The EYFS curriculum is highly ambitious and based on a clear progression of knowledge and skills. It is extremely stimulating, provokes curiosity, sparks enthusiasm and inspires all children to learn.

The planned curriculum ensures that all children receive the education they deserve as well as meeting the requirements outlined in the Early Years Framework (2024). We provide children with experiences and opportunities that develop the whole child socially, emotionally, physically, intellectually and spiritually.

We aim to ensure children keep up, not catch up, enabling them to get off to a flying start and ensuring a high quality experience for all children so that they know more and remember more.

We see every child as unique and want to ensure that all children receive a holistic curriculum that prepares them for their future life as well as the next stage in their education. We take the time to really get to know them as individuals; their interests, where they like to learn, how they learn, what fires their enthusiasm. From these observations and assessment for learning we plan an educational programme that ensures progression and gives children the dispositions and attitudes to become lifelong learners. A feeding forward system is at the heart of our practice, ensuring we are responsive to the needs of all children.

The use of our enabling environment helps to build children's learning power through stimulating continuous provision and thoughtful provocations. We use the environment as the third teacher; materials are thoughtfully added to the environment to promote creativity, thinking and problem solving skills, questions, experimentation and open-ended play.

Our environments are text rich, based on a carefully considered overview of key texts, additional books for repetition and provision that inspire and develop talk and embed vocabulary. By providing experiences and support through quality interactions, we help children to become confident and creative do-ers and thinkers so that they build a strong foundation for all they encounter in the future.

A challenge system in reception encourages children to embed skills and prior learning independently using enhancements in the provision. Further enhancements also provide opportunities to practise and apply taught skills.

We support every child in being the best version of themselves, growing in confidence and being proud of who they are. Children’s learning behaviours and dispositions to learning are influenced by feedback and the environment around them. Encouragement, praise, rewards and celebrations are well embedded within our curriculum, to provide children with a sense of belonging, and self- achievement.

• promoting independence and resilience through class discussions
• experiences - providing valuable, inspiring and exciting opportunities that support and build on their life experiences
• high engagement
• secure practitioner knowledge of child development, so staff can support children to make progress from individual starting points

We get to know the children’s interests to support learning. All areas of the EYFS are followed and planned for to ensure there is a broad, balanced and progressive learning environment and curriculum. The children learn new skills, acquire new knowledge to know more and remember more, demonstrating understanding through the seven areas of the EYFS curriculum.

We have robust assessment systems which incorporate the following to measure impact:

Baseline assessments - informed by transition from nursery to reception. Staff complete home visits and communicate with feeder nursery settings, using transition paperwork from school and the LA to gain an understanding of the whole child and where they are at. During the first half term, all staff use ongoing assessments, observations and conversations with the child to develop a baseline assessment. This identifies each individual’s starting points in all areas so we can plan experiences to ensure progress.

• The RBA (Statutory Reception Baseline Assessment) This assessment focuses on ‘Language, Communication and Literacy,’ and ‘Mathematics.’ The purpose of this is to show the progress children make from Reception until the end of KS2.
• WellComm speech and language tool - developed by Speech and Language Therapists at Sandwell and West Birmingham Hospitals NHS Trust. This quickly identifies areas of concern in language, communication, and interaction development in order to ensure early targeted intervention. This is further embedded through the role of the adult within continuous provision.
• Ongoing Observation: All ongoing observations are used to inform weekly planning and identify children’s next steps. This formative assessment does not involve prolonged periods of time away from the children and excessive paper work. Practitioners draw on their knowledge of the child and their own expert professional judgements through discussions with other practitioners, photographs and physical examples such as a child’s drawing / mark making.
• Little Wandle Phonics Assessments - we regularly assess the children to identify sounds that they are not secure with and these are addressed in our keep up interventions.

Regular and ongoing assessment and professional dialogue between EY staff enables the children to meet high expectations and show consistent high rates of accelerated progress in line with end of year predictions of better than typical progress for all children.

Our ambitious and carefully planned curriculum, alongside highly skilled adults with excellent knowledge and experience of EYFS, resulted in a GLD of 81% for 23/24, exceeding the most recently published National GLD. This is evidence of the significant impact on pupil outcomes as a result of our curriculum and provision at Co-op Academy New Islington.