The Department of Education has issued a statutory Framework for Nursery settings, known as the Early Years Foundation Stage (EYFS) Framework. This sets the UK standards for learning, development and care for children from birth to five. There are seven interconnected areas of learning and development, including three prime areas that are most essential for children’s healthy development, namely ‘Personal, Social and Emotional’, ‘Communication and Language’, and ‘Physical’. Four further areas of development strengthen the three prime areas, and they are entitled, ‘Number’, ‘Creative’, ‘Understanding of the World’, and ‘Literacy’. We are always happy to discuss the EYFS Framework with you in person, and further background information can be found here.
Parents are kept informed of their child’s progress within the principles of the EYFS framework through regular dialogue with their child’s carer, each child’s individual development folder, and via our Parentapp communication tool.
‘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 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. Staff at Richmond House Kindergarten 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.
RHK has the benefit of Alice working on site, who is a qualified Primary School Teacher and has experience of working in a classroom as well as in a school nursery. Alice also has her Early Years Professional Status which has helped in ensuring that Richmond House Kindergarten maintains high standards in implementing and developing the new curriculum.
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 which is now available to view at any time through our eyLog app.