Editor's View - Development Matters matters

After all, this substantial piece of guidance is still available on the Foundation Years website and has also been moved on to www.gov.uk (along with a whole lot of other things not to do with early years, that you may have been looking for!).

But DM's effective sidelining does raise suspicions about what else is going on behind the scenes. Some EYFS Profile moderators have been told not to use it to moderate judgements.

This is happening as Sir Michael Wilshaw has criticised the EYFS Profile and the assessment of early years children as too broad and needing to link in better to Key Stage 1 assessment, looking more at numbers and literacy.

It doesn't take a great leap of the imagination to foresee moves to take Reception class out of the EYFS and into Key Stage 1.

And what then would happen to the EYFS itself, especially if children are taken into schools at an even younger age? Already, some local authorities are moving three-year-olds into schools to free up nursery places for the influx of two-year-olds, or even looking to provide for two-year-olds there.

Add in the revised national curriculum with its proposals to teach five-year-olds fractions and computer programming, and its emphasis on 'essential knowledge', and there could be even more downward pressure on early years practice.

I really hope that I am reading too much into the shifting of a piece of guidance from one website to another!