EYFS Best Practice In School - Core values

Agroup of excited children are pressed up against the nursery fence, watching a delivery van pull up to the school next door and start unloading crates and boxes. There are plenty of opportunities for such interesting everyday experiences at Newlands Spring, given its location in the heart of the community it serves. Opposite is a supermarket and bus stop, with a doctor’s surgery and a library a few doors down. Children can feel part of daily life, while also being provided with plenty of quieter spaces to retreat to if they prefer.

Chelmsford-based Newlands Spring Primary School and Nursery is part of the Attain Academy Partnership, a group of primary schools in Essex which was formed in 2016.

All the academies in the partnership aim to work together to create one learning community, while retaining their distinctiveness in order to serve their local community. The nursery opened a year ago in September 2020, in the middle of the pandemic – previously the site had been occupied by an independent pre-school.

COMMUNITY ETHOS

Community has been absolutely key to the development of the nursery. ‘We did some canvassing of local opinion, because we wanted to make it really relevant to the community now,’ says Jessica Holme, early years teacher at Newlands Spring. Holme drove the design, ethos, pedagogy and environment of the new nursery and now leads a team of ten staff. ‘We offer wraparound care because more and more parents need that.’

The nursery opens at 7.30am and closes at 6pm. Provision is very flexible with options including morning and afternoon sessions, full school day sessions with the possibility of going home for lunch or taking it at nursery, and wraparound care before and/or after school. The nursery is also open during each half term, the first week of the Easter holidays and for three weeks in the summer holidays – provision aligns with the school’s holiday club to make lives easier for parents with children in both school and nursery.

The setting is growing bushes and trees along the metal fence that separates its outdoor area from the pavement to create a softer boundary, but the fact that children can see passers-by is a bonus, says Holme. ‘Obviously you keep an eye on people coming up, with safeguarding in mind, but actually it adds to that feel of embedding ourselves in the community.’

FROEBEL-INSPIRED

Since the school was starting from a completely blank slate, Holme was able to bring all of her expertise to bear when creating the new nursery. Previously a Reception teacher in the school, she holds a Master’s degree in education and is a certified Froebelian practitioner.

Friedrich Froebel was the inventor of kindergartens and a pioneer of early childhood education and care. Newlands Spring’s nursery provision is based on Froebelian principles, including the belief that children’s understanding develops through engaging with the world, and the importance of giving children opportunities for uninterrupted play as a creative activity and a way to learn and discover about the world around them.

‘The word kindergarten means garden of children, and it is about the fact that you’re growing children from the flower that they are, not from what you want them to be,’ says Holme.

Froebel’s beliefs that children should be surrounded by kindness, understanding and beauty have driven the development of the nursery environment, which combines natural materials and soft warm colours to provide a homely, calm atmosphere, prioritising children’s wellbeing.

While the nursery does not ban plastic – Numicon resources are valued, for example – wood and other natural materials dominate. ‘It is not a busy space, but that’s deliberate, so that the children choose what they want to work with and play with, and use their imagination,’ says Natalie Hawkes, Newlands Spring head. A block-play area is well-used: Froebel developed the first building blocks system for children, seeing blocks as simple playthings that allow children to ‘feel and experience, to act and represent, to think and recognise’.

Outside, a group of children have made a ramp out of a tube and are dropping a ball in again and again to see what happens. Enquiry-led learning, whereby children learn through activity, play and exploration, is a key Froebelian principle adopted by the setting. Practitioners and parents have noticed STEM skills developing, says Holme, including problem-solving skills, creativity and resourcefulness. As a group of children peek into the shelter she is standing in, wondering what she is doing, she adds, ‘We definitely develop their inquisitiveness!’

‘I think at the beginning there were some nervous parents, but I did some questionnaires with them recently and the feedback was so positive,’ she says. One mum described her concerns around taking her daughter for a weekend at her grandparents’ house, because her older children had been very bored when they had no toys. ‘She said her daughter in the end was completely fine, she got a cardboard tube and made a tunnel, then she made a bridge to go with it, and she kept herself entertained for the whole visit to grandma.’

