast he tells us more about PACT and the National Prisoners Helpline 0808 808 2003 which provides lots of support and information for families and  had 30,000 calls over the past 12 months: Prisoners' Families Helpline (prisonersfamilies.org). There is some support for older children and professionals: For children | Prison Advice and Care Trust and For professionals | Prison Advice and Care Trust but this podcast is all about what we can do in the Early Years to help. Here is a taster statistic that will make you think!

Six out of 10 boys with a father  in prison  will follow their father into prison, and they're more likely to go to prison than to go to university.

One of the LEYF managers recounted a story that sadly supported this statistic. She remembered one of the children aged 4 announcing that her Dad was in jail and when she grew up she would go to jail too.  She said:

            “I will be a burglar because I am very good at creeping around and climbing”

At LEYF we have now developed a pack for the Early Years sector in collaboration with PACT to help people respond when they know or suspect that a child’s parent may be in prison.  It is such a sensitive situation requiring deep levels of compassion to navigate because people remain very ashamed of the situation.   We know that when families are able to support the prisoner , reoffending drops by 39%, which is significant for the children living in those families. Our job is to remember that we must never write off children of prisoners and reject the expression of  ‘the apple doesn't fall far from the tree’.

Every child has promise and if you believe this and you want system change then listen to the podcast!

My first Podcast of 2024 is an interview with the very delightful Matt Arnerich, Director of Brand & Comms at Famly – an Early Childhood Platform that bridges the collaboration gap between the grown-ups who raise young children. It supports around 6,000 Early Years providers and families to communicate, share information, run their business and learn new things. Whilst we don’t subscribe to Famly’s platform at LEYF, we are very supportive of its work. 

I wanted to talk to Matt about his international perspective of Early Years Education and Care (EYEC), what he thinks are the benefits of digitalisation for pedagogical practice and clarify the difference between digitalisation and digitisation (who knew?!). I was also keen to hear his take on AI in the Early Years, which is something I am very interested in understanding better.  

As background, Matt’s international take on the Early Years began at home with his Mum working in the sector. His family heritage stems from New Zealand, Europe and a bit of Irish!  He has lived in Denmark for the past seven years, his partner is from Finland and he is working with Famly across the UK, Denmark, Norway, Germany and the US.  

We started our international exploration in Denmark, a country that is often cited in a somewhat rose-tinted way by the press as a great example of providing access to affordable high quality EYEC. The Princess of Wales visit there in 2022, as part of her campaigning for The Royal Foundation Centre for Early Childhood, highlighted the emphasis the Danes place on the importance of childhood and playing freely away from panicky parents. Here, they actively want their children to enjoy being children and be able to play indoors and outdoors all day long. They start school aged six but nothing in their PISA scores suggests that this approach is failing them. In fact, they are much higher up the scale than the schoolified US and UK.  Matt quoted the great Sir Ken Robinson who reminded us that a 3-year-old is not half a 6-year-old, right? 

To hear about the other countries and discover the huge funding crisis in the US, the shift in Government expectations in Denmark and the sheer size of certain church groups in Germany which run the kindergartens, you will have to listen to the full podcast. 

Do you know the difference between digitalisation and digitisation?  
It’s a subtle difference but it is  significant in terms of the outcome. We digitalise tasks to make them simpler like using programmes on iPads to capture observations with a Grammarly, checking to correct the write ups. Digitisation is taking something in the real world and making it digital for the sake of making it digital. Like trying to have a programme to record fridge temperatures which would be done ten times quicker by just writing it on a sheet of paper and pinning it to the fridge. The warning here is to understand the difference and don’t cause yourself more aggravation by complicating a task that is better on paper or using digitalisation to raise parents’ expectations. You end up a slave to your iPad, failing to see what’s happening around you because you are bent over the iPad writing up what has happened earlier! 

Finally, I asked Matt about AI (Artificial Intelligence) because I know he is exploring how to use it more efficiently and I am learning more and more about it so I can use it sensibly, and not be scared of it. I suggested he might consider developing some webinars about using Chat GPT which I think would be rather helpful. 

