Early Years
Every child deserves the best possible start in life and the support that enables them to fulfil their potential. Children develop quickly in the early years and a child’s experiences between birth and age five have a major impact on their future life chances. A secure, safe and happy childhood is important in its own right. Good parenting and high quality early learning together provide the foundation children need to make the most of their abilities and talents as they grow up.
We want all children to develop their personalities, talents and abilities irrespective of ethnicity, culture or religion, home language, family background, learning difficulties, disabilities or gender.
At Somerville Primary School we pride ourselves on providing quality learning experiences with a well-qualified, skilled staff who deliver the best possible outcomes for the children in our care.
The latest Early Years Foundation Stage (EYFS) Framework came into effect in September 2021 and covers the education and care of all children in Early Years Provision. This Framework is mandatory and sets the standards that all Early Years Providers must meet to ensure that children learn and develop well and are kept healthy and safe. The development matters is non statuory currciulum guidance which is used to inform our approach to the curriculum.
Educational programmes, referred to by some people as the ‘early years curriculum’, are the areas of learning and development which must shape the activities and experiences that children have in your early years setting, at all ages.
There are 7 areas of learning and development.
The 3 prime areas:
- communication and language
- physical development
- personal, social and emotional development
The 4 specific areas:
- literacy
- maths
- understanding the world
- expressive arts and design
Recent changes have been made to the wording in the educational programmes. Specifically, this means:
- they are longer, there is more depth, and they contain examples of things that you can do with children
- there is a new focus on early language and extending vocabulary, with more examples on how to embed and develop vocabulary skills across all 7 areas, because this improves child development in a broad curriculum
What this means in practice
The Development Matters non-statutory curriculum guidance for the early years foundation stage can help inform your approach to curriculum, putting the educational programmes into practice.
Please refer to the documents below for all key information relating to the EYFS.
To support the effective delivery of the EYFS Framework, Somerville Federation has developed a skills progression for each of the seven areas of learning and development. These can be found below: