LISTEN: How to improve early years education for all with Gill Jones MBE, Jan Dubiel, and Lyn Challender
Education Development Trust (EDT) recently welcomed Busy Bees Nurseries’ Gill Jones MBE, early childhood education specialist and consultant Jan Dubiel, and Early Years Professional Development Programme (EYPDP) Director Lyn Challender, for the latest episode of our Brighter Futures podcast, focusing on how to improve early years education for all.
A child’s early years are arguably the most important in their development, so the quality of early childhood education (ECE) should be paramount.
Whether we have consensus on what is needed for this vital age group, the priority areas of improvement, and how we address inequity in early learning experiences are all conversations at the heart of episode 9 of Brighter Futures, hosted by EDT’s Education Director, Tony McAleavy.
EDT regularly host inspiring and insightful podcasts, covering a wide variety of topics relating to education, as part of their ‘Brighter Futures’ series. For this episode, two external guests were invited to join EDT’s Education Director Tony McAleavy including Group Chief Quality Officer and Safeguarding Lead at Busy Bees Nurseries, Gill Jones MBE, and ECE specialist and consultant Jan Dubiel. Programme Director for the EYPDP, Lyn Challender who has a 30-year career in the early year and primary sectors, also joined the podcast to speak about why ‘quality’ needs to be at the heart of early years provision and how she thinks that can and needs to be achieved.
The episode covers:
- the strengths found in early years education, and priority areas for improving it
- whether we have consensus on what matters most in this age range
- the value that should be placed on that which we cannot quantify
- inequities in access to enriching early learning experiences.
“I am making an assumption that most people want most children to have a similar experience of a curriculum in the early years. If we make that assumption, we cannot then make the assumption that all children need the same delivery of that curriculum.”
Gill Jones MBE
“Not everything that can be counted counts, and not everything that counts can be counted. Sometimes we assess things that are easy to measure in early years, rather than things that really matter.”
Jan Dubiel
“In terms of areas for development, the key word is quality. Volume of childcare is not the answer if we don’t have good quality.”
Lyn Challender
You can listen to the full podcast in the following places: