Audit – your curriculum

Date:

Your details:

The educational programmes in the EYFS 2021 are statutory.

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/early-years-foundation-stage-framework--2

Your curriculum must be linked to the 7 areas of learning:

The 3 prime areas of learning have been recognised as most important for life-long learning:

 Communication and language

Common inspection actions linked to communication and language (for example) often cover – allowing
time for children to talk, asking open-ended questions, correcting children’s speech sensitively and enabling
total communication by using, for example, gestures, signing and puppets.
Question: do you need to make any changes to your curriculum to reflect the revised educational
programmes for the prime areas of learning in the EYFS 2021?

Ofsted will look at how well the 4 specific areas of learning – literacy, mathematics, understanding the world
and expressive arts and design – are used to support all ages of children’s learning in the prime areas.
Question: can you explain to your inspector how the specific areas are used to support the prime?

You need to be clear about the difference between your curriculum (what you want children to learn) and
your approach to teaching (how you will teach children).
For example, your curriculum might follow the guidance in Development Matters 2021 and your approach
might borrow from or be linked to theorists such as Montessori, Froebel, Reggio Emilia, the curiosity
approach™, forest school, in the moment planning™ etc.
Question: can you explain both your curriculum and your approach to teaching the curriculum to Ofsted?

Your curriculum must be well sequenced, flowing through the various ages of children in the setting.
Question: how well do you ensure babies, toddlers, young children and pre-schoolers all benefit from
differentiated activities that allow them to grow in skills and knowledge?

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Your curriculum should focus on health and wellbeing – oral health, daily exercise, water or milk to drink,
choking hazards managed, safer sleep and healthy eating.
Question: do you include this teaching in day-to-day routines and use every opportunity to teach children
to be independent with their self-care?

Outings are part of your curriculum and should be carefully planned, to ensure children are learning.
Question: are you confident that children’s learning needs are met on your outings? For example, can you
link a recent outing to a child’s ‘next steps’ and talk about what they learned (the impact of the outing)?

Ofsted will evaluate how well you prepare children to ‘respect others and contribute to wider society and life
in Britain’. For example, you might teach children about themselves and their family and home life… the
local community in which they live… the wider world through books, songs, food, dance, storytelling,
puppets and your multicultural and diverse planning to cover world festivals and celebrations etc.
Question: how well do you reflect the importance of teaching children about life in modern Britain in your
curriculum?

You will be asked to show your inspector evidence of daily outside play and learning opportunities. Your
inspector will evaluate how well your outside play complements opportunities for children to learn inside the
setting.
Question: can you explain how you use your inside and outside spaces to complement each other? Maybe
you can talk about how a child learns better or is more independent outside and the ways you support this?

Your pre-school children should benefit from learning the building blocks for phonics teaching. For
example, you might play games from Letters and Sounds phase 1, point to letters and numbers on outings,
signpost letters and numbers displayed in the setting, play sound discrimination games, play with rhythm
and rhyme, sound out initial letters in words etc.
Question: if you cannot explain this to your inspector, what do you need to change?

Your curriculum, which links across all 7 areas of learning, should allow children to explore, create,
investigate, try things again, develop their current interests, read books, sing songs and rhymes, have fun –
and learn something new.
Question: can you explain how you include all these elements in your curriculum to your inspector?

Do you need to make any changes to your curriculum to comply with the revised EYFS 2021?

Note: you might find the Development Mattes 2021 guidance useful alongside your knowledge of child
development and parent starting points, your observations and assessments of learning and your current
themes / topics linked to nature, the natural world, seasonal changes, special days through the year etc –
https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/development-matters--2.

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