Shifting Models of Early Childhood Education: A Study of Curriculum Ambivalence in English Preschool Mathematics

Abstract

In this paper, by means of a comprehensive analysis of the statutory and non-statutory documents that govern its preschool provision, we examine how early childhood education and care (ECEC), particularly in relation to mathematics, is conceptualised by the English educational authorities. Situated within international debates about economic (school-readiness, accountability-driven) versus social (holistic, play-based, rights-oriented) models of ECEC, the study explores how curriculum expectations, assessment practices and didactical guidance collectively frame young children’s learning opportunities. Drawing on a document-based analytic approach, and guided by six literature-derived questions, the analysis reveals significant inconsistencies both within and between documents, including conflicting messages about the purpose of preschool, an uneven emphasis on school readiness, and ambivalent statements regarding the role of play, instruction and practitioner agency, as well as contradictory and shifting expectations surrounding the scope, status and pedagogical treatment of early mathematics. While statutory materials frequently privilege school readiness and narrowly defined number outcomes, non-statutory guidance promotes broader mathematical thinking, exploratory play and child-initiated reasoning. Overall, the findings demonstrate limited coherence across the English authorities’ ECEC expectations and highlight the interpretive and professional challenges faced by practitioners expected to implement this fragmented early years mathematics policy landscape.

1. Introduction

Over the last decades, changes to family structures, patterns of employment, and broader economic pressures have fuelled both demand for early childhood education and care (ECEC) and research focused on identifying the characteristics of optimal practice (Ishimine & Tayler, 2014; UNICEF, 2008). However, childhood, while biologically universal, is embedded in cultural contexts and their respective norms and values (Oberhuemer, 2005). Consequently, there is “little agreement internationally as to the nature and goals of early-years curricula” (Hedges et al., 2011, p. 185), an issue that extends to early years mathematics (Ancheta-Arrabal & Segura, 2022; Campbell et al., 2022; Nah, 2011).

In this paper, therefore, our goal is to interrogate the documents that prescribe and support all aspects of the English curriculum for early years education, particularly in respect of mathematics and, in so doing, offer a set of questions that would frame in-depth comparative analyses of how cultures construe early years mathematics. That is, our aim is to “make certain aspects visible and possible to compare, thereby raising the awareness of curriculum questions in relation to children’s learning and development” (Pramling Samuelsson et al., 2006, p. 14).

1.1. Conceptual and Terminological Difficulties

Cross-culturally, the labels given to ECEC institutions vary both across and within cultures. In the United States, distinctions can be found between preschool and kindergarten (Pearman et al., 2020) and between pre-kindergarten and kindergarten (Greenfield et al., 2009; Weiland et al., 2012). When writing in English and despite the occasional use of preschool (Palmér & Björklund, 2023), European scholars typically refer to kindergarten, even when this is a less than adequate translation of the vernacular, as with studies undertaken in Cyprus (Elia et al., 2010), Denmark (Broström, 2017), Greece (Papadakis et al., 2017), the Netherlands (Van den Heuvel-Panhuizen & Elia, 2011) and Norway (Størksen et al., 2023). However, the labels by English scholars have highlighted variation in the location of ECEC enactment, whether it is an early childhood setting (Sylva, 2010), a children’s centre, nursery or primary school (Roberts-Holmes & Bradbury, 2016). Similarly, the labels given to ECEC professionals vary cross-culturally. In the US, occasionally modified by terms like ‘early years’ (Rudd et al., 2008) or ‘pre-kindergarten’ (Lee & Ginsburg, 2007), researchers refer to teachers (Duncan & Magnuson, 2013; Morgan et al., 2019), while English researchers, tacitly distinguishing ECEC professionals from teachers, refer to practitioners (Moss, 2016; Sylva et al., 2011). In Scandinavia, Danish (Thorsen, 2023), Norwegian (Hogsnes, 2014), and Swedish (Hermansson & Nordenstam, 2020) researchers refer to pedagogues, a role for which no satisfactory English translation exists.

In this paper, and acknowledging these difficulties, preschool refers to any institutional setting that provides education in the years before the first year of formal school. Curriculum refers to any state-produced material designed to specify preschool provision, and early childhood professional (ECP) refers to any adult with a responsibility for ensuring that provision.

1.2. Manifestations of ECEC

Broadly speaking, preschool expectations fall within two conceptions of childhood (Broström, 2017; B. Jensen, 2009), located in the distinction between ECEC as a function of economic imperatives or ECEC as a function of social imperatives (Edwards, 2021; Kjørholt, 2019). The economic model privileges the acquisition of those academic competences believed necessary for facilitating equity at the point at which children start school and, due to an emphasis on measurable characteristics, tends to form the basis of much ECEC regulation (Brownlee et al., 2009). It is located in a model of human capital “whereby a series of universal truths have been created as to the benefits of ECEC” that represent “a privileging of instrumental rationality and technical practice” (Campbell-Barr & Nygård, 2014, p. 348). Such emphases, underpinned by notions of school readiness rather than social development (Alcock & Haggerty, 2013; Alvestad, 2004), draw on experiences typically found in school—direct teaching and ability grouping focused on literacy and mathematics (Bradbury, 2019). Indeed, recent studies have shown how notions of readiness have become so embedded in contexts like the US that research is now attending to kindergarten readiness as a precursor to school readiness (Wu et al., 2025; Perez et al., 2025).

