Nursery World - The unintended consequences of the new EYFS on children with SEND

Settings are turning away children with SEND because providing the paperwork to access funding has become too burdensome, says Catherine McLeod of charity Dingley's Promise

Catherine McLeod chief executive, Dingley's Promise

Sometimes a change is undeniably great but the consequences of it are not. This is what has happened with the changes made to the EYFS in September 2021.

The move away from rigid tracking of child development allows practitioners to focus more of their time on really knowing their children. However, it is unclear what this means for children with SEND. In order to access funding and support for them, there continues to be a focus on demonstrating development and tracking progress – contradicting the changes. Many settings say that without this tracking data they cannot access local authority funding.

When asked for more clarity on how the new EYFS impacts children with SEND, the Government re-released the Pen Green document ‘The Celebratory Approach’, which focuses practitioners straight back on previous tracking models. While movement away from a deficit model is a good thing, the document focuses back on tracking of children with SEND and the use of the old ‘ages and stages’ structures that were supposed to have been left behind.

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