The EYFS became statutory for Ofsted-registered providers in September 2008. It is designed to ensure consistency in terms of the education and care that children receive across different settings, from birth to the age of five. This means that children being looked after by childminders will receive the same quality of provision as those in nurseries, children’s centres and schools.
Holistic Approach to Provision for Children
The EYFS has the important feature of being an integrated framework, which removes the distinction between education and care. In other words, it is no longer the case that certain settings (such as day care nurseries) are primarily concerned with pastoral care, and others (schools) are more concerned with education. It is now recognised that a holistic approach is the best way to provide for children’s needs – an approach which puts learning and development within the wider context of children’s welfare and wellbeing.
As the EYFS applies to children from birth and five, schools should continue to build on children’s previous experiences from other settings. Children may (or may not) change location when they reach statutory school age, but the transition should be a relatively smooth one due to the common curricular framework used in different settings.
Developmental Framework
An important feature of the EYFS is the principle of it being a developmental framework. Rather than prescribing a set of learning objectives or “targets”, it is intended to provide a continuum of development (milestones) which acknowledges the fact that children are unique and may not progress in the same way or at a uniform rate.
Although children may be at different points along their own developmental pathways, the EYFS does reflect “average” norms or expectations. The framework gives an indication of stages of development – what most children will have achieved within key timescales:
- Birth to 11 months
- Eight to 20 months
- 16 to 26 months
- 22 to 36 months
- 30 to 50 months
- 40 to 60 months onwards. (Practice Guidance for the Early Years Foundation Stage, DfES, 2007)
This helps practitioners and other professionals track children’s progress and identify potential difficulties or areas for development. Knowing what is “normal” for individual children, and being able to compare this with average expectations, can provide the basis for important decisions about provision for children and early intervention.
Early Learning Goals
Although the EYFS is based on the principle of a developmental curriculum, it does contain “Early Learning Goals” (ELGs), which provide parents and practitioners with an indication of what children are working towards – the average expectations for children at the end of the EYFS (or the end of the Reception year in schools).
ELGs are specified for each of the six areas of learning and development in the EYFS, namely:
- Personal, Social and Emotional Development
- Problem Solving, Reasoning and Numeracy
- Communication, Language and Literacy
- Knowledge and Understanding of the World
- Physical Development
- Creative Development.
Practitioners keep records of children’s learning journeys (their progress towards the ELGs) and this information contributes to the EYFS Profile – a summary of children’s achievement throughout the EYFS. This is reported to local authorities at the end of the EYFS, and shared with parents/carers. The profile is an important record which can be shared between settings or with other professionals, for example, at transition times or when multi-agency working is required.
The Early Years Foundation Stage may is designed to be a child-centred, developmentally appropriate framework, which can be used to meet the all-round needs of children in English care settings. Not all providers will find it easy to implement, and variations in quality are likely to persist, but, nonetheless, it is arguably the closest that England has come to a truly holistic approach.