The social model focuses on the creation of emotionally secure environments alongside cognitively rich stimulation (Hatfield et al., 2016; Pianta et al., 2009). It privileges the relationships and exchanges between participants and emphasises the role of everyday experiences such as conversation (Munton et al., 1995). Proponents of the social model reject the deficit discourses of school readiness and competence checklists (Anthony et al., 2015; Basford & Bath, 2014) in favour of a holistic perspective on learning located in a pedagogy of play and child-initiated activity undertaken within a community of learners, as found in Denmark (B. Jensen & Walker, 2021), Norway (Aslanian, 2020), Sweden (Palmér & Björklund, 2023) and New Zealand (Hedges et al., 2011). In countries in which the social model predominates, curricula either specify broad learning objectives (Björklund et al., 2018), set within a discourse in which play dominates (Reikerås, 2020), or are non-prescriptive in relation to both content and assessment (Hedges et al., 2011). Moreover, particularly in the context of Scandinavia, curricula are located in an explicit discourse of participative democracy (Einarsdottir et al., 2015; Emilson & Johansson, 2018) framed by systemic acknowledgements of the UN’s Rights of the Child (Alvestad & Pramling Samuelsson, 1999).

Differences in the manifestations of these two traditions are profound, particularly with respect to cultural values and their impact on conceptualisations of quality. Social models explicitly emphasise equity, democracy, and children’s rights (Alvestad & Pramling Samuelsson, 1999; Soler & Miller, 2003), while economic models rarely make explicit reference to values (Reid & Kagan, 2022). These differences are reflected in construals of quality. For the former, quality is socially constructed and culturally contingent, while for the latter, it is an objective, measurable construct applicable across contexts (Soukakou & Sylva, 2012; Tuastad et al., 2019). This cultural complexity is rarely acknowledged in comparative studies, which frequently rely on standardised tools developed in US contexts (Bjørnestad & Os, 2018; Pramling Samuelsson & Sheridan, 2009). Indeed, widely used instruments like the ITERS-R (Harms et al., 2003) have been criticised for privileging structural indicators and formal instruction over interactional quality and play (Bisceglia et al., 2009; Cerezci, 2021). Overall, cultural variation in ECEC expectations and practices may make quality a difficult construct to evaluate comparatively (Moss, 2016).

1.3. ECEC Mathematics, Didactics and Assessment

It is generally acknowledged that children who acquire basic number-related competences before starting school are advantaged in terms of their later mathematical progression (Aunola et al., 2004; Anders et al., 2013; Bakker et al., 2024; Bartelet et al., 2014; Peisner-Feinberg et al., 2001). In addition, such competences have a positive impact on the development of children’s language and literacy (Bailey et al., 2014; Sarama et al., 2012; Turan & De Smedt, 2022). Importantly, general mathematical competence is enhanced by early opportunities to engage with patterns in all their forms (Bojorque et al., 2021; Zippert et al., 2019), randomness and chance (Nikiforidou & Pange, 2010) and mathematical reasoning (Nergård, 2023; Sumpter & Hedefalk, 2015).

However, opportunities to acquire such competences are culturally situated. Research undertaken in the US, where the economic model dominates, has found mathematics typically presented as a hierarchical set of atomistic learning goals; also highlighting an expectation of school readiness, the emphasis on whole-class or small-group activity indicates that teachers are expected to instruct (See, for example, Brendefur et al., 2013; Clements & Sarama, 2013; Litkowski et al., 2020; Watts et al., 2018). Didactically, the economic model tends to privilege ECP-initiated activity (Baroody et al., 2006). In this respect, despite limited research highlighting the long-term benefits of different forms of play (Laski & Siegler, 2014; Wolfgang et al., 2003), US ECPs believe that preparing children for kindergarten requires the learning of mathematics and that their role is to help them learn it (Chen et al., 2014). Consequently, research on ECPs’ professional development typically emphasises teacher-initiated activities focused on small groups or whole classes (Brendefur et al., 2013), often with ECPs following either a scripted activity or a guiding template (Jacobi-Vessels et al., 2016). From the perspective of assessment, the typical US study of preschool children’s achievement employs multi-item tests, often a consequence of item response theory or Rasch analyses, which are administered on a one-to-one basis in a clinical setting (See, for example, Brendefur et al., 2013; Clements et al., 2008; Purpura & Lonigan, 2015; VanDerHeyden et al., 2006; Weiland et al., 2012).

By way of contrast, the social model, drawing on the argument that it is the school that instructs, has historically eschewed the teaching of mathematics (Alvestad & Pramling Samuelsson, 1999). However, the results of international tests of achievement have prompted an increasing emphasis on school readiness and the production of national curricula specifying broad early mathematics-related learning goals, as found in Denmark (P. Jensen & Sjö, 2024), Norway (Størksen et al., 2023) and Sweden (Björklund & Barendregt, 2016). Didactically, the social model, which privileges child-initiated activities (Baroody et al., 2006), draws extensively on play as the basis of learning, as found in studies undertaken in Denmark (Koch, 2023), Germany (Anders & Rossbach, 2015), the Netherlands (van Oers, 2003), Norway (Nergård, 2023), Spain (Edo et al., 2009), Sweden (Sumpter & Hedefalk, 2015), and Switzerland (Vogt et al., 2018). Indeed, despite the recently introduced expectations of explicit mathematics learning, Scandinavian curricula do not necessarily mandate instruction but continue to encourage ECPs to attend to what children do and say while playing (Helenius, 2018). That being said, in accordance with its underlying principles, assessments of children’s mathematical growth draw on real-time evaluations of children’s activity (Anthony et al., 2015; Reikerås, 2016).

