Children start developing their foundations for future learning from before birth, so this title reflects a more accurate description for the whole birth to five phase. The Early Years Foundation Stage (EYFS) brings together Birth to Three Matters and the Curriculum Guidance for the Foundation Stage, as well as elements of the National Standards for Under 8s Daycare and Childminding, into a coherent document which will help practitioners provide quality and continuity for children.

No - as long as you have been using Birth to Three Matters and/or the Curriculum Guidance for the Foundation Stage effectively, as the EYFS brings these two documents together. You will now be able to see more easily how your work with any group of children fits into the birth to five continuum. What providers will need to do is check that their provision meets all the statutory requirements. The introduction of the EYFS gives all providers and practitioners the chance to review their current provision and to ensure that they are meeting the needs of all the children in their care.

The EYFS is designed to be used flexibly. Providers and practitioners may want to use it in different ways depending on the type of setting in which they work and their professional responsibilities.

• The poster sets out the Principles and gives an overview of the EYFS.
• The EYFS Framework Document sets out the legal requirements that providers must meet. The EYFS Practice Guidance provides some additional support on effective practice that will help practitioners implement the legal requirements. It should be used in conjunction with the legal requirements and statutory guidance booklet and with the cards and CD-ROM.
• The cards are the first level of guidance to support practitioners in putting the EYFS Principles into practice.
• The CD-ROM provides more detailed information on all the areas covered on the cards as well as links to research and resources.

There is an extensive glossary which defines the terms used in the EYFS. This can be located from the home page of the CD-ROM.

These four Principles express important values underpinning effective practice in the care, development and learning of young children. They are easy to remember and they summarise all the areas covered by the original Birth to Three Matters and Curriculum Guidance for the Foundation Stage Principles. They are each supported by four Commitments which describe how the Principles can be put into practice.

The summative assessment at the end of the EYFS is the EYFS Profile based on the early learning goals for each area of Learning and Development. It is therefore appropriate for practitioners to understand how the work they are doing with the very youngest babies and children contributes in the long term to these early learning goals. This is why some of the curriculum is organised in the EYFS under areas of Learning and Development.

The guidance on the Birth to Three Matters component cards is embedded throughout the EYFS including in the areas of Learning and Development. All areas of Learning and Development are organised in overlapping developmental stages from birth to five plus and under the Birth to Three Matters headings of 'Development matters', 'Look, listen and note', 'Effective practice' and 'Planning and resources'. The text under these headings is taken mainly from either Birth to Three Matters, Curriculum Guidance for the Foundation Stage or the National Standards for Under 8s Daycare and Childminding.

Some of the standards, for example, those to do with the physical environment, are in the registration and welfare requirements. Others, for example, those relating to care, learning and play, have become part of the learning and development requirements.

The majority of them are still present in the areas of Learning and Development in the column 'Development matters'.

The Foundation Stage Profile will be known as the EYFS Profile but it will still be a summative assessment of each child’s progress towards the early learning goals; it will therefore remain the same. The EYFS scale points 1-3 will still be assessed using the statements originally derived from the stepping stones as they cover important knowledge and skills which are still included in EYFS. Scale points 4-8 are based on the early learning goals which are still there in the EYFS. Scale point 9 continues to be a statement of achievement beyond the early learning goals.

The EYFS is statutory from September 2008; the framework remains guidance. The early learning goals remain the outcomes that children in Reception classes are working towards. In order to minimise confusion and help Reception teachers make links between the EYFS and the frameworks, the early learning goals are highlighted in the literacy and mathematics frameworks. For guidance on effective practice, practitioners are referred to the EYFS.

Both the EYFS and the primary framework have incorporated the recommendations of the Independent Review of the Teaching of Early Reading carried out by Jim Rose. The whole of the Rose review is available at Teachernet: Online Publications or Review of Early Reading: Recommendations

Below is a summary of some of the main recommendations.

• It is very important to develop children’s positive attitudes to literacy, in the broadest sense and from the earliest stages, in partnership with parents and carers.
• Best practice for beginner readers provides them with a rich curriculum that fosters all four interdependent strands of language.
• Good phonics teaching is systematic, multi-sensory and interactive in order to capture children’s interests and sustain motivation and reinforce learning.
• High quality, systematic phonic work should be taught discretely and should normally start by the age of five, taking full account of professional judgements of children’s developing abilities.

These recommendations are embedded in CLL. However a more systematic approach to teaching reading does not mean drilling babies or very young children in phonics. Most of the work up to the age of five will be about supporting children’s phonological awareness: the general ability to attend to the sounds and rhythms of language. Knowledge of the alphabetic code and the skills of segmentation and blending (phonics) come for most children towards the end of the EYFS and have to be built upon strong foundations of speaking and listening.

Excellence and Enjoyment: a Strategy for Primary Schools affirms a vision for primary education that provides opportunities for all children to succeed through a commitment to high standards and excellence within an exciting, engaging, broad and rich curriculum. There should therefore be little difficulty in making links between EYFS and Key Stage 1.

Learning and Teaching in the Primary Years: Professional Development Resources is a set of professional development materials which helps practitioners make these links. The booklets and video provided in the pack include examples of effective practice in working with three- to five-year-olds, as well as older children, and show where each of the key aspects of learning listed below are embedded in the areas of learning and the programmes of study for Key Stage 1 and Key Stage 2. The key aspects of learning provide a framework for continuing the broad and balanced approach of the EYFS.

Aspects of effective learning

• Empathy
• Motivation
• Managing feelings
• Social skills
• Communication

Aspects of cognition

• Reasoning
• Evaluation
• Creativity
• Enquiry
• Problem solving
• Information processing

Issues of transition and continuity between Reception and Year 1 have been the subject of DCSF commissioned research, A Study of the Transition from the Foundation Stage to Key Stage 1. The Continuing the Learning Journey pack was sent to every primary school by the National Assessment Agency in 2005. Both these pieces of work contain effective practice case studies that schools can use when planning to provide continuity in children’s learning. Continuing the Learning Journey demonstrates how the EYFS profile should be used as an effective transfer document for children, so that their learning and development across the whole curriculum is maintained.

References

Sanders D., White G., Burge B., Sharp C., Eames A., McEune R. and Grayson, H. (2005) A Study of the Transition from the Foundation Stage to Key Stage 1, National Foundation for Educational Research, DfES Publications ref: SSU/2005/FR/013.

Continuing the Learning Journey training package, QCA ref: QCA/05/1590.