Your Curriculum

This post is designed for practitioners as a guide and not for leaders to build their curriculum. If you want some support to design your curriculum, please reach out and I can either support or recommend someone.

Any Early Years setting whether it’s a school classroom, nursery setting, forest school, playgroup or childminders should have a curriculum in place. However recent changes to the EYFS in England have raised the stakes when it comes to curricula, let’s try to take a little heat out of it.

I’ve split this post into three. That’s because curriculum requirements for school-based settings compared to non-school-based settings are [kind of] different. It’s worth reading the whole post though to understand how it all fits together.

What is a curriculum?

A curriculum is, essentially, a plan of what you will teach (intent) and how (pedagogy or implementation). In the various countries in the UK there are statutory and non-statutory documents with many being called a ‘curriculum.’ I’m not wading into this too deeply in this post but suffice it to say it is good practice to take any statutory or non-statutory document as a starting point for what you intend to teach your children, even if it is known as ‘the curriculum.’ If it is statutory, don’t replace just add. There should always be a local twist to your curriculum.

School-based settings:

Again, the requirements alter based on which country you’re in. In England it’s a requirement for schools and academies to have a long-term plan for the delivery of their curriculum. Often this means senior leadership has taken their curriculum and spread this out across all years, ensuring there is clear building of skills and knowledge from each year group starting [usually] in nursery. Some senior leaders may plan this starting in Key Stage 1 or 2 and push things down to Early Years. This is often why you end up with inappropriate content appearing on plans in school. E.g. teaching phonic skills or some maths skills too early. Development Matters is NOT a curriculum. It is a guidance to deliver aspects of a curriculum, you should have an additional document in place which makes it specific for your learners.

School-based staff rarely have much say in what they will be teaching (and sometimes how they’ll teach it) however that doesn’t mean you can’t add in activities based on interests and local events. For example, your local area has a scarecrow festival, so you bring in resources for children to engage in this activity in school. This is responding to your locality.

Non-school based group settings:

In England the focus has shifted towards PVI (Private, Voluntary and Independent) settings having a plan of what they’re going to teach and when. This has sent a lot of people into a spin because it’s not been the standard practice in the past.

Your leader will have either created a document or will be developing one. There is no requirement for the curriculum to be in a printed document form, however this tends to be the common method. Ask your leader about this. They will likely have used the ‘3 I’s’ (Intent, Implementation and Impact) and possibly will have displayed parts of this in the room.

The purpose of this document is to create ambitious goals for children to hit when they are with you. For example, it might include, ‘writing their name,’ or ‘counting to 10.’ These are quite generic but are often included.

They should have also considered the specific context of your children. If they are starting lower than national average, they should make plans for how to bridge the gap. This might be breaking down some of these goals into smaller steps and planning specific strategies (pedagogy/implementation).   

Finally, they should also include some unique experiences to your setting based on your context. For example, if you’re in the countryside, they should be including using the children’s knowledge of the local community and building new knowledge. They might also include some specific teaching around cities/towns as this is new. They should also be including visits to local places that will specifically support your learners.

Non-school based home settings:

Childminders are very similar to PVI settings in that you can choose how your curriculum will appear. I would always recommend a document but the benefit of being an individual (or a very small team if you have assistants) is that you will know your intention without the need to make notes.

Take the areas of learning as a starting point and build in local experiences. If you’re covering a wide age range it will mean that your curriculum will be broad. Take any learning from an early age and think about how you can deepen it over time. Your curriculum will be more fluid than other settings as it needs to reflect the needs of a smaller group of children.

If you’re working under a childminder as them about their curriculum and if necessary, reach out to me to ask questions.

Why a curriculum and why now?

The National Curriculum in England has long been praised with raising standards. Previous schools created their own curricula which did not have the desired impact. However, it has become apparent that applying a generic curriculum to children in different locations around the world (yes this is used all over the world) does not work. Many of the things included are useful but local culture needs to be considered.

We can say the same for Early Years. Documents like Development matters are great but fail to capture the unique culture of our settings.

The academisation of many schools in England has led to a focus on knowledge and skills as well as pedagogy. This has had a trickle-down effect into Early Years.

Internationally there has also need a big focus on curriculum, especially designing curricula for the future generations.

Implementing your curriculum:

It’s important that you know what is expected of you in your room or classroom. There are things that your leaders wish you to teach your children, and this should happen. That doesn’t mean that you can’t feed back when it doesn’t work – curricula MUST change based on the children.

Where the local aspects are not being considered you can do this in the moment each day. Pay close attention to local events and bring these into your setting (but ensure they are developmentally appropriate.)

Using your curriculum for provision planning:

With your curriculum in mind, you can plan appropriate continuous provision that reflects the desired goals. For example, if your leader has highlighted the need for the team to bridge the gap in gross motor skills, you may develop a large scale movement area such as a dance stage.

Curriculum will NOT be the leading factor when it comes to choosing provision areas yet arguably provision is there to support you to deliver the curriculum for your children. But in truth the curriculum in Early Years is so huge. It’s impossible to write down everything you want to teach the children and so you’ll subconsciously pick provision areas based on what you know the children will need over time. Part of Purposeful Provision is making it as explicit as possible now so you can better understand why you are doing what you do.

Final notes:

Your curriculum should not be a huge document. It must not shackle the team. They must have freedom to deliver learning beyond your curriculum as well as adapt their strategies if the ones in the curriculum aren’t working anymore.

You’ll find a lot of consultants are very reluctant to offer support around curriculum. That’s because we don’t yet have sufficient evidence of what Ofsted wants from the curriculum. I am happy to support you, but I would ALWAYS recommend contacting local settings which have recently been inspected to see their curriculum (or access it via their website.)

On a political note, the new Labour government is looking to review the National Curriculum in England. This will have a ripple effect across the EYFS in England and beyond. Keep an eye out for this.