EYFS

Our Early Years Foundation Stage policy outlines are aims, curriculum and assessment for children in EYFS. It also demonstrates how all statutory guidance is being adhered to.

It is important that every child has the best start to their education, so they can make a positive transition as they join Newfield school. Our youngest pupils access the Explorers curriculum. For more information about the Explorer’s curriculum please click here (link to curriculum page).

There are four guiding principles that shape the practice in early years settings (Statutory framework for the early years foundation stage 2024).

These are:

• Every child is a unique child, who is constantly learning and can be resilient, capable, confident, and self-assured.
• Children learn to be strong and independent through positive relationships.
• Children learn and develop well in enabling environments with teaching and support from adults, who respond to their individual interests and needs and help them to build their learning over time. Children benefit from a strong partnership between practitioners and parents and/or carers.
• Importance of learning and development. Children develop and learn at different rates. (See “the characteristics of effective teaching and learning” at paragraph 1.18). The framework covers the education and care of all children, including children with special educational needs and disabilities (SEND).

Although the Explorer’s curriculum at Newfield has been developed for all children throughout EYFS and Key stage one, it ensures pupils within EYFS have the principles and practice embedded into the provision, based on best practices outlines in the statutory and non statutory guidelines from the Early Years Foundation Stage Statutory Framework (2024) and Development Matters (2023).

Please click here for more information about the Explorer’s Curriculum.

References

Statutory framework for the early years foundation stage for group and school providers

Development Matters - Non-statutory curriculum guidance for the early years foundation stage

In EYFS each child must be assigned a key person. Their role is to help ensure that every child’s care is tailored to meet their individual needs, to help the child become familiar with the setting, offer a settled relationship for the child and build a relationship with their parents and/or carers.

They should also help families engage with more specialist support if appropriate.

At Newfield, the class teacher will be the assigned key person for each child and if families need any additional support the class teacher will be the first point of contact.

There will be regular routine communication with parents through Class Dojo.

Starting school is a big transition for our youngest learners and at Newfield we value the importance of starting a positive relationship with each family when they join.

Before a child starts at Newfield, we will meet with the family at their home to get to get the key information about each child and their needs. A key member of staff will also visit the child in their current setting to observe and gather hand over information.

The child will then be invited into school for transition visits, giving them opportunities to see the learning environment, key places around school and meet staff and pupils who they will share a class with.

Parents will have opportunities to meet the class teacher, and other key professionals during this transition process, including our Family Well Being Coordinators.

In Explorers, and across Newfield we believe that working in partnership with parents provides the best outcomes for pupils.

Parents have termly meetings with class teachers to discuss pupils progress as well as their annual reviews. We encourage parents to be actively involved in their children’s learning. We will share information about learning at home and events at school where parents can be involved throughout the year.

Find all the key information for parents in our specific area of the website.

The Reception Baseline Assessment (RBA) is taken within the first six weeks of starting in Reception. This is a short assessment, which is administrated by Newfield staff, and focuses on communication, language and literacy skills and Mathematics. Some adaptations can be made to support our learners to access the assessment, but in some cases pupils maybe disapplied from the assessment if they cannot access it.

The purpose of the reception baseline assessment is to provide an on-entry assessment of pupil attainment to be used as a starting point from which a cohort-level progress measure to the end of key stage 2 (KS2) can be created.

Further information about the Reception Baseline Assessments is available here: 2023 Information for parents: reception baseline assessment

During the first term of a child starting school, initial assessments will be gathered to provide a baseline of pupil’s skills and knowledge using our own Newfield Explorer’s Framework. This provides an end of term summative assessment.

At the end of the first term parents are invited into school for parent consultations, where the pupil’s progress and targets will be set and shared with parents. This will be based on both the curriculum and the EHCP outcomes.

This will then be repeated termly for on-going assessment, reporting and parental engagement.

Children who are within EYFS will have their progress measured against the 17 Early Learning Goals to complete the EYFS Profile. This data is captured using ‘Early Steps’ on our assessment tool called Bsquared.

The Explorer’s Framework links to these Early Learning Goals and will provide evidence of pupil’s progress towards those early learning Goals.

Evidence For Learning is used to capture pupils progress and linked to their individual EHCP outcomes and to the Explorer’s Curriculum Framework. Practitioners will regularly capture this evidence and provide written feedback on progress.

This will be used to inform future planning and as part of on-going monitoring of pupils progress. This record of pupil’s achievements will be shared with parents during parent consultations each term.