FOREST SCHOOL

Nursery business manager Tracey Brown is a trained Forest School educator, and aims to incorporate the Forest School ethos into everyday provision, giving children access to tools and building dens, and toasting marshmallows over a firepit. The outdoor area is very important to the setting, and children are swinging on ropes and balancing on logs and cable wheels. Some have made a slide from large loose parts such as tyres and smooth planks.

Children helped to create a woodland walk in the outdoor area, using a saw to make a fence, and grow fruit and vegetables in an allotment. Some are looking at books in a sunflower-decorated summerhouse.

Indoors, children’s learning journals are always accessible to them. ‘When you are three, nothing is more interesting than reading about yourself,’ says Holme. ‘They look at the pictures and say “that’s me, I remember when I did that”, and then they might do it again or build on it.’

The nursery has a mixture of child- and adult-led and initiated activities, with one adult-led activity a day, which is driven by children’s interests. A ‘children’s interests tree’ on the wall is constantly added to and keeps children’s own interests front of mind.

PART OF THE SCHOOL

The nursery is self-funding, but staff are employed by the school. In its first year, the school has not been able to link Reception and nursery as much as they would have liked to due to Covid, but Holme says they still feel like a cohesive early years team.

Nursery staff take part in whole-school training. The nursery uses the same behaviour management policy, Zones of Regulation, that is used further on in the school, although the coloured ‘zones’ that represent different emotional states have become coloured monsters, and children are given more support to recognise and manage their emotions.

The values and ethos of the school and academy group are shared by the nursery. ‘We talk about wanting to create creative, confident children and resilient learners, and that feeds back down and is very much a part of what we’re aiming to achieve,’ says Hawkes. ‘Just because they’re three doesn’t mean that they can’t be confident and resilient and creative and enterprising.’

The setting has a number of children with SEND and has noticed an increase in issues around speech, language and communication. Being able to spot these issues early benefits parents, children and the school, says Hawkes. ‘Often a child starts Reception and it is the first time mum and dad have heard that their child might need some extra support, and that conversation takes a bit of time,’ she says. ‘This gives that extra time to drip feed it, so at least the child might get what they need before Year 1 and the parents are prepared.’

With plans for the trust to open a new school in nearby Witham, there are hopes that Newlands Spring will be able to share its expertise within the group. While other schools might prefer to draw from different pedagogies, the important thing is to have an underpinning belief system, says Holme. ‘Rather than thinking about what “school ready” means for early years, you need the life-raft of a belief system,’ she says. ‘Whether it’s Montessori, Froebel or New Zealand’s Te Whāriki, you need those core values, or you are going to be drowning in an ocean of ideas that are never consistent.’

CASE STUDY: Ark Start, London

In March this year, Ark Start Oval, a new nursery in East Croydon, welcomed 26 families into the purpose-built nursery, which is made of recycled shipping containers. Located next to Ark Oval Primary Academy, Ark Start Oval is the second nursery opened by Art Start, charity Ark’s early years programme. The first, Ark St John Archer, opened in October 2020.

Many of multi-academy trust Ark Schools’ 24 primary schools have nursery classes, but Ark Start extends provision to younger children and offers more flexible hours. Ark has invested £1.4 million in the Ark Start programme, the majority of funding coming from the DfE’s School Nurseries Capital Fund.

Building communities is one of the key drivers behind the launch of Ark Start, says Lydia Cuddy-Gibbs, head teacher at both Ark Start nurseries. ‘We want to be able to build a family around the nurseries and the schools, to support that flow from nursery into primary school into secondary school.’

The organisation runs Stay and Play sessions for children under two and is delivering programmes supporting families with parenting and making changes in the community. ‘We’re hoping that the work that we do within Ark Start will flow back up into the schools and provide models for parent engagement,’ says director Katie Oliver. The concept extends to PVI nurseries.

