Meeting with Department for Education about EYFS

On Friday 7^th October 2011, Patrice Lawrence, Haki Kapasi, Anita Bey and Meryl Shepherd all Black Voice Network (BVN) steering group members met two representatives from the Department for Education (DFE) to contribute our views on the revised Early Years Foundation Stage (EYFS) consultation. 

The meeting was scheduled to last one and a half-hours. From the BVN perspective one of our long-term aims was achieved in that the DFE requested a meeting with us in response to our written consultation comments and a previous meeting we had contributed to during the consultation period earlier in the summer. The meeting followed a DFE format with a prepared list of six questions that we were given in advance to comment upon. Our response was to answer these questions as fully as possible but our priority was the BVN agenda which differed somewhat.

Having asked why we were invited to the meeting, the response was that they were hoping for our perspectives on children with English as an additional language which is clearly where they felt our strengths lay. It was suggested to them that though we spoke as the BVN, we and all of our members were not only multidisciplinary in our work, but offer a wealth of personal and individual, professional expertise that included but did not limit us to, the concerns of children and families with EAL skills. We pointed out that until national, regional, meetings, conferences, committees and quangos visibly included and represented a range of people like us, very little was likely to change.

We also discussed BVN members reporting similar experiences across the country of usually being the sole, visible, person of colour at most events and suggested that the very meeting we were in was unusual in that it included people like us. This was a good model to take forward. We ensured that they understood that our strengths and skills were our network as well as our blackness and that within our membership there are many voices that needed to be heard.

The meeting was amicable and we felt that our voices and views were noted. Whether or not we will be called upon again, given the fact that we hijacked their agenda remains to be seen. We look forward to future agencies approaching us to gain a range of black voices perspectives so as to contribute to the ongoing debates that we know take place regularly and that we are so often sidelined in.

Meryl Shepherd. October 2011