Curriculum

The EYFS is the learning and development requirements and welfare requirements that early years providers must comply with. It is mandatory for all early years’ settings in Ofsted registered settings to comply with this framework for children aged birth to the end of the academic year in which a child has their fifth birthday.

The aim of the EYFS is to help young children achieve the five ‘Every Child Matters’ outcomes of staying safe, being healthy, enjoying and achieving, making positive contribution, and achieving economic well-being by:

Setting the standards for learning, development and care young children should experience when they are attending a setting outside their family home, ensuring that every child makes progress and that no child gets left behind.

Providing for equality of opportunity and anti-discriminatory practice and ensuring that every child is included and not disadvantaged because of ethnicity, culture or religion, home language, family background, learning difficulties or disabilities, gender or ability.

Creating the framework for partnership working between parents and professionals, and between all the settings that the child attends.

Improving quality and consistency in the early year’s sector through a universal set of standards, which apply to all settings, ending the distinction between care learning in the existing frameworks, and providing the basis for the inspection and regulation regime.

Laying a secure foundation for future learning through learning and development that is planned around the individual needs and interests of the child, and informal by the use of ongoing observational assessment.

The Childcare Act 2006 provides for the EYFS learning and development requirements to comprise three elements:

The early learning goals – the knowledge, skills and understanding which young children should have acquired by the end of the academic year in which they reach the age of five.

Educational programmes – the matters, skills and processes, which are required to be taught to younger children.

The assessment arrangements – the arrangements for assessing young children to ascertain their achievements.

There are six areas covered by the early learning goals and educational programmes:

Personal, Social and Emotional Development

Communication, Language and Literacy

Problem Solving, Reasoning and Numeracy

Knowledge and Understanding of the World

Physical Development

Creative Development

At ABC Nursery and Pre-school we deliver these development areas through planned, purposeful play, with a balance of adult-led and child-initiated activities. Each child has a development folder, which has observations, and samples of work they have completed all linking into the EYFS.