'Starting with the child, learning through play'

Purpose and aims of the Early Years Foundation Stage

Every child deserves the best possible start in life and support to fulfill 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. When parents choose to use early years services they want to know that provision will keep their children safe and help them to thrive.

The Early Years Foundation Stage (EYFS) is the framework that provides that assurance. The overarching aim of the EYFS is to help young children achieve the five Every Child Matters outcomes of staying safe, being healthy, enjoying and achieving, making a positive contribution, and achieving economic well-being by:

	A Unique Child recognises that every child is a competent learner from birth who can be resilient, capable, confident and self-assured. The commitments are focused around development; inclusion; safety; and health and well being.
	Positive Relationships describes how children learn to be strong and independent from a base of loving and secure relationships with parents and/or a key person. The commitments are focused around respect; partnership with parents; supporting learning; and the role of the key person.
	Enabling Environments explains that the environment plays a key role in supporting and extending children’s development and learning. The commitments are focused around observation, assessment and planning; support for every child; the learning environment; and the wider context – transitions, continuity, and multi-agency working.
	Learning and Development recognises that children develop and learn in different ways and at different rates, and that all areas of learning and development are equally important and inter-connected.

This approach ensures that the EYFS meets the overreaching aim of improving outcomes and reflects that it is every child’s right to grow up safe; healthy; enjoying and achieving; making a positive contribution; and with economic well-being.

	Setting the standards for the learning, development and care young children should experience when they are attending a setting outside their family home, ensuring that every child makes progress and that no child gets left behind;
	Providing for equality of opportunity and anti-discriminatory practice and ensuring that every child is included and not disadvantaged because of ethnicity, culture or religion, home language, family background, learning difficulties or disabilities, gender or ability;
	Creating the framework for partnership working between parents and professionals, and

Between all the settings that the child attends; improving quality and consistency in the early years sector through a universal set of standards which apply to all settings, ending the distinction between care and learning in the existing frameworks, and providing the basis for the inspection and regulation regime; laying a secure foundation for future learning through learning and development that is planned around the individual needs and interests of the child, and informed by the use of ongoing observational assessment.

There are six areas covered by the early learning goals and developmental matters:

Personal, Social and Emotional Development;

Communication, Language and Literacy;

Problem Solving, Reasoning and Numeracy;

Knowledge and Understanding of the World;

Physical Development;

Creative Development.

None of these areas of Learning and Development can be delivered in isolation from the others. They are equally important and depend on each other to support a rounded approach to child development. All the areas must be delivered through play activities that are formed around the children’s interests; the emphasis on child led play, with adults ‘scaffolding their ideas.

Working Together For Your Children

In our pre-school we maintain the ratio of adults to children that is set though the Early Years Foundation Stage. We also encourage parents/carers to come and spend time within the setting, sharing hobbies or interests. Studies have proven that parents/carers that are involved in their child’s learning can lead to higher achievement.