Intent 

Our Early Years Foundation Stage (EYFS) team at St Francis Catholic Primary School, has developed and constructed a curriculum that is enriching, ambitious and allows our children to build upon everyday real-life experiences, self-belief and cultural capital that they will need to succeed in life.

At St Francis our EYFS curriculum places great emphasis on ensuring that children acquire a wide vocabulary and communicate effectively with both adults and their peers. This can be seen throughout the children’s day to day learning and through a secure knowledge of phonics. Teaching early reading and synthetic phonics systematically ensures that all children learn to read words and simple sentences accurately by the end of Reception. 

Through our enriching EYFS curriculum, we ensure that we have academic ambitions for all our children. For children with particular needs, such as those with Special Educational Needs and Disabilities (SEND), their curriculum is designed to be ambitious but to meet their needs. The EYFS curriculum provides no limits or barriers to the children’s achievements, regardless of their backgrounds, circumstances or needs. 
Each and every child at St Francis is recognised as a special and a unique individual, who is celebrated for their differences. We are able to celebrate these through the teaching of our core values: Joy, Trust, Respect and Faith. During the children’s time in EYFS, as a school we want them to develop a strong sense of belonging to a family and community. Our curriculum provides learning opportunities to help encourage children to have a lifelong love and passion for learning and we want the children in our care to feel welcomed, loved, safe and valued and feel secure in having the courage to take risks and make mistakes.

Implementation

Our EYFS curriculum at St Francis Catholic Primary works alongside the Early Years Statutory Framework for the Early Years Foundation Stage. The framework informs us of the requirements for learning and development in the Early Years and provides us with prime and specific areas of learning we must cover in our curriculum.

At St Francis, our curriculum is child centered and allows for those wonderful experiences which invite the children to become active, independent learners who are motivated and interested. We take time to learn about the children and take into consideration their interests in order to support their learning.  Our Curriculum ensures that all areas of the children’s needs and development are taught progressively and the children are provided with opportunities to learn new skills, gain new knowledge and demonstrate an understanding through the seven areas of the EYFS curriculum.

• Literacy
• Mathematics
• Personal, Social and Emotional Development
• Physical Development
• Communication and Language
• Understanding the World
• Expressive Arts and Design

We believe, encourage and support our children in EYFS to learn through exploration, play, being active, being creative and being given the chance to become critical thinkers, both indoors and outdoors. Through the curriculum, the children are able to develop language skills, their emotions and creativity, social and intellectual skills. 

St Francis ensures that all of our children make good progress across the whole of the EYFS curriculum. We aim to ensure that our SEND and Disadvantaged children feel valued and included, and have high aspirations. Inclusion is embedded and implemented in our practice and our EYFS team are supported and work closely with our SEND team to ensure our Curriculum is inclusive to all children. We review our practice regularly and adapt our teaching practices to respond to the needs of all our learners.

Impact

The children at St Francis make good progress from their varied starting points. They leave EYFS with a love of learning and a confidence to extend their own. They are able to access their learning with resilience, a good level of independence, a high level of problem-solving skills and have a strong curiosity for the world around them. Our children also develop detailed knowledge and skills across the seven areas of learning in an age-appropriate way.  They will also have developed and deepened their vocabulary to ensure a smooth transition within their educational journey through the school and beyond.

The impact of our curriculum on what children know, can remember and do is strong. Children demonstrate this through being deeply engaged and sustaining high levels of concentration. Children, including SEND pupils and those from disadvantaged backgrounds, make very good progress from their entry point. 
We also measure the impact of our curriculum by the effectiveness it has on helping our children to become gentle, compassionate, well-rounded individuals who embody our core values, Joy, Trust, Respect and Faith and demonstrate these in their everyday lives. They transition well into Year One with the knowledge and skills needed for the next stage of their academic journey.