Reclaiming our children’s rights from the jaws of school effectiveness

Currently, within the field of early childhood education and care (ECEC) (birth-8 years) in England, a conflict exists between the need to respect children’s rights and the ‘pernicious paradigm of school effectiveness’ (Fielding 2001: 134) which is now infiltrating early years’ settings. Despite apparently laudable intentions to positively affect children’s access to high quality provision (DCSF 2009), in practice the focus on standards disrespects our children by imposing on them irrelevant external top-down pressures. These pressures distract from processes which might support children’s genuine learning and development needs. This short paper considers the context of children’s rights and school effectiveness in England before considering how outcomes might be discarded in favour of more meaningful processes as a measure of high quality provision that is genuinely respectful of our children’s right