Early Years Foundation Stage Setting Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1750 words

Early Years Foundation Stage Setting - Essay Example According to Palaiologou (2010, p4) and the Department of Education (2012, p.1), under the EYFS setting, each and every child must be helped acquire the best possible start in life and this refers to every child early years development. EYFS suggests a standard policy and curriculum that, in the view of the Department of Education, ensures that every child has enjoyed its rights to equal treatment whether the child requires special care or not. EYFS outlines the fundamentals of a child’s early years curriculum that every practitioner, providers and/or responsible carers must be committed to ensuring that children are safe and healthy, children achieve various EYFS goals, equal treatment of the children irrespective of their background whatsoever (Goffin & Wilson, 2001, p12; Palaiologou, (2010, p6); Department of Education, 2012, p1) is observed, the children performance reflects their individual abilities (Pound & Hughes, 2005, p33), and that every child is dealt with as a uni que entity in the context of learning. The respective institutional administrations must ensure that EYFS guidelines are followed to the letter and so are implemented. But, according to Callaway (2005, p.19), Carr (2005, p7), Silberfeld (2009, p27), Glazzard, Chadwick, Webster and Percival (2010, p51), EYFS is a policy just like other existing policies and it is subject to failure especially as it comes to implementation. Important as it is, however, implementation of EYFS is crucial as it concentrates on the welfare of the children, that the efforts used in handling the children, in this context, determine the ways a particular child grows into adulthood and how such a child relates to its environment in the future. In other words, if EYFS could be defined as a policy, then it is a special kind of policy that must be implemented. But uniformity in implementation may not be a reality (Pound & Hughes, 2005, p38). While thus implementation becomes important a subject, this study asses ses how various children handlers implement EYFS curriculum guidelines. By doing so, various observations and conclusions are made as the study advances. Various EYFS guidelines: summary The EYFS supposes that every child must be helped to grow and develop fast and the various early year providers must ensure that this is attained (Palaiologou, 2010, p8; Department of Education, 2012, p1). The key goals of EYFS it to provide quality and consistency, equal learning opportunities at all levels, partnership between carers and academic practitioners, and anti-discriminating practice. EYFS also introduces specific areas of learning, goals and assessment criteria that must always be adhered to. It specifies educator-children ratios under different circumstances and other key requirements such as the essence of a key person for every child and the qualifications of various child educators. All these are coined in as being of paramount and equal importance in the learning and developmental processes of any child (Pound & Hughes, 2005, p53; Palaiologou, 2010, p17). Implementation strategies, analysis and critique of EYFS Curricula The curriculum provides a wide range of guidelines regarding various childhood requirements. The respective authority in the education sector ensures compliance as far as implementation of the curriculum is concerned. For example, all practitioners must make normative assessments and make each child’s profile detailing its abilities, achievements, areas of strengths and those of weaknesses and so on. While such a strategy may prove a cutting edge in this respect, only about 73% of public early years settings and 55% of private year settings fully comply with the curriculum (Goffin &