The other driver is narrowing the achievement gap. ‘We know that early years is a real area of need,’ says Oliver. ‘Forty per cent of the achievement gap at 16 is already visible before children start school.’ Data from existing nursery classes showed offering provision from a young age was making a difference to children’s outcomes.

CURRICULUM

Each nursery is led by qualified teachers, and the organisation has recently invested in a Forest School educator, who will upskill staff as well as providing Forest School opportunities. As well as being head teacher, Cuddy-Gibbs is network leader for early years across all of the trust’s academies, driving strong links between the nurseries and the schools. Together they created an Ark Start curriculum that draws on pedagogies including Reggio Emilia and Montessori as well as their own experience. ‘We were able to look at the curriculum in different schools and find out what was working to transform outcomes,’ says Cuddy-Gibbs.

The curriculum is structured around storytelling, encouraging children to tell their own stories and listen to others’ stories. ‘We have a set list of literature that we want children to meet,’ says Cuddy-Gibbs. ‘We value the notion of Helicopter Stories, supporting children to recall an anecdote or retell a story they love. We also value listening to parents, because we know that the more we know about what a parent has been doing with their child, the more we can tune in to what a child is saying.’

The curriculum includes a range of enrichment activities, based around a list of ‘51 things to do before you turn five’. ‘They can be very simple things like baking to bigger, more extraordinary things like going to the seaside,’ says Cuddy-Gibbs. There is also a commitment to ensuring every child spends at least three hours each day doing physical activities and goes outside every day. A range of projects including ‘Who am I?’ and ‘Can you make it work?’ support the teaching and learning of key developmental milestones, knowledge and skills.

Ark Start takes in two- to four-year-olds and hopes to extend the offer to younger children. The organisation has recruited staff with experience of working with younger children and created a curriculum for two-year-olds, which is based on the four seasons and structured around storytelling, as well as drawing on knowledge of how young children learn, such as schemas.

The settings are designed around a ‘sibling model’. ‘The younger and older children get a lot out of learning from each other together, although we also have spaces where children can be quieter, regardless of their age,’ says Cuddy-Gibbs.

CASE STUDY: Robert Mellors Primary Academy, Nottinghamshire

Robert Mellors Primary Academy is part of the Redhill Academy Trust, a group of ten secondary schools and five primary schools in Nottinghamshire. In 2018, the school opened a new purpose-built pre-school, Little Herons, designed by staff in collaboration with consultancy Early Excellence. Assistant head teacher Juliet Clark also visited Pen Green Children’s Centre in Northamptonshire for inspiration, which included incorporating an open-plan kitchen, a changing area and space to store potties built into the provision.

Little Herons caters for two- to four-year-olds in the same setting. There is a focus on self-care and toileting. ‘Having two-year-olds in the provision enables us to see when they are ready and support parents when implementing toilet training,’ says Clark.

Like Newlands Spring, Little Herons’ approach is influenced by the work of Froebel, with an emphasis on the importance of outdoor learning. Clark did her PGCE at a Froebel college.

A focus on developing the early skills needed for reading has seen the school develop a progression document, setting out core rhymes and stories for two-year-olds up to Reception-aged children. ‘Using repetitive rhymes with younger children, we have seen them increase their vocabulary more quickly, and have also seen an improvement in listening and attention skills,’ says Clark. The songs are chosen to allow children to use first their whole body, then their hands, then their fingers as they progress.

A scheme called Chatterword helps children develop their vocabulary further, with particular books linked to specific words and pictures which are put up in the classroom and often returned to and discussed.

Meeting children at an early age allows for early interventions which benefit both children and school. The local speech and language team, for example, has been able to deliver a programme called Home Talk to two-year-olds who do not meet the criteria for more in-depth services. Little Herons staff have also taken part in Let’s Interact training, which focuses on language development in children.

Routine is important, especially with phonics sessions, which take place at the same time in the same way every day. ‘This reduces the cognitive load for the children – we are not making things different every day,’ says Clark. ‘When children move to Reception, they are able to blend words orally, and have the listening skills they need.’