OCCASIONAL PAPER 16 - Questioning the relationship between pre-compulsory education and school.

Victoria Bamsey, Lewis Fogarty, Mabel Encinas and Mandy Andrews

At a time where 94% of four-year-olds are in some form of funded education in England (National Statistics, 2020), often reception classes in schools, Victoria Bamsey, Lewis Fogarty, Mabel Encinas and Mandy Andrews question the relationship between education and school in a system of hyperactive policy change (Ball, 2018) in this occasional paper. The authors report on research into different aspects of pre-compulsory education, considering parental choice of education for their cuildren, partnership working through mathematical play in the reception class and learning through unsupervised play outside the school gates.  They trouble the idea of education as school, consider approaches to education at school, and address what education looks like other than school to challenge schoolification of early education.

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