The Revised Years Foundation Stage
The Early Years Foundation Stage (EYFS) sets the standards that nurseries and other early year’s providers in England must meet to ensure that children develop and learn well and are kept healthy and safe.
The skills, abilities and knowledge that a child is likely to be learning the vital early years, between birth and age five are divided into seven areas of Learning and Development in the revised EYFS: three Prime and four Specific.
The Prime area are:
- Physical Development
- Personal, Social and Emotional Development
- Communication and Language
The Specific area are:
- Literacy
- Mathematics
- Understanding the World and,
- Expressive Arts and Design
All the above area are important and interconnected. However the Prime areas seen as fundamental are in the earliest years from birth to three, as they support all of children’s development and later learning. Without enough of the right kinds of experiences in the Prime areas, children may struggle with their learning, find it difficult to communicate well and their confidence and emotional resilience may be affected.
Importantly, the revised EYFS recognises that children learn through;
- Playing
- Exploring
- Being active
- Creating, and
- Thinking critically
It is acknowledges too that children develop at their own rate and in their own ways, so ‘stages of development’ have no fixed age boundaries.
Chart taken from NURSERYWORLD 2012
