More children than ever are achieving a good level of development

The Early Years Foundation Stage profile results in England have recently been released by the Department for Education (2016) and the results have shown that more children than ever are achieving a good level of development at the end of the foundation stage.

This is great news for all working in the early years as achieving a good level of development is crucial to a child’s future achievements and outcomes. The level of children achieving a good level of development has risen 3% with just under 70% of children now reaching a good level of development.

Also good news for those working in the early years is that although the gender gap stills exists this has decreased since 2015 and is now at its lowest level since 2013. This shows that the early years are engaging more boys and allowing them to reach their full potential. Still some work to be done in this area but this is a great step in the right direction.

Highest and lowest areas of achievement

The results have also shown that children are performing best in technology with the largest amount of children achieving a good level of development in this area. This may come as no surprise to many early years’ practitioners as there has been a large rise in the number of children owning their own pieces of technology at home and with more settings choosing to use tablets, interactive whiteboards and other forms of technology.

The lowest area of achievement is writing with the least amount of children achieving a good level of development in this area, the results clearly show this has been the case for a few years. This could inform practitioners that this is the area which may need more training and awareness in. There are many different views shared by those in the early years regarding early writing skills and it could be this confusion which is causing children to perform the least well in this area.