The news that a successful and innovative kindergarten has felt the need to close down because of the compulsory imposition of the early years foundation stage curriculum is scandalous and tragic in equal measure (‘Kindergarten to close in battle over foundation stage”, May 15).

This development confirms the worst fears that the Open EYE Campaign has been highlighting for the past 18 months. What we are seeing here is a reduction in the breadth of provision available in the early years, and the state preventing parents from choosing the learning milieu for their young pre-school children.

The Government’s bureaucratic approach to the early years fundamentally contradicts its mendacious claim to be encouraging “diversity”. If diversity is strictly confined within state-imposed guidelines, then it is not diversity at all.

The spectacle of a highly experienced teacher who runs a creative and well-regarded independent school feeling that he has no choice but to close his kindergarten because he cannot comply with state requirements that fundamentally contradict his understanding of healthy child development is scarcely believable.

It gives us a taste of what it must have been like living in an East European state before the Iron Curtain fell.

Dr Richard House, Gabriel Millar, Sue Palmer, The Open EYE Campaign.