In sum, while there remains two dominant models of ECEC, the social model seems under pressure from an accountability and standards discourse, although it is interesting to note that while the development of social competence is integral to the social model, research conducted in the US has confirmed its significance as a core prerequisite of school readiness (Fantuzzo et al., 2007; McClelland et al., 2000; Teo et al., 1996). Furthermore, and independently of any underlying model of ECEC, research internationally has highlighted the mathematics learning benefits of the judicious use picture books, whether in Flanders (Op ‘t Eynde et al., 2025), Indonesia (Sianturi, 2024), Netherlands (Van den Heuvel-Panhuizen & Elia, 2013), Serbia (Maričić & Stakić, 2023), Sweden (Björklund & Palmér, 2022), Turkey (Güven Akdeniz, 2024), and the US (Cooper et al., 2020; Flevares & Schiff, 2014; Hassinger-Das et al., 2015). Overall, and pointing the reader to the next section, these studies highlight the role of the ECP in recognising and alerting young children to the possibilities that emerge from both planned and unplanned activity.

1.4. The Role of the ECP

Irrespective of any underlying conception of ECEC, the ECP has an important role to play in shaping young children’s access to mathematics, particularly if they are to be challenged rather than merely encouraged (Björklund et al., 2018). Whether learning is intended to occur in formal contexts like the shared reading of picture books (Björklund & Palmér, 2020, 2022), informal contexts like play (Anders & Rossbach, 2015; Nergård, 2023) or even activities undertaken outdoors (Delacour, 2016), ECPs need not only to be sensitive to the possibilities embedded within different activities but also have the ability to help children see those possibilities (van Oers, 2003, 2010). Such abilities are closely related to the quality of an ECP’s mathematical content knowledge, which is a significant predictor of the pre-school teachers’ ability to perceive learning situations and to plan educational actions to foster learning (Dunekacke et al., 2015). In a related vein, the breadth of a US ECP’s mathematical language is a strong predictor of teaching quality (McCray & Chen, 2012; Rudd et al., 2008) and a predictor of young children’s mathematical growth (Klibanoff et al., 2006). Problematically, however, many ECPs are not only more confident working on literacy-related activities than mathematics (Gerde et al., 2018) but more likely to recognise opportunities for the learning of number topics than spatial topics (Björklund & Barendregt, 2016; Parviainen et al., 2023). Furthermore, mathematics anxiety prevents many ECPs from meaningful engagement with both children and mathematics (Galeano et al., 2024), a problem that increases with ECP age (Beisly et al., 2025).

1.5. England, ECEC and Mathematics

Historically, English ECEC has eschewed preschool as a source of objective academic knowledge in favour of children’s everyday experiences, subjectivity and quality of life (Munn, 2006). However, the last quarter century has seen a gradual shift from an explicit social model in which government played no part towards government-initiated curricula with a growing school readiness component (Archer, 2022; Gifford, 2004a; Munn, 2006; Wood, 2020). For example, the mathematics section of the first iteration of this intervention (Qualifications and Curriculum Authority, 2000) made no mention of direct teaching but, “by emphasizing number rhymes, incidental talk and opportunistic intervention in children’s play, suggests a non-directive model of teaching” (Gifford, 2004b, p. 100). Put simply, this first iteration differed little from the then-current social model expectations. However, the shift since then has been so profound that preschool managers are instructing ECPs to place three-year-old children in ability groups for phonics, writing and mathematics (Archer, 2022).

In 2008, this first document was superseded by the Statutory Framework for the Early Years Foundation Stage (EYFS) (Department for Children, Schools and Families, 2008), which comprised 12 mathematics-related learning goals to be achieved by the end of the preschool years. These goals included expectations that young children would be able to, inter alia, count to ten, recognise the numerals to nine, use comparative language like more and bigger, engage with simple patterns, and use words relating to position (Department for Children, Schools and Families, 2008, p. 14). Four years later, a revision to the framework (Department for Education, 2012) extended the range of these goals to numbers up to 20 and incorporated expectations of simple additive arithmetic. When compared with research in the field, many of these new goals were found to be developmentally inappropriate for many children (Gifford, 2014).

More recent iterations of the framework have been critiqued at both general and mathematical levels. At the general level, the English authorities (Department for Education, 2017), drawing on a selective research base to create a normative discourse of assessment and school readiness, have created a regime in which ECPs are governed by performance criteria focused on contested conceptions of quality (Wood, 2020). At the mathematical level, and despite international research showing its developmental value, the EYFS framework (Department for Education, 2020) privileges numbers at the expense of patterns (Gripton, 2023) and leads to ECPs overemphasising counting and cardinality (von Spreckelsen et al., 2019).

A consequence of this ever-changing professional environment is that many English ECPs find themselves trying to balance their commitment to the social model against the growing imposition of the economic model (Orlandi, 2014). Thus, while managing expectations of data-based accountability on their professionalism (Roberts-Holmes & Bradbury, 2016), ECPs mediate (Bradbury et al., 2025) or subvert (Archer, 2022) policy expectations according to their beliefs, prior experience and earlier versions of official guidance.

2. Materials and Methods

The above present an uncertain picture of English mathematics-related ECEC, particularly in relation to international trends. In this paper, our aim is to delve deeper than has previously been the case into the materials that govern English ECEC in order to evaluate its “vertical consistency”, defined as the “coherence between intentions, implementation, and assessment of outcomes” (Voogt & Roblin, 2012, p. 302), both generally and in respect of mathematics. In so doing, and drawing on the literature above, the analysis is structured against six broad questions that should allow for a more nuanced interpretation of curricular materials than would typically be found with broad characterisations based on the social or economic models, which seem increasingly insufficient when so many systems appear to be in a state of flux as they shift from the former towards the latter. Also, as discussed above, previous scrutiny of the English ECEC curriculum, both generally and in relation to mathematics, has tended to focus on a limited selection of documents. For example, some have compared curricular expectations with those of specific supplementary materials, as with Bradbury et al.’s (2025) comparison of the curriculum and its associated assessment profile or Wood’s (2020) comparison of the curriculum and its non-statutory guidance. Others have compared the curriculum with what are now redundant materials, as with Aubrey and Durmaz’s (2012) and Gifford’s (2004b) comparisons of the curriculum and the expectations of the national numeracy strategy. Thus, acknowledging that mandated curricula are typically accompanied by non-statutory exemplification and guidance, as well as other materials, some legally binding and some not, related to, inter alia, assessment and the inspection of educational institutions, we adopt Pratt and Alderton’s (2023) position that a critical scrutiny of all available materials is more likely to reveal underlying principles and expectations, as well as any consistencies and inconsistencies, than more limited approaches.

