As we rush to the end of a very speedy 2012, I thought I would review the year through the lenses of my 42 blogs. From RiRi to the Spice Girls and Bedouin Tents to Scottish Islands, it’s clear that LEYF has had an eventful year.

Back in January 2012, we started the year with interest rate rises, higher unemployment, problems in the Eurozone, freakish weather and the promise of deflation. Quite frankly, we needed neither Nostradamus nor the I Ching for predictions on how to navigate the year, as such things seem to be regular occurrences nowadays – and all evidence indicates that 2013 will begin along very similar lines. These realities have meant a year of keeping our noses at LEYF just above the waterline, with a great deal of pressure on the front line in our nurseries to keep occupancy up and debt down. Not the easiest task, even with the stalwart support of our Central Office team. Consequently, the debate about child poverty remained live throughout the year and featured in my blog at least six times. Just to remind you, my I Ching reading for LEYF for 2012 said:

Work on what has been spoiled;

Has supreme success;

It furthers one to cross the great water,

Afterwards there is order

Not so far from the truth then as we consider progressions and challenges over the past 12 months!

Earlier in the year we began preparing for the Olympics and, like any good organisation, we had a plan. Luckily, we never had to use it. Instead, like James Bond we whisked across London on foot, bus and ‘Boris Bike’  – and in the case of our Facilities Manager April running, as we brought our own special light (in the shape of our very own Olympic-style torch) to every LEYF nursery, and in so doing created a piece of art that exceeds anything the Turner Prize has ever honoured.

The issue of feminism was raised early this year with the celebration of Little Women’s Christmas in January. While we focused on parents continually throughout the year, we also examined the role of mothers who got bashed for wanting to work. Our annual Margaret Horn Lecture was given over entirely to examining how we can help women excel in the workplace. The criticism against mothers felt like a re-run of the 1970s, prompting this working mother to resurrect my old Spare Rib and Virago books. Ah, such nostalgic memories for the days of ‘Reclaiming the Night’ marches in London.

Humanising capitalism was also a key theme of the year. Occupy London made its rather biblical mark on the steps of St Paul’s cathedral in direct response to the moral failing of banks, as they thrived to the benefit of overpaid staff and the detriment of the poor. Social Enterprise featured in the media as a palatable version for transforming the way we operate. We were proud therefore to be the first social and childcare business to win the ‘Transformational Change’ category of the National Business Awards; a sign of things to come perhaps? Much will depend on the growing availability of social finance and the jury is still out on that.

Leadership was a subject of debate as Boris retained the crown of London’s Mayor and Bob Diamond lost his sparkle. For a while we were able to think more publicly about the importance of good, wise and steady leadership. Sadly, with the phone hacking scandal, the Leveson Report and poor leadership at the BBC unmasked, we saw and heard a lot about unsustainable leadership and not enough about how to lead with integrity, honesty and as a true custodian of the nation’s interests. Radio 4′s Women’s Hour seems to be trying to re-balance this with a bid to name the 100 most influential women leaders. I just hope they think outside the box and not rely on the same old… (Question Time comes to mind!)

Meanwhile, there were changes in Early Years – such as the new Early Years Foundation Stage (EYFS), a fresh Ofsted regime and the change of Government Minister. Other things remained unchanged however, particularly the issue of how to make childcare affordable. This unfortunately remains unanswered and unanswerable, unless we strip down the effective management of funds and its reallocation against societal objectives of what we want for our children.

My blog will always feature things we do and try-to-do at LEYF. Some areas of note have included developing the notion of cultural capital, particularly with regards to language, art, music and food. Just last week, the Ofsted report said that children from deprived homes were still not achieving a level playing field with their more advantaged peers. It also indicated the gap could be as wide as 19 months by the time they get to school. It’s a shocking statistic and one that everyone at LEYF feels we can positively affect. Hence our growth strategy, with the aim of replicating what has been dubbed ‘the LEYF sum’; where a child spends a minimum of 15 hours a week for 36 months in a high quality LEYF nursery, with additional support for parents to help develop a good home learning environment. It was the theme of our heart-warming Staff Conference where we were joined by six Scottish colleagues and Paul Brannigan, lead actor of the Angel’s Share - a film that summed up the plight of so many young people who had a poor start in life. It’s certainly one for the Christmas present list.

