Early Years Foundation Stage (EYFS) guidance

Useful information and resources for those working with early years children

Share page with

Statutory

The Department for Education has launched a new page on the Foundation Years website to provide teachers with support to complete the Early Years Foundation Stage (EYFS) Profile. This will be updated regularly throughout the 2023/24 academic year. Each update will cover a new area of the EYFS Profile, focusing on topics the sector has asked for more information on.

The first update provides information on how to complete the EYFS Profile for children with special educational needs and disabilities, and includes case studies and key information from the EYFS Profile 2024 handbook.

EYFS Profile 2023/24 Handbook
This publication provides guidance to local authorities and early years providers from the Standards and Testing Agency (STA), an executive agency of the Department for Education (DfE), which is responsible for ensuring early years foundation stage (EYFS) profile outcomes are reliable.

EYFS statutory framework 2023/2024
This framework is mandatory for all early years providers in England, maintained schools; non-maintained schools; independent schools; all providers on the Early Years Register; and all providers registered with an early years childminder agency.

New framework from 4th September 2023 - See related link

Non-statutory

Development Matters
DfE non-statutory curriculum guidance for the early years foundation stage. View publication.

Birth to 5 Matters
Birth to 5 Matters has been developed by the Early Years Coalition, composed of the 16 early years sector organisations. They came together to create a resource which pooled their members’ considerable expertise and experience and kept alive multiple possibilities for the future of early childhood education. The document is intended to work with members’ many values, principles and aspirations. View publication.

Information and guidance from the Department for Education on supporting babies and children’s mental health is now available on the Help for Early Years providers platform.

How you can help
We are asking for your help to promote the guidance to your Early Year’s settings. Please reach out to make them aware of this new resource.

To help you with this, we have created an example message you may want to use.

Example message for early years settings
We all have mental health, just as we have physical health. In the same way that we can be more or less physically healthy from time to time, we can also be more or less mentally healthy from time to time too.

Help for Early Years Providers has added new information and guidance on supporting babies and young children with their mental health.

The guidance:

explains how practitioners can support positive mental health in early years children
includes emotional and behavioural support strategies to use in early years settings
links to further reading and resources

For more guidance on supporting children in the early years, visit the Help for Early Years Providers website.