Curriculum: Understanding what is 'crucial'

We know a lot about what makes good early years pedagogy, but what is it exactly that pedagogues should be teaching? Verity Campbell-Barr, Katherine Evans, Jan Georgeson, Sasha Tregenza identified key features of a good curriculum

We have often heard that attending high quality early years provision can improve a wide range of child outcomes, and this has been well researched and theorised both in the UK and internationally. Where there has been less focus, however, is on what makes a high-quality early years curriculum. What are the key features? How are they different from curricula for older children?

In the UK, there is a lack of a specific focus on the curriculum: the Early Years Foundation Stage (EYFS) is a guidance document and not a curriculum document, Ofsted state that the EYFS is the ‘framework for the curriculum’, but ‘it is up to schools to decide how to expand, extend and broaden’ this (Gov.UK, 2023). However, in the first of a series of ‘research reviews for early years’, Ofsted (2022) have outlined their view of an early years curriculum.  Ofsted had already made the distinction between curriculum as ‘what is taught’ and pedagogy as ‘how it is taught’, but now Ofsted advocate a model of curriculum that is linked to progress where progress is defined as “knowing more and remembering more” (p10) and the role of educators is to plan for that progress with the careful sequencing of subject-based knowledge.