A Comparison of the Old Eyfs to the New Eyfs

A comparison of the old EYFS to the New EYFS together with the relationship between the Montessori Method and the EYFS structure.

The Early Years Foundation Stage is a document which displays and outlines the requirements in development, structure of learning and care for a child from birth to 5 years old. It is a legal requirement to follow the EYFS for any companies working with children, such as nurseries, crèches, and independent schools in England.

This document is put in place by the government to guide practitioners such as teachers working with children from birth to 5 years old. In using this framework there are six key areas of learning that are covered. With this, practitioners set activities for children that are based on and cover the six key areas.

The EYFS also enables adults such as parents to understand how and why nurseries or ‘Key workers’ work and observe children in this way, often the practitioner will ask about the child’s interests outside of nursery – that way it helps the parent build on the child’s welfare and progress as well as the teacher. The six areas of development that are covered in the EYFS 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 of these main titles has a subtitle which breaks down the area into more specific sections, such as; Creative development: exploring media and materials. There is also a grading system for age groups which helps the practitioner find the right area to look in for the area of development. The EYFS is not only a guide for areas of development but also states welfare requirements such as the safeguarding of children and the promotion of a positive environment as children learn best when in this type of setting.

As mentioned earlier the ‘Key worker’ is responsible for creating profiles which contain observations of a child in nursery, artwork the child may have done and photographs of the child doing activities. With each observation will be an area of learning – this is where the EYFS handbook is used. The handbook can also be used as a tool to help with lesson planning and resourcing.

The revised framework of the EYFS breaks down the areas of development in a slightly different way; there are ‘Prime’ areas which are the foundations for the ‘Specific’ areas. So the same as the old EYFS is Personal, social and emotional development, Communication and Language and physical development, these are known as the ‘Prime’ areas. The ‘Specific’ areas are what grow from the ‘Prime’, therefore Literacy, Mathematics, Understanding the world and Expressive Arts and design are what come after in terms of the learning and development of a child. This way of fragmentation leads to a more focused approach to lesson planning for the children and gives reinforcement for the communication between parents and key workers.

The EYFS talks about ‘A unique child’ which is also an approach Maria Montessori took. She believed ‘Each child is born with a unique potential to be revealed, rather than as a blank slate waiting to be written upon.’

Maria Montessori, was born in 1870, was the first woman in Italy to receive a medical degree. She worked in the fields of psychiatry, education and anthropology. Whilst teaching young children she found that the child making decisions and having desires about learning something in particular was the best way. Whereas the old EYFS would have said to plan from the observations taken from a child.

The Montessori Method employs a non rigid controlled school curriculum but an environment filled with learning opportunities and choices. However the EYFS talks about ‘Enabling environments, in which their experiences respond to their individual needs…’ P2. This links with the work of Maria Montessori and her method of teaching.

The revised EYFS opposed to the old, leans more to the Montessori Method as it says all next step planning should be built from the child’s interests.

References

http://www.michaeloaf.net/maria.html

P2 (Page 2 of the revised EYFS)

References: http://www.michaeloaf.net/maria.html P2 (Page 2 of the revised EYFS)