This article has been published as part of the Rethinking Curriculum project, kindly funded by The Helen Hamlyn Trust.
Emma Maguire, Headteacher, Wootton Primary School, Bedford
Introduction
The transition from the Early Years Foundation Stage (EYFS) to Key Stage 1 (KS1) often represents a pedagogical cliff edge. For pupils — some of whom have only recently turned five — the move into the National Curriculum is a significant and often overwhelming step. When I joined our large four-form entry primary school, we were in the depths of the Covid-19 pandemic and practitioners in school had highlighted that change was needed for the academic, social and emotional progress of the children in our care. Drawing on my experience as a Specialist Leader of Education (SLE), the primary objective was to move away from the traditional ‘sit-down-at-tables’ model of KS1, which Fisher (2013) argues can stifle the independence and self-regulation nurtured in Reception. By maintaining a familiar environment, we aimed to sustain high levels of wellbeing and engagement while meeting the rigorous demands of the National Curriculum.
This case study examines the implementation of continuous provision in Year 1 to mitigate this transition and ensure our children continue to believe, achieve and thrive beyond the Early Years.
Pedagogical approach
Our approach was rooted in the belief that at five years of age, children should not be spending large periods of their day sitting at tables engaging in formalised learning. This does this not align with children’s developmental needs. Indeed, research conducted by the academics at the University of Cambridge (Skene et al., 2022) indicates that ‘guided play’ can support key elements of learning, including the development of early maths skills, as well as, or sometimes more effectively, than more traditional methods such as direct instructionA method of instruction in which concepts or skills are taught using explicit teaching techniques, such as demonstrations or lectures, and are practised until fully understood by each student. In addition, desk-based approaches can also lead to the dispiriting line, “we just sit at tables and do writing”, from children who have only existed in our world for sixty months. This is something I never wanted to hear in my school.
However, implementing continuous provision while embedding the National Curriculum is a challenging prospect. It must be led with a secure knowledge base, a carefully considered strategy and an unwavering belief that this is the correct approach for the children in your school and the community you serve.
The first consideration was environmental design. This does not need to include hundreds of tuff spot trays or beautifully designed areas worthy of a Pinterest photo shoot. What it does need is a variety of purposeful learning areas, equipped with ample open-ended resources that demonstrate noticeable progression from those available in the Early Years classrooms.
It was crucial that the four classrooms offered the same experiences, ensuring that all 120 pupils in Year 1 had the same diet of provision. Crucially, this is not a set of resources which are ‘wheeled out’ in the afternoon. This pedagogical approach moves far beyond ‘choosing time’ towards a model of National Curriculum objective-led planning. It includes permanent areas (e.g. Construction, Creative, Small World (See Figure 1), Writing, and Maths), each equipped with continuous provision resources and carefully considered enhancements (See Figure 2). These are complemented by planned whole-class inputs and targeted small-group sessions, known as ‘masterclasses’. The approach is meticulously planned and strategically implemented by the dedicated educators in my school.
Figure 1: After building a ‘secret tunnel’ in the Small World area, the children are using their story roads to plot out their own story which they will then write and share with the class.
Figure 2: An example of an enhancement to support children in their understanding of nutrition. Here, the children are working independently to make fruit kebabs.
For many practitioners — particularly those who did not gain EYFS experience during their initial teacher trainingAbbreviated to ITT, the period of academic study and time in school leading to Qualified Teacher Status (QTS) — this approach can feel daunting. We were fortunate to have fantastic teachers who embraced this change because they firmly believed it was the right approach for our children and community. As a school, we work hard to be continually research-led and, through my experience as an SLE, I decided to adopt the ‘gradual release’ model. Provision, mindsets and planning were not all going to be perfect straight away. Indeed, despite the introduction of this approach five years ago, we continue to refine and improve aspects of it, just as you would in any area of teaching and learning.
The key, I believe, is to not view provision as an add-on, but rather the primary vehicle through which children apply their taught skills and knowledge in the classroom. This shift involved a significant amount of staff training, enabling practitioners to scaffold learning effectively and support this independent exploration, while ensuring that the pitch of provision remained high and the pace of learning was appropriate. This approach aligns with Vygotsky’s (1978) Zone of Proximal Development, in which the environment provides the scaffold for the child to reach their next potential level of understanding.
