EYFS & Aims

Every child deserves the best possible start in life and the 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 it’s own right, and it provides the foundation for children to make the most of their 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 support 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:

-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;

-promoting 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 setting 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;

-and laying a secure foundation for future learning through learning and development which is planned around the individual needs of the child, and informed by the use of ongoing observational assessment.

For more information about the EYFS please visit www.nationalstrategies.standards.dcsf.gov.uk