So as this year draws to a close, our nursery children, parents and staff are all enjoying festive concerts, parties and family events to mark the Christmas season. As part of this, our nurseries are visiting local care homes to allow the children in our care to bring songs of good cheer to their older neighbours. It truly gladdens my heart, as loneliness, isolation and the separation of the generations are the biggest failing of our modern society.

Next year maybe the importance of childcare will be on everyone’s lips. Amidst scenes of the Christmas nativity and the expectation of the birth of a Royal baby in the New Year, our future as a nation may yet take on a golden glow. I wonder, will the three wise men include Mr Gove, our Secretary of State for Education, bringing with him gifts of frankincense, gold and myrrh – or better still, funds and positive policy? Will our star rise in the sky and shine a light on what we do? We will have to wait and see. In the meantime, I best be quick if I’m to write that letter to Santa…

Merry Christmas to you all and a Happy New Year!

…till 2013.

An invitation to speak at the Early Arts UnConference at the MAC in Birmingham led to my reflecting back on why I started to investigate cultural capital as a core of the LEYF learning approach. This was long before the days of the EYFS, so the raft of information, guidance and research we have since developed was in short supply. However, Europe and New Zealand was a great source of information for me, and I looked there for proof that children would benefit greatly from a culturally enriched environment.  My hypothesis was that creativity was built by being with people who could translate it in many ways.

It all became real for me when we introduced classical music at sleep time, and a little girl with a fairly difficult home life sat bolt upright when she heard the first blasts of Handel’s Water Music, saying “It’s like God’s music”. She was an immediate convert to Handel, and I was an immediate convert to the notion of cultural entitlement.

It is true that most learning happens at home, but a good education can open your eyes and bring new ideas and a new world into that home. Education is part of culture and cannot be divested from it, as culture is transmitted through children. It’s why the home learning environment is a key element of the LEYF social impact model.   I was lucky to get a good convent education, and the nuns (for all their faults and fury) introduced me to Jane Austen, Michelangelo, Stravinsky and Miles Davis. This opened up a whole new world for me which I never would have received at home;   my curiosity then grew and developed, albeit more slowly for genres such as opera and modern art, and more quickly for dance and literature.

So what does a cultural entitlement look like? Howard Gardner summed it up perfectly when he said that every child has a spark inside them, but it’s our responsibility to find what will ignite that spark.

I hopefully regaled the Birmingham audience with stories and photos of how to enrich and embed daily activities with a touch of magic. Extended language, arts and crafts, music, singing, poetry, drama, food, outings, galleries, museums, theatre, art exhibitions, science, shopping and eating;  all daily activities with which a stretch and a twist can open a new world for our children. The core impulse for a human mind is to learn and use all kinds of experiences, and then to learn what other people label them. Fostering creativity is fundamentally important, because creativity brings with it the ability to question, make connections, innovate, problem solve, communicate, collaborate and to reflect critically. All of which is vital for all children to be able to play their part in their rapidly changing world.

According to the Henley Report, by the time a child has reached seven years, the minimum level of cultural education they should have experienced through school is to have regularly read books and taken part in storytelling, arts and crafts, singing, music and dance. They should also have visited art galleries, theatre, cinema, museums, libraries and heritage sites. The new EYFS states that expressive arts needs to contribute to children succeeding in the three prime areas. (PSE, CLL and Physical in case you had forgotten!)

