early years foundation stage
To support Councils with the first year of delivery, and to enable them to support providers to deliver sufficient 30 hours places, the Department for Education (DfE) has established a Delivery Support Fund (DSF). This fund will be made available to Councils via a bid round. Funding will be available for work that directly benefits 30 hours delivery and will create (directly or indirectly) new 30 hours places for the 2018 Summer Term.
Ofsted published their report into ‘The Reception curriculum in a sample of good and outstanding primary schools’ called ‘Bold Beginnings’ last week. The opening comment states ‘A good early education is the foundation for later success. For too many children, however, their Reception Year is a missed opportunity that can leave them exposed to all the painful and unnecessary consequences of falling behind their peers.’ We will explore the key findings at the spring term LA leaders and managers meetings (5th and 6th March 2018) and explore how schools make sure their curriculum is ‘fit for purpose’.
New research raises teachers concern into ability grouping and its effect on children’s self- esteem. The researchers, Dr Alice Bradbury and Dr Guy Roberts-Holmes from UCL Institute of Education, University College London, said: “Teachers told us that the pressure upon schools to demonstrate continuously improving data in the Phonics Screening Check and KS1 SATS appears to exert a downward pressure into the EYFS.” The information from this research will be explored in the Solihull Early Years and Education Improvement CPD programme (link below).
Arrangements for the termly collection of school’s Reception, Year 1 and Year 2 Phonics data through SIMS.
Thank you to the schools who submitted their autumn phonics data through SIMS to the Data and Performance team. As this is a new collection process that became available at the end of last term only a small number of schools did this. Therefore, we have been able to arrange for the submission date to be extended to Friday 9th February 2018. If enough schools participate, analysis will be provided back to schools and in time we hope to create analyse within SIMS that you can run immediately after data entry has been completed. Having this data recorded in SIMS also means it is available to pull through onto other marksheets, such as tracker marksheets, which might be useful.
All schools within the CLLD network have had the relevant templates uploaded into SIMS. If you are not in the CLLD network but are interested in being part of this collection, please log a helpdesk call for EIMS, and they will set this up for you.