Methodologically, unlike Wood (2020), who undertook a critical discourse analysis study based on a selection of key words, we take the position that an in-depth understanding of a system’s construal of ECEC requires that documents speak for themselves. Also, as with Bradbury et al. (2025), the texts under scrutiny “are not presented as a linear or logical sequence, but rather as a policy assemblage that reveals shifts in emphasis according to changing government rationalities and the socio-historical contexts of their production” (Bradbury et al., 2025, p. 326). Consequently, our analysis is based on six broad questions, each warranted by different elements of the review above. These six questions, with some additional prompts, are

• What materials are available, who is their intended audience, are they publicly accessible, what is their legal status and what is their focus?
• Can the purpose and function of preschool be inferred from these materials and, if so, how clearly are they articulated? For example, is preschool a preparation for later learning, a place of emotional or physical security, or a place where children learn to live together or simply to be?
• Can any underlying principles be inferred, and how clearly do they connect with the above aims? For example, is preschool underpinned by expectations of democratic or religious participation, does it privilege the individual or the collective, and where does agency lie?
• How is learning manifested in these materials? For example, is learning child- or practitioner-initiated, is knowledge a process or a product, and how is it assessed?
• How is mathematics conceptualised in these materials, and is its inclusion warranted? For example, is it connected to any broader principles? Is it integrated alongside other subject areas or separated from them? Are specific outcomes itemised?
• How is the didactics of early years mathematics manifested in these materials? For example, what experiences are privileged? Are they justified? What resources, if any, are promoted?

Procedurally, various websites, including those of the education ministry and other relevant agencies, were scrutinised for documents relevant to the study. Despite being led down some misleading avenues, a complete set of relevant material was eventually identified. Documents available as PDFs were downloaded, while those available only in HTML format were saved as PDFs. Unfortunately, due to the nature of HTML files, none of these latter documents had page numbers that could be used for referencing purposes. Each text was first read to establish an overview of its scope, structure, and purpose, before being interrogated against the six questions. This entailed a process of inductive coding that involved the digital annotation of documents, the highlighting and extraction of relevant passages, and included differences, contradictions and silences across documents. This process was repeated to ensure, as far as is practicable, that the coding and cross-document comparisons were secure.

3. Results

The following, drawing on all available materials, addresses each of these questions in turn. In so doing, our aim is to determine the extent to which the different narratives represented in these documents form a vertically consistent presentation (Voogt & Roblin, 2012) of English ECEC, both generally and in respect of mathematics.

3.1. Curriculum Availability and Presentation

ECEC in England is regulated by central government, with relevant material being freely accessible from the ‘Early years and childcare: guidance for providers’ page1 of the government’s website. Here can be found more than twenty links grouped into five sections headed, respectively, (1) Early learning and childcare; (2) Early years foundation stage (EYFS); (3) Providing childcare; (4) Early years qualifications and training; and (5) Inspection of early years and childcare providers. Of these five, only the sections on EYFS and inspection are relevant to this study.

Within the EYFS section are several documents that comprise the ECEC curriculum. The ‘Statutory Framework for the Early Years Foundation Stage’ (hereafter curriculum) takes two forms, written for different audiences but with equivalent content, focused on the age range birth through to the year in which the child turns five. In this paper, due to its explicit focus on preschool, we focus on the curriculum2 for ‘group and school-based providers’, which comprises 55 A4 pages. Curriculum is augmented by various documents, both statutory and non-statutory. ECPs’ curriculum implementation is accompanied by the non-statutory ‘Development Matters’ (hereafter development3), which offers 128 A4 pages of guidance and support. The assessment of children’s learning is regulated by a statutory, annually produced, ‘Early Years Foundation Stage Profile’ (hereafter profile4). For the academic year 2025/26, profile is available only as an HTML file. Profile is accompanied by a non-statutory ‘Progress check at age two’ (hereafter progress5) whose 43 A4 pages support ECPs in assessing the development of very young children. Finally, in the ‘inspection of early years and childcare providers’ section can be found the statutory ‘Early years inspection handbook’ (hereafter handbook6). Like profile, this is currently only available as an HTML file, although it is structured by numbered paragraphs detailing every aspect of the inspection process, including expectations that ECPs will be observed. When printed, handbook and profile comprise approximately 65 and 25 A4 pages, respectively, although, for the purpose of this exercise, no page numbers can be inferred.

The visual impact of the various documents is determined by their legal status. Statutory documents contain no illustrative images and comprise formal and essentially monochrome text. By way of contrast, non-statutory documents employ much colour, many cartoon images and a less assertive and more accessible language. These differences, particularly in respect of linguistic register and the expected roles of participants, seem highlighted by the figures in Table 1. For example, the use of the verbs must and should, which reflect a hierarchy of compulsion, highlights an ambivalence across the five documents. The non-statutory development and the statutory handbook present a balanced set of expectations. Curriculum, with an overwhelming emphasis on must, reflects high levels of compulsion, while the opposite can be seen in statutory profile and non-statutory progress, although profile alerts its readers to the fact that it “uses the word ‘must’ where the provision is a legal requirement”.

Table 1. Frequencies of three pairs of terms and their derivatives.