The importance of having a creative staff who can embellish and fascinate children by using imagination, creativity and all the arts available as part of children’s daily lives is what matters. Research is particularly clear about the importance of language. We know that children who have a grasp of formal language, rather than being restricted to informal language, are at an enormous advantage in the education system. Low level and limited vocabulary and poor management of grammar limits children and reduces their expression of analytical and abstract ideas and arguments. We also know reading is key to helping us transmit content, vocabulary and styles of expression which in turn helps develop linguistic fluency, a fundamental skill and one that is well rewarded in school.  We know that broadening a child’s horizons and experiences, which extend and challenge them, takes them further up their zone of proximal development.  So who are we to limit children by being unable or unwilling to teach and extend their vocabulary, literacy and world view by failing to use the vast array of creative resources, opportunities and teaching methods available to us?  Why should Hannah be deprived of ever hearing “God’s Music”? A learning approach needs to be based on the principles of cultural entitlement, not as a nice thing to do now and then, but as the basis of all that goes on in the nursery.

There are two lasting bequests we can give our children: one is roots, the other is wings.

Hodding Carter

Let me know your thoughts, and how you make cultural capital an every day reality in your setting, in the comment area below.

Every year we hold our annual LEYF conference when we celebrate our achievements over the past 12 months and present our plans for the year to come. The conference days always balance up-beat speakers with active involvement, and over the years we have formed a strong relationship with our Scottish colleagues – especially Alice Sharp of Experiential Play. This year is no exception.

Good relationships within and outside the organisation remains a constant of LEYF, and the conference definitely reflects this – starting with the venue. For the second year, we have chosen to work with Pimlico Academy, which is a perfect venue and reflects our positive relationship with the local secondary school.

Our conference this year aims to tell the story of why we want to help build a better future for London’s children, and how our model helps us achieve such an ambition. Key aspects of the LEYF model are central to the day.

To help us explore this, Alice Sharp has invited colleagues from the Scottish Islands to demonstrate their multi-generational approach, along with their exciting take on home learning. Anne Patterson, Quality Improvement Officer for Early Years and Primary, Kathleen Johnson, Head Teacher Early Years and Primary Islay and Jura, and Stephen Glenn Lee, Head Teacher of Early Years and Primary Isle of Luing and Easdale, will help inner London nurseries become the centre of their own urban villages as these have done on their small islands.

To give a small geography lesson, the islands of Islay and Jura are the most southerly of the Inner Hebrides. Both islands, though distinctly different in character, have stunning scenery, abundant wildlife, varied terrain and are famed for malt whiskies, wintering geese, miles of sandy beaches and friendly locals.

The Isle of Luing is 16 miles south of Oban, and 3 hours from Glasgow. A beautiful island with a strong and caring community, Luing measures some six miles long by one-and-a-half wide and lies north-south across the mouth of Loch Melfort on the Argyll coast. It is generally low lying, with a maximum height of about 300 feet, and has a population of around 200.
Easdale is a small island in Argyll on the west coast of Scotland, 16 miles south of Oban. Easdale has no cars, roads or street lamps. The island has a population of around sixty people and is the smallest permanently inhabited island of the Inner Hebrides.The World Stone Skimming Championship has taken place annually in September on Easdale since 1997.

As part of the conference we have invited Paul Brannigan of the Ken Loach film The Angel’s Share. Brannigan plays new dad Robbie who, narrowly avoiding jail, vows to turn over a new leaf when a visit to a whisky distillery inspires him and his mates to seek a way out of their hopeless lives. It was a film recommended to me by Detective Inspector John Carnochan who heads up the Scottish Violence Reduction Unit. He spoke at our Staff Conference last year and the staff were blown away by his stories. They were very touched by his story of David which, like in the film, shows what happens when the system fails a young boy from a very troubled background, and how the intergenerational cycle of poverty and deprivation is reaffirmed by the system.

Brannigan will be speaking about the importance of the home learning environment from his own personal experience, and how as a new Dad he wants to make sure he gives his son the best start in life. I suspect that, given his next film is with Scarlett Johansson, he is on target to succeed.

