The Department of Education has issued a statutory Framework for Nursery settings, known as the Early Years Foundation Stage (EYFS) guidance. The framework sets out the legal requirements for the care of young children relating to Learning, Development and Welfare. These are important areas all parents need to be comfortable with before choosing any type of childcare for their young children.
Parents at Rainbow have told us they like to be kept informed on the EYFS as the framework not only provides legal requirements, but also structure around the four key areas of learning and development as well as focus in helping young children achieve their full potential.
The EYFS framework sets the UK standards for learning, development and care for children from birth to five.
It is an important part of the Government’s wider vision for families with children aged from birth to five. The plan is to ease up on paperwork demands, allowing staff to interact more with the children, and use their professional judgement. It is seen a step towards a lighter touch regulatory regime.
‘The Government will continue to seek to reduce burdens and remove unnecessary regulation which can undermine a professionals’ ability to protect children and promote their development.’
The EYFS framework makes a number of changes:
Reducing bureaucracy for professionals, simplifying the statutory assessment of children’s development at age five, when in Reception Class at school.
Simplifying the learning and development requirements by reducing the number of early learning goals, assessed in Reception, from 69 to 17.
Stronger emphasis on the three prime areas which are most essential for children’s healthy development. These three areas are:
These three areas really are important to a child’s overall development – for a child to learn and reach his/her potential they need to be confident and socially capable, able to express their needs, thoughts and wishes, and physically capable to develop important gross and fine motor skills. These areas of development, from recent studies, have been shown to be the best predictors of how a child will perform later in life. Four further areas of development are more specific and support our holistic approach to following the progress of each individual child. They cover:
For parents, nursery staff will complete a new progress check at age two on their child’s development. This links with the Healthy Child review carried out by health visitors, so that children get any additional support they need before they start school. We still need to have more information regarding the format this will take within our authority, and training will have to be provided. Staff at HDN see this as a further reinforcement of the very important role we play in your child’s development and an acceptance of that by the Government. If we share our professional knowledge of your child with yourselves and other caring and educational professionals then obviously your child will reap the benefit.
Strengthening partnerships between professionals and parents, ensuring that the new framework uses clear, family friendly language. We always aim to keep you as informed as possible, and do ask for your opinions to help improve the service we offer. This includes making things clear and precise for you.
Parents are kept informed of the development of their child’s progress within the principles of the EYFS framework through regular dialogue with their child’s carer and through the individual development folder of each child.
We hope you will see a connection with the EYFS framework with some of the other information we have tried to articulate on other pages on our web site, through our activities, our approach and our focus on the safety and wellbeing of each child.