What is the Early Years Foundation Stage Profile Assessment (EYFS)?
The Early Years Foundation Stage Profile Assessment (EYFS) is a statutory assessment for primary schools.
It’s based on ensuring children are taught about seven areas of learning and development. These seven areas include (the first 3 are prime areas, and the other 4 are important too):
- Communication and language (including phonics)
- Physical development
- Personal, social and emotional development
- Literacy
- Mathematics
- Understanding the world
- Expressive arts and design
The DfE published extensive guidelines on how schools and nurseries can support early years development, as much of this will happen before children reach primary school age.
Here’s an example when it comes to reading and understanding:
“Extend children’s vocabulary, explaining unfamiliar words and concepts and making sure children have understood what they mean through stories and other activities. These should include words and concepts which occur frequently in books and other contexts but are not used every day by many young children. For example, use scientific vocabulary when talking about the parts of a flower or an insect, or different types of rocks. Examples from ‘The Gruffalo’ include: ‘stroll’, ‘roasted’, ‘knobbly’, ‘wart’ and ‘feast’.”
[DfE] EYFS Observation checkpoint
Around the age of 3, can the child shift from one task to another if you fully obtain their attention, for example, by using their name?
Around the age of 4, is the child using sentences of 4 to 6 words – “I want to play with cars” or “What’s that thing called?”?
Can the child use sentences joined up with words like ‘because’, ‘or’, ‘and’? For example, “I like ice cream because it makes my tongue shiver”.
Is the child using the future and past tense: “I am going to the park” and “I went to the shop”? Can the child answer simple ‘why’ questions?
The EYFS is “The standards that school and childcare providers must meet for the learning, development and care of children from birth to 5.”
Teachers need to complete an EYFS for every child in their class before the end of this academic year, to ensure it’s submitted to the local authority before 30 June 2024.
In order to complete an EYFS, each child must be assessed against the 17 ELGs (Early Learning Goals to make sure every child has reached a Good Level of Development (GLD)) and teachers may choose to provide a commentary on the 3 characteristics of effective learning.
The EYFS Profile must be completed for all eligible children registered at the school, including children who have not spent a long time in the school for whatever reason and children with SEND.
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For more information:
Early years foundation stage statutory framework. For group and school-based providers
When should primary schools administer the Early Years Foundation Stage Profile Assessment (EYFS) in 2023 - 2024?
The Early Years Foundation Stage Profile Assessment (EYFS) is a statutory assessment for primary schools. It’s crucial that schools administer this to primary school children, those in reception classes, before the end of the academic year in which children turn 5 in KS1 ⏤ before they’ve finished reception.
The Early Years Foundation Stage Profile Assessment (EYFS) must be administered and submitted to the local authority no later than 30 June 2024.
ReadingWise and Primary School (KS1 - KS2) Assessments 2023 - 2024: Our Resources
In 2018 as part of a government-funded study, the impact of ReadingWise Zip was explored in 17 schools across year 1. The impact was promising as the reading gap between chronological age and reading age closed in a short space of time.
ReadingWise Zip is extremely easy to deliver and in effect 'fills in the gaps' in learners' phonics knowledge as the programme understands each child's strengths and weaknesses and therefore focuses on the areas that need more work. ReadingWise Zip is not a full phonics programme but a supplementary resource that can support and reinforce your phonics programme.
To trial ReadingWise Zip please arrange a demo through the link below and we look forward to discussing your needs.
Find out everything you need to know about ReadingWise Zip and other ReadingWise modules for your primary school with our friendly, knowledgeable team.
Take a look at our other modules that would benefit pupils at primary school. Over 100,000 pupils in UK schools have completed a ReadingWise programme!
ReadingWise produces massive improvements in reading fluency, reading skills, and literacy in a short timescale. A Department for Education (DfE) RCT study found ReadingWise increased reading ages by 9.5 months in 1 term and ReadingWise pupils improved twice as fast compared to the control group.
