Early Years Foundation Stage

The Early Years Foundation Stage

The Early Years Foundation Stage (EYFS), the time in your child’s life between birth and age 5, sets the standards that all early years providers must meet to ensure that children learn and develop well and are kept healthy and safe. It promotes teaching and learning to ensure children’s ‘school readiness’ and gives children the broad range of knowledge and skills that provide the right foundation for good future progress through school and life.

The areas of learning and development

The EYFS Framework explains how and what your child will be learning to support their healthy development. Your child will be learning skills, acquiring new knowledge and demonstrating their understanding through 7 areas of learning and development.

Children should mostly develop the 3 prime areas first. These are:

• Communication and language;

• Physical development; and

• Personal, social and emotional development.

These prime areas are those most essential for your child’s healthy development and future learning.

As children grow, the prime areas will help them to develop skills in 4 specific areas. These are:

• Literacy;

• Mathematics;

• Understanding the world; and

• Expressive arts and design.

These 7 areas are used to plan your child’s learning and activities. The professionals teaching and supporting your child will make sure that the activities are suited to your child’s unique needs. This is a little bit like a curriculum in primary and secondary schools, but it's suitable for very young children, and it's designed to be really flexible so that staff can follow your child's unique needs and interests.

Children in the EYFS learn by playing and exploring, being active, and through creative and critical thinking which takes place both indoors and outside.

• Communication and language development involves giving children opportunities to experience a rich language environment; to develop their confidence and skills in expressing themselves; and to speak and listen in a range of situations.

• Physical development involves providing opportunities for young children to be active and interactive; and to develop their co-ordination, control, and movement. Children must also be helped to understand the importance of physical activity, and to make healthy choices in relation to food.

• Personal, social and emotional development involves helping children to develop a positive sense of themselves, and others; to form positive relationships and develop respect for others; to develop social skills and learn how to manage their feelings; to understand appropriate behaviour in groups; and to have confidence in their own abilities.

• Literacy development involves encouraging children to link sounds and letters and to begin to read and write. Children must be given access to a wide range of reading materials (books, poems, and other written materials) to ignite their interest.

• Mathematics involves providing children with opportunities to develop and improve their skills in counting, understanding and using numbers, calculating simple addition and subtraction problems; and to describe shapes, spaces, and measures.

• Understanding the world involves guiding children to make sense of their physical world and their community through opportunities to explore, observe and find out about people, places, technology and the environment.

• Expressive arts and design involves enabling children to explore and play with a wide range of media and materials, as well as providing opportunities and encouragement for sharing their thoughts, ideas and feelings through a variety of activities in art, music, movement, dance, role-play, and design and technology.

New EYFS Reforms

The Early Years Foundation Stage (EYFS) has been reformed and there is a new EYFS framework that all schools and settings will have to follow from September 2021. These national changes have been made to better support all young children’s learning and development. It is also the aim that the new framework will better prepare children for the transition into key stage 1.

There are some elements of the EYFS that have not significantly changed and some that have. Below are some of the key points from the new EYFS reforms that include relevant changes which parents, carers and children may notice or experience.

• Staff will be spending less time on large amounts of written observations and assessments for evidence collection. This means they can spend more time supporting and engaging with the children and their learning and development needs.

• Children will no longer be assessed against statements from an age band category. Instead, staff will use their experience and knowledge to monitor if a child’s learning and development is on track for their age.

• The early learning goals at the end of reception have been changed to become more clear and easier to understand. Staff will use their judgements to assess if the children have met these goals at the end of the EYFS and inform parents and carers.

• There is an emphasis on improving children’s language and vocabulary through increasing opportunities for conversations, reading of a wide range of books and holding discussions around activities in other areas of learning.

• Literacy and numeracy skills focused on in the EYFS have been adapted to better match up with the national curriculum that starts in year 1.

• There is no longer an exceeding judgement at the end of reception. Children will instead be challenged to have a greater depth and understanding of ideas.

• Safeguarding and welfare of children is still a priority, with the added mention of teaching children about the importance of good oral health and how to keep teeth clean and healthy

How could you help learning and development at home to support the new EYFS reforms?

• Read stories daily to your child and use them as an opportunity to talk about the characters and events in the story. You could also discuss some of the details children have spotted in the pictures, such as the character’s facial expressions.

• Have lots of conversations with your child throughout the day. Try and increase their vocabulary by using a wide range of vocabulary.

• Practise counting with your child and looking at small groups of items. Explore what happens to numbers when you put these small groups of items together, or split a larger group into two smaller groups.

• Support your child’s early reading by practising phonic skills, such as recognising letter sounds and blending them together to read words. Also, support your child with their writing by checking they are forming their letters in the correct way and holding a pencil properly.

• Encourage your child to make healthy food and drink choices, especially related to sugar content and how this can affect teeth. Also, support your child to properly brush their teeth at least twice a day at home.

• Plan activities that allow your child to be active and develop their strength through large body movements as well as smaller, more precise movements.

How can you find out how your child is getting on?

It is important that you and the professionals caring for your child work together. You need to feel comfortable about exchanging information and discussing things that will benefit your child.

You can ask me for information about your child’s development at any time, but the professionals caring for your child must give you written information about how he or she is doing at two stages:

1. Progress check at age 2

At some point after your child turns 2, the professionals working with your child must give you a written summary of how your child is progressing against the 3 prime areas of learning:

• communication and language;

• physical development; and

• personal, social and emotional development.

This check will highlight areas where your child is progressing well and any where they might need some extra help or support – and how you and other family members or carers can work with me or the key person in another setting to help. You might find it useful to share the information from the check with other professionals such as health visitors (who can use it as part of the health and development review).

If a child moves between early years providers between the ages of two and three, the progress check would usually be done by the early years childcare provider where the child has spent most time. Your early years childcare provider must give you a short written summary of your child's development in the three prime areas of learning and development when your child is aged between 24 and 36 months.

2. When your child is 5

In the final term of the year in which a child reaches age five, and no later than 30 June in that term, the reception teacher completes an assessment which is known as the Early Years Foundation Stage Profile (EYFSP) . This will assess your child's development against 17 early learning goals which are linked to the goals in "Development Matters in the Early Years Foundation Stage" between the ages of 40 and 60 months.

Your child's school or early years provider has to share the results of the profile with you. A copy will also be given to your child's Year 1 teacher to help plan activities which meet the stage of their development and learning needs.

Where can you go for further information?

‘What to Expect When’, is a parent’s guide to the EYFS and has recently been rebranded. The purpose of this booklet is to help parents and carers find out more about how their child is learning and developing during their first five years in relation to the EYFS.

Please visit https://www.foundationyears.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/0778-What-to-Expect-When-2018.pdf

The new early years foundation stage (EYFS) framework was published on the 31 March 2021 and should be used by all Ofsted registered early years providers in England from September 2021.

Development Matters is the new non-statutory curriculum guidance for the new EYFS framework that everyone can use from September 2021. Early adopter schools can use this now. It gives you an overall view of how children develop and learn. It guides but does not replace your professional judgement.