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Organisation

Requirements introduction

General requirement

Providers must plan and organise their systems to ensure that every child receives an enjoyable and challenging learning and development experience that is tailored to meet their individual needs. [1.1, 3.3, 4.2]

Specific legal requirements

Providers must have effective systems to ensure that the individual needs of all children are met. [1, 2.4]

Each child must be assigned a key person. In childminding settings, the childminder is the key person.

Providers must promote equality of opportunity and anti-discriminatory practice and must ensure 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.

Providers must ensure that there is a balance of adult-led and freely-chosen or child-initiated activities, delivered through indoor and outdoor play.

Providers must undertake sensitive observational assessment in order to plan to meet young children's individual needs. [1, 2, 3]

Providers must plan and provide experiences which are appropriate to each child's stage of development as they progress towards the early learning goals.

Statutory guidance to which providers should have regard

The key person should help the baby or child to become familiar with the provision and to feel confident and safe within it, developing a genuine bond with the child (and the child's parents) and offering a settled, close relationship.

The key person should meet the needs of each child in their care and respond sensitively to their feelings, ideas and behaviour, talking to parents to make sure that the child is being cared for appropriately for each family.

Practitioners should value linguistic diversity and provide opportunities for children to develop and use their home language in their play and learning. This is part of the respect for each child's cultural background that is central in all early years provision. Alongside support in the home language, practitioners should provide a range of meaningful contexts in which children have opportunities to develop English. As they move into the Key Stage 1 curriculum, English will be crucial as the language they use to access learning. [1, 2]