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FOUNDATION

The Importance of the Foundation Curriculum

The Foundation Stage is the first part of the National Curriculum, focusing on the distinct needs of children from birth to the end of the reception year in primary school. This is a crucial stage in children's development and well-being. Growth is rapid and differs from child to child; a significantly high proportion of learning takes place during this developmental period. It is therefore a time when children need particularly high quality care and learning experiences. The Foundation Stage is important in its own right, and in preparing children for later schooling. The Early Learning Goals set out what is expected of most children by the end of the Foundation Stage.

Aims of the Foundation Stage

The overarching aim of the Early Years Foundation Stage is to help young children achieve the five 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;
providing for 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, 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 a universal set of standards which apply to all settings.
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.

It is crucial to their future success that children's earliest experiences help to build a secure foundation for learning throughout their school years and beyond. We are sensitive to the individual development of each child to ensure that the activities they undertake are suitable for the stage that they have reached. Children need to be stretched, but not pushed beyond their capabilities, so that they can continue to enjoy learning.

The Foundation Stage Curriculum

The curriculum documentation used within our setting is the Early Years Foundation Stage Statutory Framework. We adapt this Foundation Curriculum to suit our unique setting and the differing needs of our pupils. Children learning English as a second language are supported to access the curriculum while also developing cognitive and academic language within whole-class, group and independent contexts.

The Foundation stage has 6 learning areas, these are:

Personal, social and emotional development
Communication, language and literacy
Problem Solving, Reasoning and Numeracy
Knowledge and understanding of the world
Physical development
Creative development.

Each area has stepping stones and early learning goals. These set out the skills, attitudes, knowledge and understanding which it is hoped children will reach or exceed by the end of the Foundation Stage.

For the children however learning is holistic and cannot be compartmentalised. One experience may provide children with opportunities to develop a range of competencies, skills and concepts across several areas of learning.

The learning experiences will offer a balance of adult supported, adult directed and child initiated activities. They will also allow for a variety of learning styles.