In a world that is now undeniably digital, with disruptive technologies arriving at breakneck speed and continually changing how we live and work, the need to stay connected and collaborative has never been greater. This not only makes us more productive and efficient when done correctly, it allows us the time to focus on what matters. 

Workout to Help with Salas… and Bring Kindness to the World 

Life is very serendipitous and leads to meeting some very engaging people who want to do something helpful with their time on this earth. Salas Baldas is one of these people.  I heard about his work from a friend of mine who attended his workouts during Covid lockdown and then I discovered how he developed these workouts to support people all over the world through his project ’Workout to Help’. 

Salas was born in Guinea Bissau in West Africa, moved to Portugal, Lisbon when he was about 10 years and now lives in south London. His story is about how to turn something you enjoyinto a way of becoming.  It is how simple ideas can be used to support people who are struggling through connections and conversations. He is the antithesis of the view shared by Mohamed Yunus Link that indifference is the enemy.  

After the pandemic lock-down rules were lifted, Salas and his friend, Nico took their van and travelled to Africa,Brazil and Peru to support local individuals and families in need of help.  For example, they provided a wheelchair to a family in Peru and repaired a house in Dominica which included giving the family a front door and windows so they felt safe.  His ’Workout to Help’ has now become a network which he is funding from the profits of his new clothing line.  

His delightful new cartoon book,  Workout to Help traveling the world with Salas: Guinea-Bissau (and just published on Amazon) tells of his personal story which is beautifully illustrated and teaches children what kindness and empathy can look like. 

Salas is a great role model for our children and, over the next few months, will come and tell his story to schools and groups. I suggest you connect with him, not least because his sheer positivity and joy will light up your day, but his message about the need to do better for the world should resonate with all of us . Listen to his podcast and connect. 

Sarah Ronan, Director of the recently formed Early Education and Care Coalition (EECC) joined me to talk about the EECC. As a fellow Cork woman, she got a warm welcome!

The Early Years sector is often criticised for not always speaking with one voice, a consequence of being part of a very fragmented sector. The Coalition has been developing over the past year and is the brainchild of Lucie Stephens who some people will know from her work at the New Economics Foundation.

The Coalition has been set up to raise the importance of the Early Years; a cohesive voice to send a strong message to government and political parties that you cannot separate our interests, as we all want the best and most sustainable policy decisions to secure the sector. This must be of benefit for all children and reduce the way current policy is creating a gap between affluent and disadvantaged children. As Sarah says:

The Coalition commissioned a report from Claremont Behavioural Change Agency which looked at the public perception of the sector was very interesting, explaining that most people understood childcare but struggled with the concept of Early Education and Care, a finding that was supported by the Royal Foundation Centre research last year.  Given 42% of people said childcare would influence their choice of votes in the next election then maybe the Coalition can help. I look forward to joining them at a panel at the Labour Party Conference this weekend.

If you are interested in a helping shape a plan to creating a national Early Years strategy and committed to working together then listen here and consider how you and your wider circle can step in and step up.

Solitaire Townsend is a remarkable woman. She is one of the leading international voices on communicating sustainability. In 2001, she co-founded Futerra, one of the few UK communications consultancies to specialise solely in sustainable development and corporate social responsibility. She has worked with senior management on internal and external initiatives across the UK, Europe and North America, implementing real and impactful solutions for a broad range of businesses, governments and NGO's including Unilever, Barnet Council, Shell, DECC, DFID, Defra and Greenpeace. 

She is also a member of the UN Sustainable Lifestyles Taskforce and a member of the Green Alliance. In 2008, she was named one of fifteen 'London Leaders' by the Mayor of London. 

Her TED Talk in October 2021 asked the audience ‘Are ad agencies, PR firms and lobbyists destroying the climate?’ 

Soli’s work is not directly linked to children but she agrees that sustainability must begin with  our youngest citizens. She recognises the importance of positive narratives in a world where studies such as The Lancet Planetary Health (2021) are finding more and more children are suffering climate anxiety.  

I firmly believe we can all make progress if we combine the forces of education and business to create a strong and positive narrative. Yet in doing so, children need each and everyone one of us to step up in our own way and begin paving the way to solving the biggest crisis our planet has ever faced. 

If you want to find out how you can do this, listen to this podcast