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more optimistic than their parents, who worried that youngsters spend too much time in front of screens and are victims of the celebrity culture, among other things. Schools are “largely happy places”, the report confirms.

Inequality is the key
According to the review, the real problem is inequality. “The truly urgent crisis concerns not the pursuit of shallow celebrity but the fate of those children whose lives are blighted by poverty, disadvantage, risk and discrimination, and here governments are right to intervene.”

The review has also attracted attention with its calls to replace SATs with teacher assessment across the curriculum and scrap league tables. It also proposes introducing
a new curriculum with 70 per cent of its content determined nationally and 30 per cent left for schools and local authorities.

The final report was the subject of misleading headlines saying it proposed that children should not start school until the age of six. In fact, it says children should not start formal learning until six, with the early years foundation stage extended to that age.

Most embarrassingly for the government, the report calls on ministers to stop over-managing schools. Professor Alexander says: “[There is] a feeling that power needs to be taken back towards the profession, and also to communities.”

There are many other ideas among the report’s 75 recommendations, but perhaps the over-riding feeling at the Cambridge conference was that the review’s thoughtful approach – attempting to lay down the aims for primary education and seeking to base what happens in schools on what research tells us about how children learn and develop – should be recognised and built on.

Daphne Babouris, an early years teacher at Colleges nursery and family centre in Cambridge, said: “They have listened to the professionals, to children, parents and local authorities. As someone who wants to deepen my understanding, I am a huge advocate of the Cambridge review.”

What happens next?
What happens now is the subject of intense debate. The review’s final report came out just months after a government-commissioned review led by Sir Jim Rose, former head of primary schooling at Ofsted. Although the Rose review was well-received, Professor Alexander has argued that it lacks the Cambridge version’s depth. There is also widespread discontent that Sir Jim Rose was told by ministers not to look at SATs testing.

The government’s reaction to the Cambridge review has provoked anger. On the day it appeared, it was dismissed as “woolly” and “retrograde” by schools minister Vernon Coaker. Professor Alexander said this showed ministers had not read it. He also said the review has since been deluged with support: “We have had a massive array of emails [and] there really is deep concern about the summary dismissal of our report by government.”

The review’s final report runs to 586 pages, but a shorter, 42-page summary has been sent to every school in the UK. The Cambridge conference was the first of 14 regional dissemination conferences taking place around the country (see box, page 12). A recommendation in one of the interim reports – the scrapping of the national strategies – is now government policy.

And there were signs the review might have other effects: a teacher educator from Homerton college, Cambridge, said the final report would be on her PGCE students’ reading list from next year.

Its long-term impact is still uncertain, however. Professor Alexander said its predecessor, the Plowden report of 1967, was unfairly vilified on publication, but its recommendations on early years education nearly match those in place 40 years on.

But as John Bangs, NUT head of education and a speaker at the conference, said: “The attitude of the government, with its short memory and resistance to outside ideas, means that supporters of the review also need to lobby MPs and peers directly.”

Reactions
There were calls at the conference for more teachers to read the report, or the summary. Alison Peacock, said there was a danger teachers would feel too “frightened” to engage with it, because the review set out an alternative to government policy.

Helen Andrews, secretary of Bury NUT, believes teachers need to get past the government reaction and misleading press coverage. “The review is a breath of fresh air, and we want teachers, parents and governors to know this is a good view of primary education, to be encouraged, not spun out of existence.”

The report’s main recommendations:
Adopt the UN Convention on Human Rights
Prioritise the elimination of poverty, disadvantage and discrimination
Maintain focus on reducing underachievement
Review special educational needs
Extend early years foundation stage to age six, and replace KS1 and 2 with a single primary phase
Establish new aims-based curriculum, with local flexibility
Uphold the principle that it is not for government to tell teachers how to teach
Replace SATs with teacher assessment across the curriculum; emphasise formative assessment
Reform inspection
Scrap league tables
Employ some specialist subject teachers in primary schools
Replace top-down political control of education with ‘professional empowerment’
Scrap primary/secondary funding differences.

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