Early Years – St Anne's Catholic Primary School

Download our Curriculum Intent, Implementation and Impact statement here: EYFS Curriculum

At St Anne’s we aim to nurture children within a happy, caring and positive environment. We support and scaffold their learning, allow them to make mistakes and help them to overcome challenges. We aspire for all of our children to develop a love of life-long learning.

We passionately agree that:

“Every child deserves the best possible start in life and support to fulfil their potential. A child’s experience in the early years has a major impact on their future life chances. A secure, safe and happy childhood is important in its own right, and it provides the foundation for children to make the most of their abilities and talents as they grow up.” — Statutory Framework for the Early Years Foundation Stage, Department for Children, Schools and Families, 2021.

The EYFS seeks to provide:

quality and consistency in all early years settings, so that every child makes good progress and no child gets left behind
a secure foundation through planning for the learning and development of each individual child, and assessing and reviewing what they have learned regularly
partnership working between practitioners and with parents and/or carers
equality of opportunity and anti-discriminatory practice, ensuring that every child is included and supported.

The EYFS is based upon four principles:

A Unique Child

We recognise that every child is a competent learner who can be resilient, capable, confident and self-assured. We recognise that children develop in individual ways, at varying rates. Children’s attitudes and dispositions to learning are influenced by feedback from others; we use praise and encouragement, as well as celebration and rewards, to encourage children to develop a positive attitude to learning.

Positive Relationships

We recognise that children learn to be strong and independent from secure relationships. We aim to develop caring, respectful, professional relationships with our children and their families.

Enabling Environments

We understand that the environment plays a key role in supporting and extending the children’s development. Through observation and interaction we continuously assess the children’s interests, stages of development and next steps for learning, and plan challenging, achievable activities and experiences to enable children to progress quickly.

Learning and Development

Our ‘Foundation Stage’ environment is organised to allow children to explore and learn securely and safely. There are areas where the children can be active, or be quiet and rest. The unit is planned so that children are able to find activities, equipment and resources independently. Provision in these areas includes familiar and continuously accessible activities and resources, as well as activities which are varied and enhanced to fit in with current themes and learning needs. Each day is composed of playing and learning through a balance of adult-led teaching activities and child-initiated time.

When planning and guiding children’s activities, our practitioners reflect on the different ways that children learn and reflect these in our practice.

Three characteristics of effective teaching and learning are:

playing and exploring – children investigate and experience things, and ‘have a go’
active learning – children concentrate and keep on trying if they encounter difficulties, and enjoy achievements
creating and thinking critically – children have and develop their own ideas, make links between ideas, and develop strategies for doing things.

The Areas of Learning and Development

There are seven areas of learning and development that must shape educational programmes in early years settings. All areas of learning and development are important and inter-connected. Three areas are particularly crucial for igniting children’s curiosity and enthusiasm for learning, and for building their capacity to learn, form relationships and thrive.

These three areas, the prime areas, are:

Communication and language
Physical development
Personal, social and emotional development
Providers must also support children in four specific areas, through which the three prime areas are strengthened and applied.

The specific areas are: