Every child deserves the best possible start in life and the support that enables them to fulfil their potential. Children develop quickly in the early years and a child’s experiences between birth and age five have a major impact on their future life chances.
Each child within our setting is assigned a key person. Their role is to help ensure that every child’s care is tailored to meet their individual needs. They will work towards an educational programme promoting the seven areas of learning from the Early Years Foundation Stage. This framework is mandatory for all early year’s settings and from 1 September 2021 the framework has been updated.
Over the next few months, we will be working to make the changes necessary ready for September 2021. One of the key features is limiting the amount of data that we collect on the children: reducing the amount of written work that the staff produce on a daily basis, which in turn will give us more time with the children for quality interactions which are not interrupted by data collection. With this in mind we will be looking at the observations that we put onto the app by ensuring that we have a selection of quality and meaningful observations but not necessarily as many. You may therefore see a reduction in the number of daily observations that you receive on the app. Ongoing assessment is an integral part of the learning and development process. It involves practitioners knowing the children’s level of achievement and interests, and then shaping teaching and learning experiences for each child reflecting that knowledge into their everyday interactions with the children. As the new document states ‘Assessment should not take practitioners away from the children for long periods of time’.
Granby will continue to encourage parents and/or carers to share information about children’s learning at home to ensure that we create a holistic understanding of children’s learning and development.
