By Melanie Pilcher
The past few months have gone by in a blur as the sector has responded with its usual grit and determination to the many challenges it has faced.
It feels like the sector has being playing catch-up, reacting to situations that early years providers never would have dreamed of this time last year.
In the early days of the coronavirus, the emphasis was on infection control and good hygiene as practitioners worked tirelessly to keep the virus at bay and children in settings.
When even the best practice was no longer enough to contain the virus, they were faced with the unthinkable scenario of early years settings closing their doors to all but the most vulnerable, and the children of essential workers.
For those settings that have remained open many questions have been raised.
The emphasis on providing ‘care’ has outweighed the core purpose of early years to provide teaching and learning to ‘ensure children’s school readiness’ and give children the broad range of knowledge and skills that give them ‘the right foundation for good future progress through school and life’ (EYFS 2017).
Modifying the EYFS
With this in mind it is clear that even though the EYFS remains mandatory, there are certain elements that are unachievable for some settings which is why emergency legislation came into force on the 24 April that allows for that include:
- Should (rather than must) use reasonable endeavours to meet the learning and development requirements
- temporary changes to paediatric first aid requirements
- staff qualifications in order to be counted in ratios
- suspending the progress check at 2, for this year only.
The official guidance to the EYFS modifications stipulates that in most cases providers must make ‘reasonable endeavours’ to meet the existing EYFS requirements. Only where this is not possible can the disapplications and modifications be implemented. Providers who are already struggling to apply restrictions such as social distancing are faced with the additional challenge of interpreting what reasonable endeavours look like and then modifying their practice accordingly.
Resources to support providers
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