Early Years Foundation Stage |
National Curriculum KS1+ |
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Personal, social and emotional
development
This is considered an area of high importance. The Key Person
approach contributes to the children’s wellbeing and staff are expected to
support children’s emotional development as a matter of priority. By the end
of the EYFS children are expected to be self-confident and self-aware, manage
their feelings and behaviour in an appropriate way and be able to make
relationships with other children and adults.
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There is no specific subject to support children’s PSED. The
curriculum begins with a broad statement explaining the need for schools to
deliver all the subjects within an environment which supports children’s
personal, social and emotional needs so it is overarching and should be embedded
in every lesson that teachers deliver – within the ethos of the school and
the values and beliefs held by the teachers.
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Physical development
This is also a prime area. Early years settings should always have
opportunities for physical play both indoors and outdoors. By the end of the
EYFS children are expected to be able to coordinate themselves with gross and
fine motor skills. They are expected to be able to manage their own personal
hygiene needs and understand the need for a healthy diet.
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This becomes physical
education and is the final subject to be included on the subject list.
Children are expected to develop their strength, agility and coordination,
dance and participate both competitively and cooperatively. The KS1 programme
of study is less than half an A4 page for the entire two years, although the
statements of expectation are wide ranging.
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Communication and language
The final prime area. Staff need to ensure that they communicate with
children in developmentally appropriate ways and encourage children’s
communication, both with adults and their peers. Children are expected to
have developed their ability to listen and respond to instructions, pay
attention when being spoken to, understand what is being said to them and
speak in order to communicate their own thoughts and ideas by the end of the
EYFS.
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The subject of English
should be the obvious choice to continue this prime area. However, childrens’
spoken word and ability to listen is almost ignored within this large subject
section. There is one sentence: ‘Teachers
should ensure that their teaching develops pupils’ oral vocabulary as well as
their ability to understand and use a variety of grammatical structures,
giving particular support to pupils whose oral language skills are
insufficiently developed.’ (p.20) This assumes that children are already
able to communicate well with adults and peers.
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Literacy
A specific area with less priority, although the expectations are
high. For literacy, children need to learn how to read – demonstrating a good
phonic knowledge and the ability to decode words by the end of the EYFS. They
also need to learn how to write these words and create sentences. In order
for children to attain the early learning goals, they will need a strong systematic
synthetic phonics teaching programme in Reception to get them to the level
they need to be to start in Year 1.
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English moves literacy on
in leaps and bounds. There are six pages in the programme of study, making it
the most important subject of the curriculum. Children are expected to
develop their reading – phonic knowledge and comprehension, and writing – transcription,
composition, vocabulary, grammar and punctuation. There are copious pages of
details which are a statutory requirement, with so much for teachers to cram
in to just one year of teaching – with spellings included. It seems that the
ability to read and write becomes the most important focus as it enables the
learning in all of the other subjects.
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Mathematics
Another specific area, given less priority, although again the
expectations are high. Children are expected by the end of the EYFS to learn
how to count and do simple number problems. They also need to know
mathematical language referring to shape, space and measures.
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Mathematics is a subject
of high importance, comprising five pages of the Year 1 programme of study.
Children are expected to learn about number – place value, addition and subtraction,
multiplication and division, fractions, measurement and geometry – both properties
of shapes and position/direction. This leads directly on from the learning in
the EYFS, although children will need that foundational knowledge of number
to effectively engage in the programme of study for KS1.
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Understanding the World
A specific area. Children are expected to be able to talk about the
lives of others, be interested in and explore the world around them and show
an interest in utilising technology by the end of the EYFS.
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This is split into a number of subjects: science, geography, history and computing. The Year 1 programme of study for science sets out
the expectation for children to learn about animals (including humans),
everyday materials and seasonal changes. They need to do this within the KS1
statutory requirement to work scientifically. Geography and history correspond
well with ‘topic’ work, and for computing children need to learn how to use
programs effectively to retrieve and display information.
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Expressive arts and design
A specific area. This area is more about processes than products, so
children are expected to have had the opportunity to explore a variety of
creative resources to design, create and use their imaginations. This is far
more about the environment and appropriate resourcing by the staff than the
children having specific outcomes.
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This splits into three subjects: art
and design, design and technology and
music. Between the three different subjects, the programmes of study
amount to about two pages for KS1. Children are expected to have access to
creative materials, tools to manipulate them and knowledge of how to use
them. They are also expected to gain a musical knowledge, listen to music,
sing, play instruments and begin composing their own music.
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The information contained in the
table above I find incredibly interesting. I can see that the National
Curriculum has set the standard for the attainment within the EYFS, so although
we may fight against the unrealistic and inappropriate early learning goals,
really it is the National Curriculum which needs to shift the learning
expectations so that the Early Years can be relieved of the burden of
inappropriate teaching.
In light of this realisation, I
feel that I need to ensure I do not become trapped in this system which is
pushing formal teaching further and further down the age ranges. I know what is
appropriate for the children in my care at preschool, and this term while I’ve
been doing my maths assessments (using an appropriate play based approach to
assessing), I’ve noticed that there are quite a lot of children going to school
in September who cannot recite numbers 1-10 and do not count with 1-1
correspondence. Because children have to be able to do this (up to 20) by the
end of Reception, this makes me feel like I should be doing more at preschool
to give them less to work for in their Reception year, for which they will
quite clearly come home very tired every day from the sheer amount of information
being put into their brains! But I need to be careful that this doesn’t happen,
because responding to the pressure from higher up by challenging children too
far will damage their ability or motivation to want to learn at all.
With regards to Literacy/English,
the jump during the Reception year from being non-readers to being readers is
huge. I understand that at this age children do have a large capacity to learn
and they are able, in most cases, to pick things up and apply their knowledge
well. However, the pressure placed on the teachers to ensure that by the time
children go into Year 1 they are already able to decode words and write their
own means that children need to make that transition in just one year.
Reception is a key year group in
this whole scenario, it almost needs its own column in between the EYFS and the
National Curriculum because that is the year when children need to start making
that transition to more formal learning. But do they?! This is all according to the British Government. The more I learn about the education system and reflect on it, the more I think that children are getting a raw deal in all of this.
There are plenty of movements regarding early education and changing the expectations placed on children, some of whom I will list here. If you are interested and would like further information, please click on the links.
http://www.savechildhood.net/
http://www.toomuchtoosoon.org/
http://www.betterwithoutbaseline.org.uk/
http://www.upstart.scot/
