EYFS Policy

‘Every child deserves the best possible start in life and support to fulfil their potential. A child’s
experience in the early years has a major impact on their future life chances. A secure, safe and
happy childhood is important in its own right and it provides the foundation for children to make
the most of their abilities and talents as they grow up.’

EYFS Curriculum

Intent

The curriculum is designed to:

  • Recognise and value children’s prior learning from previous settings and home experiences.
  • Provide first hand engaging, stimulating and challenging, play-based learning experiences, allowing learners to build positive identities through managing and taking risks, having a go, developing resilience and promoting a ‘can do’ attitude.
  • Learner’s choices and interests are the driving force for building knowledge, skills and understanding.
  • Provide high quality provision, along with high quality interactions, so that we are laying the foundations for the children becoming independent, active, successful and ambitious lifelong learners.
  • Every child is valued as an individual, safe and well cared for.
  • Offer a balance of child-initiated and adult-led learning using a continuous provision based approach.

Implementation

  • Across our EYFS, we follow the Early Years Statutory Framework for the Early Years Foundation Stage.
  • The Framework specifies the requirement for learning and development in the Early Years and provides prime and specific areas of learning we must cover in our curriculum.
  • Prime Areas covered - Personal, Social and Emotional Development, Physical Development , Communication and Language development.
  • Specific Areas covered- Literacy, Mathematics , Understanding the World,  Expressive Arts and Design.
  • Focus at first is on the prime areas of learning. These form the foundation of a child’s learning. Once the children are secure in these areas they will begin to work on the specific areas of learning.
  • A vital aspect in the development of essential knowledge and skills is the use of continuous provision. This means that children are using and developing taught skills throughout the year on a daily/weekly basis.
  • Continuous Provision practice and principles begin in the Early Years Foundation Stage and support children to develop key life skills such as independence; creativity, enquiry and problem solving.
  • Continuous provision areas are set up to reflect children’s interests, as well as ensuring that reading, writing and maths are high profile.
  • Throughout a typical day, learners will have the opportunity to work independently, work collaboratively with their peers and work with practitioners.
  • There are several direct teach and adult-led sessions taking place daily in Reception. These include phonics, mathematics, topic, PE, Music, story, etc.

 Impact

  • The impact of our curriculum is measured by our observations and assessments that we carry out on a daily basis.
  • The impact on our curriculum is measured by how well practitioners know each individual child.
  • The impact of our curriculum is measured by internal termly data, as well as measuring outcomes against the LA and nationally at the end of the EYFS phase.
  • The impact of our curriculum will also, in fact, be measured by how effectively it helps our learners to develop into well rounded individuals who are independent, active, successful and ambitious lifelong learners.