Legal Status	Document	Must	Should	Teacher	Practitioner	Play	Teach
Statutory	Curriculum	234	68	61	58	18	16
	Profile	34	66	89	2	5	6
	Handbook	118	115	0	45	13	21
Non-statutory	Development	8	10	1	19	156	19
	Progress	8	18	1	50	32	2

The figures in Table 1 initially appear ambivalent with respect to the labels given to ECPs, an ambivalence confounded by a closer reading of the documents. Curriculum typically refers to teachers in the context of school and practitioners in the context of preschool, a distinction clearly found in development, progress, and handbook, which unambiguously present ECPs as practitioners. By way of contrast, profile, which consistently refers to teachers, does so after informing its readers that “‘teacher’ should be understood to refer to any early years practitioner working with the child”. In short, there is no ambivalence, although it seems strange that the authors of profile deviate from the practice adopted elsewhere.

3.2. Systemic Expectations

In its introduction, curriculum asserts that it “promotes teaching and learning to ensure children’s ‘school readiness’ and gives children the right foundation for good future progress through school and life” (curriculum, p. 7). It also asserts, on three occasions, the importance of ensuring children’s “readiness for year 1” (pp. 8, 11, 20). However, while handbook (para. 180) asserts that inspectors should consider “the progress children make in their learning and development relative to their starting points, and their readiness for the next stage of their education”, none of development, progress or profile make reference to readiness.

Beyond such broad expectations, curriculum’s content is structured around seven areas of learning, each introduced by means of a paragraph outlining its significance. Of these, three are defined as prime and four as specific. The three prime areas, which concern ‘communication and language’, ‘physical development’, and ‘personal, social and emotional development’, offer ‘a foundation for children to thrive and provide the basis for learning in all areas’ (curriculum, p. 8). The four specific areas address ‘language’, ‘mathematics’, ‘understanding the world’, and ‘expressive arts and design’. Across these seven areas are 17 early learning goals (ELGs), each typically comprising several bulleted sub-goals.

In a later section, curriculum asserts that every “child’s level of development must be assessed against the early learning goals” (p. 20), although the bulk of this section focuses on why and how assessment should be undertaken rather than on what should be assessed. In addition, profile outlines the procedures by which preschool children are assessed against the early learning goals and reminds ECPs that it represents, our parenthetical insert, “a statutory assessment of children’s development at the end of the academic year in which children turn 5…”, based on ECPs’ “knowledge and understanding of what a child knows, understands, and can do”.

Additionally, profile asserts that a “child’s level of development is assessed against 17 early learning goals (ELGs) across all 7 areas of learning in the EYFS statutory framework” before asserting, less than one hundred words later, that by age five children’s development will be satisfactory “if they have achieved the expected level for the ELGs in the prime areas of learning… and the specific areas of mathematics and literacy”. That is, the document seems to contradict itself within the space of a few words. The situation is further confused by a reading of progress, which reminds ECPs that, even at ages two or three, children should be assessed against curriculum’s three prime learning goals, before adding that “it is important to bear in mind that all seven areas of learning are important, both prime and specific” (Progress, p. 14). In other words, both within and across documents, ECPs are offered conflicting messages with respect to which areas of learning will be assessed.

Procedurally, profile expects assessments to be “based primarily on the teacher’s professional knowledge of what the child knows, remembers and can do day-to-day” and “is a means of checking whether a child has learnt what has been taught”. Moreover, it is expected to “take place during routine interactions with children and does not need to be planned or documented”. By the end of a child’s preschool experience, ECPs are expected to construct a summative assessment “based on a holistic view of what the child can demonstrate against each ELG at the end of the EYFS”—whether or not the child is “meeting the level of development expected at the end of the EYFS” or “not yet reaching this level”. Thus, for each ELG, a child’s record will show either ‘expected’ or ‘emerging’.

Also, in its criteria for preschools to be acknowledged as good, handbook highlights the need for preschools to encourage children’s acquisition of, albeit with no elaboration in any document, fundamental British values, while a preschool judged to be inadequate is one in which “British values are not actively promoted in practice” (para. 201).

3.3. Underlying Principles

Curriculum is guided by four (our parentheses) “principles (that) should shape practice in early years”. These (p. 7) are that

• Every child is a unique child who is constantly learning and can be resilient, capable, confident, and self-assured.
• Children learn to be strong and independent through positive relationships.
• Children learn and develop well in enabling environments with teaching and support from adults, who respond to their individual interests and needs and help them to build their learning over time. Children benefit from a strong partnership between practitioners and parents and/or carers.
• Importance of learning and development. Children develop and learn at different rates.

However, there are no references in any of the documents to democratic participation, cultural values or citizenship, although, with respect to learning to live together, curriculum mentions the significance of building relationships, asserting that children will

• Work and play cooperatively and take turns with others;
• Form positive attachments to adults and friendships with peers;
• Show sensitivity to their own and to others’ needs (p. 13).

There are no references to the Rights of the Child, although emphases on safety places the child at the heart of the early years enterprise. Finally, handbook, in its grade descriptors for good preschool provision, asserts that in addition to promoting equality and diversity and encouraging children to be respectful, practitioners should facilitate “children’s understanding of fundamental British values” (para. 205), although nothing is added to elaborate on the concept.

3.4. Perspectives on Learning

The figures in Table 1 highlight variation in the documents’ use of the verbs teach and play. The non-statutory materials privilege play above teaching, while the statutory documents seem to offer more balanced perspectives. For example, development states that ECPs should not only “organise enabling environments for high-quality play”, but “make time and space available for children to invent their own play”, while sometimes joining in “to sensitively support and extend children’s learning” (development, p. 10).

In similar vein, curriculum seems superficially to accord with development when it states that play “is essential for children’s development, building their confidence as they learn to explore, relate to others, set their own goals, and solve problems”, before going on to add that children “learn by leading their own play, and by taking part in play and learning that is guided by adults” (p. 16).

However, the final sentence presents a subtle shift in expectation from child-initiated to adult-initiated activity, a shift reflected elsewhere in both curriculum and profile. For example, despite asserting that the early learning goals “should not be used as a curriculum” (curriculum, p. 11), curriculum states that the seven areas of learning represent (our italics) “what providers must teach the children in their settings” (p. 8), before adding that ECPs “need to decide what they want children in their setting to learn, and the most effective ways to teach it” (p. 16). In a similar vein, profile states that the “teacher may simply reflect on the knowledge, skills and understanding that the child demonstrates in the course of everyday learning to plan what to teach next” (profile, p. 6).

Finally, curriculum barely acknowledges the role of either talk or discussion, with only four and three references in relation to children’s learning respectively. By way of contrast, development includes 90 references to the word talk and its derivatives and 28 to the word discuss and its derivatives. Of these, ten and nine respectively relate to mathematics.

3.5. Conceptualisations of Mathematics

Details concerning mathematics can be found in two sections of curriculum. The first (p. 10) comprises a paragraph summarising expected content. This includes general statements about the provision of frequent and varied learning opportunities relating to both number and space, the development of positive attitudes towards and interest in mathematics, looking for patterns, relationships and connections, a willingness to ‘have a go’ and not be frightened of making mistakes, and talking to adults and peers. It offers no justification for mathematics’ privileged curricular position beyond asserting that “developing a strong grounding in number is essential so that all children develop the necessary building blocks to excel mathematically”.

Later (p. 14), two early learning goals can be found, each comprising three specific learning outcomes, set against an expectation that “children at the expected level of development will”, with respect to number

• Have a deep understanding of numbers to 10, including the composition of each number;
• Subitise (recognise quantities without counting) up to five;
• Automatically recall (without reference to rhymes, counting or other aids) number bonds up to 5 (including subtraction facts) and some number bonds to 10, including double facts.

And, in relation to numerical patterns

• Verbally count beyond 20, recognising the pattern of the counting system;
• Compare quantities up to 10 in different contexts, recognising when one quantity is greater than, less than or the same as the other quantity;
• Explore and represent patterns within numbers up to 10, including evens and odds, double facts and how quantities can be distributed equally.

Despite its initial paragraph in which spatial understanding is promoted, nothing further is added, leaving curriculum to focus solely on the attainment of number-related goals. Confounding the ambivalence, development offers, across the preschool age range, both numerical and spatial goals, each accompanied by exemplar activities, alongside patterns in all their likely forms. However, despite its inclusion of spatial ambitions, development reiterates curriculum’s earlier justification concerning a strong grounding in number being the foundation for later mathematical success (p. 85). The confusion is exacerbated by a reading of progress, which offers nothing in respect of any aspect of mathematics.

3.6. Mathematics Didactics

Nowhere in any document are specific didactical approaches promoted, either generally or in relation to mathematics. For example, curriculum “does not prescribe a particular teaching approach” (p. 16), while handbook reminds ECPs that school inspectors have no expectations of any “particular method of planning, teaching or assessment” (handbook para. 15). However, the mathematics-related learning goals specified in curriculum, and reiterated in profile, indicate an expectation that ECPs will instruct. That being said, while curriculum, albeit tacitly, and development encourage the use of concrete materials, development privileges play. For children up to the age of three, ECPs should “encourage babies and young toddlers to play freely with a wide range of objects—toddlers engage spontaneously in mathematics during nearly half of every minute of free play” (p. 86). For children aged three or four, ECPs are encouraged, albeit moderated by the phrase “when appropriate”, to engage children in activity-related conversation designed to elicit awareness and insight. For example, when discussing children’s play with shape-related materials, development (p. 89) invites ECPs to focus children’s attention on which aspects are the same and which are different, and to get “children to talk informally about shape properties using words like ‘sharp corner’, ‘pointy’ or ‘curvy’. Talk about shapes as you play with them: “We need a piece with a straight edge”.

For children in the year before formal school, ECPs are invited to encourage children to engage explicitly with content-related play. For example, development invites ECPs to encourage children to “Play games which involve counting” (p. 93) or, with respect to subitising, “Play hiding games with a number of objects in a box” (p. 95). In other words, with increasing age, emphases shift from undirected play to directed play. Finally, development incorporates a number of didactical recommendations. For example, and occurring in several places, ECPs are invited to make deliberate ‘mistakes’ and then discuss with children how to fix them.

4. Discussion

In this paper, against a set of literature-derived questions, we have scrutinised the documents that comprise the English ECEC curriculum, both generally and mathematically, to determine the extent to which they represent a coherent conceptualisation. The six questions have collectively proved comprehensive in their coverage, while individually yielding insights that may otherwise have gone unnoticed had only individual documents, like curriculum, been scrutinised. In discussing these insights, while not ignoring their social, educational or political implications, we attend principally to the efficacy of the questions in exposing the extent to which English ECEC lacks coherence and a developed warrant for its expectations and practices.

4.1. Curriculum Availability and Presentation

While the early years webpages are superficially navigable and all documents are available online, there are hyperlinks that may lead readers along irrelevant paths. For example, it is by no means obvious that the section, ‘Early learning and childcare’, which is found on the ‘Early years and childcare: guidance for providers’ homepage, is intended for municipality managers and has no relevance to ECPs, parents, children’s learning or anyone interested in curriculum. Also, it is inexplicably odd, acknowledging their importance, that two of the legally binding documents, profile and handbook, are only available as HTML files and not as downloadable PDFs—converting and then linking them to a homepage would take barely seconds to complete. It is equally odd that, while four of the five documents are consistent in their use of practitioner in the context of preschool and teacher in the context of school, profile, despite a caveat, adopts an entirely different labelling.

