Keeping the problem alive: Curriculum, problematisation and the EYFS

This paper explores how problems are understood in debates about England’s Early Years Foundation Stage (Department for Education [DfE], 2025). Discussions of the EYFS often focus on identifying what is wrong with it and proposing ways to improve or replace it, including both critical perspectives and alternative approaches to early childhood education. While these positions appear different, the paper argues that they share a common tendency: they treat problems as things to be solved. The paper introduces the concept of solution-binding to describe this habit.
Rather than offering another critique or alternative, the paper asks what happens if problems are not treated as something to be resolved. Drawing on the philosophies of Henri Bergson and Gilles Deleuze, it approaches problems as ongoing, generative conditions that shape how curriculum can be thought and lived. It argues that keeping problems open, rather than closing them down through solutions, is an important ethical and conceptual move for curriculum thinking in early childhood education.