The training does not end with the team of teachers working in Year 1; it requires wider staff in school to understand how this pedagogical approach works. For example, we had to consider how to support our Year 5-based Science Lead to appropriately monitor Science provision in a Year 1 classroom. When making the decision to move to a continuous provision approach, it must involve whole-school buy-in and an ongoing commitment to professional development.
Findings and implications
The impact of implementation across the year group was monitored through learning walks, data analysis and pupil voice, as well as wider indicators such as behaviour logs, children’s emotional regulation skills, and their overall attitudes towards school and learning.
The first area of noticeable improvement in any well-planned provision is the level of engagement among the children. In our school, levels of pupil engagement, as defined by Laevers (2005) using a five-point scale, increased significantly. Developed by Laevers (2005), the Leuven Scale of Involvement helps practitioners monitor how children are engaging with their learning. It ranges from ‘extremely low’, where you may see a child flit from one activity to the next, to ‘extremely high’, where a child would be intensely involved in an activity for a prolonged period of time. In our context, children demonstrated higher levels of persistence and involvement in their learning compared to the previous year’s desk-based cohort.
Teachers also observed that children developed key skills for their social, emotional and mental health such as conflict resolution, sharing with peers and collaborative play. These are all skills which five-year-olds are in the process of learning and need time and space to rehearse. A predominately desk-based model can stifle the opportunity for this, particularly impacting our youngest pupils who often have not yet learnt or been taught these skills explicitly. In addition, we noted a marked improvement in children’s communication and language skills with notable improvements in data from our ‘Wellcomm’ assessments. The freedom to express themselves and engage in structured and unstructured talk gave ample opportunity for oracy development.
When adopting a continuous provision approach in KS1, a common concern, particularly amoung colleagues in senior leadership roles, is that children may fal behind and not be sufficiently challenged. My experience, however, has been the opposite. This pedagogical approach offers abundant opportunities for adaptive teaching and enables children to express their ability in different contexts. For example, by placing writing materials in every area, children engaged in purposeful mark-making, sentence construction and writing for different purposes. This has resulted in improvements in the quality of writing across the year group. Once again, this approach is not simply a continuation of the EYFS; it is a considered, high-expectation model of learning in which the National Curriculum is purposefully taught in an engaging, age-appropriate way. The outcome for our children has been consistently strong social, emotional and academic results, despite many beginning with below-expected baseline starting points.
Recommendations
For school leaders considering a similar pedagogical shift in a large primary setting, I recommend the following:
Consistent resourcing: Ensure parity across all classrooms. A resource audit should be conducted to ensure the provision is high quality and there is a visible and tangible increase in expectations from EYFS into Year 1.
Continual professional development: Proactively educate all staff in your school, as well as the parents in your school community, on the value of play-based learning in KS1 to avoid the perception that children are ‘just playing’. Ensure staff who are leading the classrooms are clear of the ‘why’ for your school and are familiar with the academic research underpinning this approach.
Flexible timetabling: You cannot implement effective Continuous Provision classrooms while continuing to follow a ‘traditional’ timetable – a school day in Year 1 should not look the same as it does in Year 6. Move away from rigid 60-minute blocks. Continuous provision requires flexibility, as well as uninterrupted time to allow for deep-level learning.
Be brave: Changing anything in school which deviates away from ‘the norm’ takes an element of bravery. Ensure that a member of your school leadership team unapologetically advocates for this approach to learning and has the skillset to drive this change alongside a team of passionate and dedicated teachers who will create the learning environments, provision and lessons for the children to thrive. As with everything in schools, it truly is a team effort.
References
- Fisher J (2013) Starting from the Child. 4th ed. Maidenhead: Open University Press.
- Skene K, O’Farrelly C, Byrne E, Kirby N, Stevens E, Ramchandani P (2002) Can guidance during play enhance children’s learning and development in educational contexts? A systematic review and meta-analysisA quantitative study design used to systematically assess the results of multiple studies in order to draw conclusions about that body of research, Child Development, 93(4), pp. 1162–1180
- Laevers F (2005) Well-being and Involvement in Care Settings: A Process-oriented Self-evaluation System. Leuven: Research Centre for Experiential Education.
- Vygotsky L S (1978) Mind in Society: The Development of Higher Psychological Processes. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