In terms of presentation, the linguistic registers of the various documents generally accord with their legal status, particularly in their use of colour and images. However, acknowledging that must implies a higher order of compulsion than should, there is little consistency across the five documents as to what is non-negotiable and what is not. Also, a finding that would have gone unnoticed had not all documents been scrutinised is the volume of material which defines English ECPs’ professional lives. The documents regulating and supporting the different aspects of English ECPs’ practice comprise approximately 145 statutory and 170 non-statutory pages of A4 text and confirm that English ECPs are bureaucratically burdened in ways likely to lead to a diminution of professional competence and a reduction in the quality of the learning opportunities they offer children (Bradbury, 2012; Evans, 2022).

4.2. Systemic Expectations

Superficially, curriculum’s seven learning areas appear as unambiguous statements of expectation. However, extending the analysis to other documents exposed a confusing, and at times conflicting, array of ambitions with respect to which learning goals are privileged and which are not, confirming an earlier observation of a disjuncture between statutory and non-statutory materials (Gifford, 2004a, 2004b, 2014). Indeed, while progress emphasises the importance of all seven areas of learning, it asserts that only the three prime learning goals should be assessed. Also, profile, focused on the assessment of children prior to starting school, makes no reference to either ‘understanding the world’ or ‘expressive arts and design’, an omission confounded by the same document’s assertion that all children (our emphasis) “must be assessed against the 17 ELGs”. In other words, the confusion embedded within the documents, particularly profile, may lead to an impoverished learning experience as ECPs focus solely on goals they know will be assessed (West, 2010).

Also, curriculum’s specification of learning goals and explicit emphasis on school readiness, coupled with formal assessments and inspections, confirms the ongoing shift from the social towards an economic model of ECEC (Munn, 2006; Wood, 2020). Moreover, the commensurate growth of performance criteria and data-driven accountability has created a new professionalism (Roberts-Holmes & Bradbury, 2016), whereby ECPs, committed to the social model but expected to work within the economic (Orlandi, 2014), mediate (Bradbury et al., 2025) and subvert (Archer, 2022) policy expectations. That being said, and despite its embedded ambivalence, profile implies that the assessment of children’s learning should be undertaken by ECPs in realistic settings, which resonates more closely with the social model of ECEC than the economic.

4.3. General Principles

Curriculum offers nothing to justify preschool education. Its four guiding principles are generic statements concerned with the establishment of appropriate conditions for learning and the nurturing of the independence, confidence and resilience of the individual. Also, while the social model of Scandinavian ECEC is rooted in the Rights of the Child (Alvestad & Pramling Samuelsson, 1999) and democratic participation (Einarsdottir et al., 2015; Emilson & Johansson, 2018), no such principles can be found in the English documents, although curriculum’s learning goal focused on ‘building relationships’, which emphasises cooperation, positive relationships and awareness of others’ needs, would not be out of place in Copenhagen, Oslo or Stockholm.

By way of contrast, if it can be construed as a principle, curriculum is clear that a key underpinning of English ECEC is school readiness, a construct that is contextually situated and, as a consequence, contested (Dockett & Perry, 2013). However, readiness is nowhere defined in the English documents, being left implicit in the expectations embedded in the seven areas of learning and 17 learning goals. Thus, rooted in ensuring young children are inducted into a testing culture and frequently subjected to inappropriate practices like ability grouping, readiness as conceptualised in English ECEC resonates much more closely with the expectations and traditions of the economic rather than the social model (Roberts-Holmes, 2021).

Finally, handbook informs ECPs of their legal responsibility to encourage children’s acquisition of fundamental British values. However, nowhere in any document is there a definition. Summarised by Lander (2016, p. 275) as ‘democracy; the rule of law; individual liberty; and mutual respect for and tolerance of those with different faiths and beliefs and for those without faith’, they were introduced to counter a perceived threat from Muslim communities. They impede educational implementation (Healy, 2019), not least because they reinforce racial hierarchies by conflating democracy with whiteness and present Muslim identities as inferior (Crawford, 2017). They form linguistic and ideological tools that create ‘us and them’ narratives that risk alienation and undermine social cohesion (Lockley-Scott, 2019, p. 364). In sum, English ECEC, which is largely devoid of serious principles, is premised on a range of poorly articulated and frequently contradictory values.

4.4. General Conceptions of Learning

In the context of learning, the analyses have confirmed an earlier reported disjunction between English early years educators’ perspectives on ECEC as process and English policy makers’ perspectives on ECEC as product (Munn, 2006). On the one hand, and despite neither curriculum nor handbook prescribing particular teaching approaches, both clearly expect ECPs to instruct, with the consequence that many ECPs, believing they should privilege adult-initiated above child-initiated activity (Orlandi, 2014), not only engage in direct teaching but also employ ability grouping (Bradbury, 2019). On the other hand, both progress and development, which emphasise child-initiated above adult-initiated activity, encourage long-term development both socially and intellectually through play and interpersonal interaction. In this respect, it seems clear that the non-statutory documents advocate the holistic “educare” found in Scandinavia (Alvestad & Pramling Samuelsson, 1999; Broström et al., 2018), which resonates with the social model of ECEC and children’s rights and agency (Soler & Miller, 2003). Moreover, while outdoor play is fundamental to children’s physical, emotional and cognitive development (Waite, 2011), curriculum implicates it solely in the context of children’s physical development, while development emphasises it in all aspects of cognitive development. In summary, the analyses have highlighted an ambivalence wrought by multi-agency authorships with differing ECEC perspectives.

