Nursery and Reception

The Early Years Foundation Stage is the statutory framework used as the basis for all learning, development and care in Nursery and Reception classes. It has its own play based curriculum guidance document and also prepares children for learning in Key Stage One.
The 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:

  • Setting the standards for learning, development and care young children should experience and ensuring that every child makes progress.
  • Providing the 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 settings that the child attends
  • Improving quality and consistency through a set of universal standards and ending the distinction between care and learning
  • 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.

The EYFS principles are grouped into four distinct but complementary themes:

A Unique Child

Positive Relationships

Enabling Environments

Learning and Development


Partnership working underpins successful delivery of the EYFS in a number of different ways:

  • Where children receive education and care in more than one setting, practitioners must ensure continuity and coherence by sharing relevant information with each other and with parents
  • Close working between early years practitioners and parents is vital for the identification of children's learning needs and to ensure a quick response to any area of particular difficulty.
  • Parents and families are central to a child's well being and practitioners should support this important relationship by sharing information and offering support to learning in the home
  • Practitioners will need to work with other agencies, such as local and community health services, or where children are looked after by the local authority, to identify and meet the needs and use their knowledge and advice to provide children's social care with the best learning opportunities and environments for all children

Learning and Development Requirements

There are six areas of learning covered by the early learning goals and educational programmes:

  • 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 are closely linked to provide children with a broad and balanced curriculum and depend on each other to support a rounded approach to child development. All the areas are delivered through planned, purposeful play, with a balance of adult-led and child-initiated activities.


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