Paul is unusual however, and while few get to his giddy heights, he is admirable in wanting to speak up for parents who like him have had a challenging start and want to do their best for their children. Our staff conference this year will support the research which underpins the LEYF philosophy, namely that we only make an impact if we do things that create and embed cultural and social capital by changing the way parent’s help children learn at home.

We have it in our power to build the world anew.”

Thomas Paine 1737 -1809

To celebrate 25 years of wedded bliss (well, most of the time), my husband and I headed off on a week of cultural events, stopping in the little town of Lewes.  I was surprised to discover that Thomas Paine, author of The Rights of Man (1791), had lived here from 1768 to 1774, before heading to America – where he not only changed their constitution but was also central to naming it the United States of America.

For those of you less familiar, The Rights of Man posited that people have natural rights along with responsibilities, but can revolt if the government is failing to safeguard those natural rights and interests. Paine also argued for the ‘Rights of Infants’ to be free from abuse and poverty.  It’s  a modern message and probably worth a re-read, especially for those of us advocating on behalf of children.

I was equally reminded by my long-wedded husband that Thomas Paine also featured in one of his favourite Bob Dylan songs, As I went out one morning.  That set the tone of the CDs for the rest of the journey; Mozart to Bob Dylan, both of whom would feature in my Desert Island Discs (having already submitted my collection to the reader’s choice, with a million to one chance they will be played on June 11^th). Now, Desert Island Discs being one of my favourite programmes on Radio 4, I have on occasion written to its guests as a direct response to hearing their world view on air; one in particular being Professor David Phillips, president of the Royal Society of Chemistry.  I asked his opinion about how we ensure science remains a crucial focus of the Early Years curriculum, as the basis for inspiring interest and excitement in the subject by our youngest children.

At LEYF, we recently conducted a piece of action research in this very area, led in the main by two exemplary practitioners, Maria Anemouri from Eastbury Children’s Centre Nursery and Michelle Samuels from Marsham Street Community Nursery. We asked the question: was science too focused on biology? Upon investigation, we found that it was, and so began a journey which included sending both Maria and Michelle to the Children Scientist Exhibition in Edinburgh. They came back bursting with ideas – along with a great story about staying in a guest house straight out of Fawlty Towers. The simple outcome was a whole set of learning activities they have since developed - from making toothpaste to every kind of volcano – thereby extending the interest of children, parents and staff in more chemical and physics based approaches. It was written up as an article, Putting the Sparkle Back into Science, Technology, Engineering and Maths, for EYE magazine (vol 12, 8^th December 2010), and is now set to form a central plank in the LEYF curriculum.

On a final note this week, I was delighted to hear from Julie Weiss, manager of our Luton Street Community Nursery and a great community organiser herself, how she had arrived safely at Paddington Farm in Glastonbury for a long weekend with seven children, two staff and one apprentice. In this world of risk aversion, health and safety mania and litigious attitudes, I am so proud that LEYF staff are still willing to go beyond their core duties to build in the extra cultural capital which makes such a difference to so many of our children; and equally proud that parents allow their children to go. The farm itself, of which I am proud to be chair, has been reconfigured into a social enterprise (surprise , surprise) and offers a lovely country retreat – with among other delights a willow play area, clay pizza oven, forest school and animals set in a beautiful 43 acre organic farm. It’s a beautiful experience for so many children who rarely get beyond the Edgware Road. I really do think quality indicators for nurseries need to recognise outings, trips and holidays for children, as sadly many hardly venture beyond the nursery door.

It made me wonder what Margaret McMillan (1860 – 1931) might have thought of this attitude – with her movement for outside nurseries and fresh air – or Octavia Hill (1838 – 1912), who set up housing with built in open spaces for children to play as well as organising  holidays and countryside experiences for the children of Marylebone…

Thomas Paine complained in the 18^th century ‘These are the times that try men’s souls’; it’s a sentiment I certainly share.