4.5. Conceptualisations of Mathematics

The analysis has highlighted the position of mathematics as a privileged and independent element of a collection curriculum (Bernstein, 1975). Also, curriculum’s two mathematics-related early learning goals, each presented alongside three specific learning objectives, resonate more closely with the broad mathematics-related learning goals of current Scandinavian social models (Björklund & Barendregt, 2016; Størksen et al., 2023) than with the economic model reflected in the multi-item tests typically found in US-based research (Brendefur et al., 2013; Clements et al., 2008; Purpura & Lonigan, 2015; VanDerHeyden et al., 2006; Weiland et al., 2012).

That being said and acknowledging concerns that many of the mathematical learning goals are developmentally inappropriate (Gifford, 2014; Wood, 2020), collectively the English documents represent considerable confusion with respect to what young children are expected to learn, with curriculum’s general goals failing to match its specific (Gifford, 2004a). Indeed, while number is repeatedly but inconsistently emphasised, the positioning of spatial understanding in both curriculum and development is ambivalent. Also, while literacy is presented as an emotionally satisfying and life-long activity (see curriculum, p. 10), mathematics is justified solely by its utility. Such matters confirm both the understated place of mathematics in ECEC discourses and a need for mathematics education researchers to engage more fully with the field (Anthony & Walshaw, 2009).

4.6. Mathematics Didactics

Internationally, whether located in the social model and its emphasis on play (Anders & Rossbach, 2015; Edo et al., 2009; van Oers, 2003) or the economic model and its emphasis on instruction (Brendefur et al., 2013; Chen et al., 2014; Jacobi-Vessels et al., 2016), preschool children rarely learn mathematics without intentional adult support (Baroody et al., 2006; Gifford, 2004a). Such support requires of ECPs an appropriate mathematical knowledge, language, and confidence (Dunekacke et al., 2015; Klibanoff et al., 2006; McCray & Chen, 2012). In light of such matters and acknowledging the anxiety that mathematics frequently induces in ECPs (Beisly et al., 2025; Galeano et al., 2024), the ambivalence embedded in the English documents is likely to be problematic. On the one hand, development includes activities based on the didactical principles of early mathematics and supports young children’s learning in age-appropriate ways (Siraj-Blatchford & Nah, 2014). It offers appropriate support to those ECPs who lack confidence and competence with mathematics. On the other hand, exacerbating the problem of ECPs’ lack of didactical sensitivity towards mathematics, curriculum offers no indications as to how young children may best learn mathematics other than tacitly encouraging adult-initiated activity. Moreover, further highlighting the problematic ambivalence identified earlier, development promotes a range of shape-related activities that are neither expected of curriculum nor assessed by profile.

4.7. Closing Thoughts

In this paper, drawing on an extensive review of the literature, we proposed six questions designed to structure an interrogation of the documents that collectively represent the English conceptualisation of ECEC, both generally and mathematically. Broadly speaking, the analyses confirmed not only the questions’ efficacy, although there was clearly some overlap, but also the necessity of including all available documents (Pratt & Alderton, 2023). Indeed, by including all documents we have exposed, at all levels, the extent of the vertical inconsistency (Voogt & Roblin, 2012) of the English conceptualisation of ECEC. In particular, curriculum’s lack of principles, repeated emphases on school readiness, and narrowly specified subject-related learning goals align English ECEC with the economic model as “self-evident, natural, and unquestionable truths” (Turunen et al., 2014, p. 296). By way of contrast, the repeated assertion that no particular didactical approach is privileged alongside development’s reification of the principles of early years mathematics (Siraj-Blatchford & Nah, 2014) accord closely with the social model of ECEC.

Methodologically, the inclusion of all documents has facilitated the emergence of insights beyond those that could be gleaned from an examination of curriculum alone. Indeed, not only the likely multiple authorships and exceptional levels of ambivalence but the challenging interpretive dilemma that ECPs are compelled to navigate would otherwise have gone unnoticed. In short, as with recent comparative analyses of the mathematics curricula of the four constituent countries of the United Kingdom (Andrews et al., 2022) and the three constituent countries of Scandinavia (Sunde et al., 2022), the outcomes would have been misleadingly incomplete had not all material been included.

The results of this study recommend the six questions for a meaningful analysis of any curriculum documents, irrespective of the phase of education under scrutiny. Also, highlighting the questions’ flexibility and adaptivity, the two mathematics-focused questions could as easily be focused on any other disciplinary domain. Importantly, the questions are neutral in the sense that they do not presuppose the characteristics of either the social or the economic model. They allow for either to be highlighted or, as is the case in this study, expose a hybrid model. In this respect, the existence of a hybrid model may not, of itself, be problematic. The problem, as identified above, lies in a systemic failure to adequately attend to the disparate messages both within and across documents.

While a study of this nature offers ECPs little encouragement or support, it opens the door to policy change and meaningful comparative research. In respect of the former, it challenges the wisdom of inviting seemingly independent multiple authorships and invites those responsible to look anew at the outcomes of their endeavours. In respect of the latter, the broad nature of the six questions should facilitate and structure analyses focused on the horizontal coherence, or the similarities and differences, between curricula (Voogt & Roblin, 2012). For example, setting aside domain-specific matters, what curriculum-related materials do different systems make available, can the purpose of preschool and any underlying principles be inferred from them, and how do they characterise learning? Indeed, our next goal is to undertake comparative analyses of different European systems’ construals of ECEC and the place of mathematics within them.

Finally, the reader is reminded that this study is based solely on publicly available policy documents and is, therefore, limited by the availability of material. Also, such a study cannot address how ECPs interpret these documents or enact those interpretations, although the related literature has helped frame the study and, where appropriate, inform the discussion. That said, the contradictory expectations and ambiguities identified above highlight the need for further research, particularly in respect of how ECPs navigate the confusing policy landscape within which they are mandated to operate.