Support for the Early Years Foundation Stage (EYFS) and Birth to 5 Matters Framework in Daily Connect

If you work in the childcare industry in the UK, you’re likely aware of the Early Years Foundation Stage (EYSF) and Birth to 5 Matters framework. The Birth to 5 Matters framework is a non-statutory framework that serves as optional guidance to support childcare practitioners as they implement the statutory requirements of the EYFS in their childcare business. 

Produced by the Early Years Coalition, the Birth to 5 Matters framework takes the latest research in child development into account to provide childcare centers guidance as they support children’s progress in their early years. By following the framework, childcare professionals can ensure that all children in their care progress towards all of the statutory learning goals outlined in EYFS. 

At Daily Connect, we’re excited to announce that we’ve added support for the Birth to 5 Matters framework in the Daily Connect App, making it significantly easier for teachers and administrators to track children’s progress towards various developmental milestones. 

Our goal is to support practitioners in the fundamentals of observing, planning and assessing children to support and share their growth. With that in mind, we’ve made several updates to the Daily Connect app to best support our users in the United Kingdom. 

You can try them out for yourself by selecting the Birth to 5 Matters framework in your Daily Connect app, but for now, here is an overview of some of the key features:

Save Observations for Each Child

Teachers are able to save observations for each child and choose both an assessment (Emerging/Meeting/Exceeding) and a Range for each selected statement. For teachers, this allows easy saving of information and observations in the classroom, and eliminates the need to track evidence from previously used frameworks. 

An overview of the different areas and statements supported is shown below:

Reporting Features 

We’ve also added a range of new reports specially designed to help daycare staff and administrators track the progress of children against the Birth to 5 Matters framework. 

These reports can be used to track the development progress of children internally, but they also serve as a valuable resource for the EYFS reporting requirements. You can also use them to have higher quality conversations with families about the development of their children, and ensure a more joined up approach to development between home and daycare. 

There are three key reports available:

#1 The Individual Summative Assessment Report

This report shows the range and assessment for each statement that makes up the Birth to 5 Matters framework. It’s personalized to each individual child, and is colour coded to provide a quick and easy way for teachers, administrators, and parents to track and identify development areas for each child:

#2 The Group Summative Assessment

This report summarizes each child’s individual summative assessment report into an overall view that allows teachers and administrators to quickly view the information for every child in a classroom at once. 

#3 Assessment Wheel Report

The Assessment Wheel Report provides a holistic view of each child’s development in every area of the Birth to 5 Matters framework. This report makes it simple for teachers, administrators, and parents to get an overall picture of every child’s development against all important milestones. 

Other Learning Framework Reports

All of the reports and features detailed above are available in addition to the existing reporting features available in Daily Connect for all learning frameworks. These reports make it easy for teachers and administrators to easily view assessment levels for each statement, quickly view the number of observations and the date of the last recorded assessment, and easily enter new assessments.

Here is an overview of the key learning framework reports:

Individual Assessment Report

Group Assessment Report

We’re confident that these new features will help childcare centers, nurseries, and playgroups across the United Kingdom as they adapt to the Birth to 5 Matters Framework and EYFS. We’re excited to support childcare providers in England, Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland as they make these changes and commit to delivering a high quality of childcare for the families they work with. 

Interested in learning more about Daily Connect’s support for a variety of learning frameworks and state standards? Visit the Learning & Assessment section on our website, or start a free trial of Daily Connect to try it out for yourself.