Moving the Box

Moving the Box

We will show how focused approaches can offer equity to children in the early years and achieve increases in the numbers of children achieving Good Levels of Development (GLD) and benefit from enhanced investment in Early Years Pupil Premium (EYPP).

With new ambitions comes the need for new approaches.

Ensuring children have the best start in life is the foundation of the Government’s opportunity mission. To achieve their overall mission of closing the opportunity gap, they have set a goal to achieve a record proportion of children starting school ready to learn.Moving from 67.7% GLD to 75%.

Government will measure progress through 75% of five-year-olds reaching a GLD in the EYFS assessment by 2028 – which looks at children’s development across areas like language, personal, social and emotional development, and maths and literacy.This is an increase from the current 67.7% and would mean an additional 40,000 to 45,000 children a year hitting developmental goals.We are of course keen to see how we can become more ambitious and not be satisfied that 25% of children will not mee the GLDs.

Building on curriculum development.

The understanding of how we construct and design an appropriate curriculum for children in the Early Years Foundation Stage (EYFS) has developed considerably in recent years.The need for relevant learning ‘domains and the necessity for acknowledging the role of learning behaviours as integral to the curriculum has challenged and enriched the potential of effective and impactful provision.

Critically, a curriculum is grown, not given, as it needs to fully reflect both the context in which the provision operates and the values of the professional educators that deliver it. Our Moving the Box programme identifies the starting points and underlying principles that enable this and using case studies from recent hey! projects further explores how EYFS educators can become empowered and confident in designing and owning their curriculum.

Programme aims:

1. To provide continuous professional development that supports EYFS provision to:

• Strengthen the leadership of early years practice.
• Improve knowledge and understanding of early years curriculum, pedagogy and assessment and enhance the ability of senior leaders to ensure and assure the quality of early years provision.
• Explore and define values and aspirations for the children they work with and understand and articulate the needs of children in EYFS provision.
• Reflect on current curriculum and identify meaningful ‘content’ relevant to their learners that ensures a curriculum progression that accumulates and deepens appropriate knowledge, skills and learning behaviours.
• Explore and develop a pedagogical repertoire that defines appropriate and effective approaches to deliver the curriculum, centred around the acquisition of learning behaviours and relevant knowledge and skills.

2. Create an evidence base of effective practice to demonstrate:

• What an effective curriculum should look like and how it is developed, designed and implemented in the context of the provision.
• How this is most effectively delivered.
• How this relates to supporting outcomes.

3. How to get involved:

• As a local authority.
• As an individual practitioner.
• As an individual setting or school.
• As an individual practitioner.