With the revised Early Years Foundation Stage guidance being used by early adopters we argue that now is a good time to focus on revisiting the function of Early Childhood Education and Care (ECEC). Current debates have focused on the reforms and the ways to develop suitable curriculums to meet the development goals of the EYFS. This series of events provides a space for a wider democratic conversation that we proposed in our blog (Fairchild & Kay, 2020) around the purpose of ECEC and how this is enacted. To facilitate this, we have invited a range of speakers which we feel will allow us to broaden the debates around democracy and the problematisation of schoolification and ECEC; activism within the ECEC profession; and the collaborative nature of the development of Birth to Five Matters exemplification documents.

We recommend that participants read chapter 1 and chapter 4 of
Transforming Early Childhood in England Towards a Democratic Education Edited by Claire Cameron and Peter Moss in preparation for the discussions. Open access to the book can be found here: https://www.uclpress.co.uk/products/128464