Rethinking early childhood and the importance of play within the curriculum

This article has been published as part of the Rethinking Curriculum project, kindly funded by The Helen Hamlyn Trust.

Andrew King, Headteacher of Riverhead Infants’ School in Sevenoaks, Kent.

How we are refocusing our approach to teaching and learning for EYFS and KS1 children in response to changes bought about following the pandemic.

The need for change

“It’s not like it used to me in my day; children nowadays are…different”

Like many of us, I grew up with at least one grandparent who would inevitably make claims like this. To me, this sounded like children in ‘their day’ were somehow removed from what I identified with as being a child. Was it my generation? Were we the different ones? Surely not. This was just somebody who had forgotten what it was like to be a child – I returned to my Curly Wurly, safe in the knowledge it was them, not me!

As I grew older, I continued to question my grandparents’ logic, unsure of how the material changes of the late twentieth century could alter the experiences of childhood. Yes, we had plastic toys, video game consoles, a smorgasbord of children’s television channels and more e-numbers than you could shake a Swingball bat at – but we still played. We went on adventures, scraped our knees and treated our local area as our playground. These experiences fuelled our imagination and creativity, not stunted it. Once again, I assumed that my grandparents were the ones who were wrong, not me.

The first half of my teaching career did little to change this view. Yes, the world was changing, but even amongst the endless debates about screen time, so-called ‘Supernannies’ or whether was the way forward, little seemed to alter the experiences of the children I encountered day-to-day. They still played and, crucially, they played together.

Then, in 2020, the world did change. For the first time, I really could see a demonstrable difference in children’s experiences and behaviours.

The immediate effects of COVID-19 on education were obvious, and the national focus swiftly fell upon the impact of ‘lost learning’ for children already in school. However, the longer-term challenge for the education sector was only just entering the wider world. Namely, what would be the developmental effects on children raised during a time of unprecedented societal change and how might this alter early childhood for generations to come?

I have been a senior leader for over ten years and, for me, the ‘change’ in children entering school has been marked. Conversations with colleagues across the country point to increasing levels and complexity of need at point of entry, on a scale rarely seen in mainstream settings. Over time, these conversations have been supported by a number of studies that demonstrate a significant decline in children’s school readiness when entering into Early Years Foundation Stage (EYFS).

• In 2020, the Sutton Trust highlighted that the “school readiness gap” had widened during the pandemic, with fewer children entering Reception able to dress themselves, play cooperatively, or express emotions.
• A report published by the Education Endowment Fund in 2021 stated that Early Years children showed delays in communication, language, and personal-social skills post-lockdown, especially those from disadvantaged backgrounds. Professionals also reported reduced levels of confidence and independence, together with weaker self-regulation and emotional literacy.
• Even OfstedThe Office for Standards in Education, Children’s Services and Skills – a non-ministerial department responsible for inspecting and regulating services that care for children and young people, and services providing education and skills, in their 2021 review entitled ‘Education Recovery in Early Years Providers’, noted regression in social interaction, resilience, and group collaboration, with many children struggling with turn-taking, initiating play, and adapting to routines.

These reports (and the countless others published since) confirmed a seemingly obvious problem – schools could no longer deliver education in the way they had done before.

Our context

Our school is a successful, three-form Infant School based in the North-West of Kent, with a solid reputation for academic outcomes throughout EYFS and KS1. However, over the past few years, the school has had to adapt and evolve both its pedagogy and practice as we welcome children whose experiences of early childhood differ from their peers in previous years.

In 2021Liz Robinson (co-founder of Big Education) posited a thought on a course I attended, and it has stuck with me ever since. In fact, it has become central to much of what we have planned for our school. Put very simply, it was this:

‘Meet the needs of the children where they are at, rather than where you think they should be.’

Although this seems straightforward enough, , it suddenly becomes far more complex. Liz’s initial thought often has to run parallel with meeting specific targets and working within often tightly defined parameters and statuary frameworks.

Nevertheless, undeterred by the size of the task, leaders, teachers and support staff at our school committed to the idea expressed by Liz Robinson. We set out to consider how we could move the school forward to better support our learners – both now and in the future.

For us, this meant developing some key areas of our offer, to ensure it met a wider and more diverse range of needs. This included:

• Developing nurture provision within our school that included both a dedicated practitioner and specified resources, thus supporting children who may require support that falls outside of the SEND scope.
• Recognising the vital importance of play in children’s development and ensuring its significance within our curriculum.
• Collaborating with external partners to help us improve our knowledge and understanding of a wider range of increasingly complex needs, without an over-reliance on ‘Velcro-adults’.
• Linked to the above, working to build staff knowledge and confidence through targeted professional development, to ensure all staff feel equipped to work with all children within our school.

Our curriculum journey

Whilst the strategies above are important in delivering our vision, central to all of this is the school’s curriculum – both the taught and the hidden curriculum. If the children were evolving, then we needed to reflect this in how and what we taught them.

It was for this reason that we were very keen to engage with the As leaders, we had an idea about what we wanted to achieve but were unsure how best to go about it. We were also uncertain of how it might fit within the expectations for a Local Authority (LA) maintained school. Equally, we wanted to ensure that changes were for the benefit of our school and our children – something that made simply choosing ‘off- the-shelf’ ideas less appealing to us.

From the start, the Deputy Headteacher and I wanted to establish some non-negotiables for our revised curriculum. It needed to be:

• Experiential: the learning needed to have as many tangible elements to it as possible to enable our children to ‘live’ their learning.
• Relatable: the world of an infant-aged child is relatively small and their experiences of it limited; learning needed to be relatable. We wanted our children to engage with their local community and make links to what they knew about it.
• Developmentally appropriate: we needed to ensure that what we were asking of the children was within their grasp developmentally – physically, mentally and emotionally.
• Progressive: the curriculum needed to build over time and have clearly defined progression running throughout to allow suitable opportunities to both support and stretch the children.
• Prioritise input: we wanted to support teachers to think carefully about how they taught things as much as what they taught, thus developing practitioners’ pedagogical approach to most effectively support the children.
• Compliant / quantifiable: whilst not our primary driver, we are a LA maintained school and, therefore, must recognise our statutory responsibilities and the relevant assessment points.

Our early sessions working with the Chartered College of Teaching (CCT) allowed us time as leaders to unpick our vision and reflect on our own knowledge and experience to get to the heart of what we wanted. The CCT team provided us with access to experts, linking us with Kath Bransby, Education Coordinator at Steiner Waldorf.

Working with Kath was both a demanding and exhilarating experience for those of us lucky enough to have the opportunity. Kath explored and unpicked our ideas with us, so that she could present models and practices she felt would further inform our thinking. Crucially, she encouraged us to consider the work of Urie Bronfenbrenner and his ‘Ecological Systems Model’ (1979), as Kath felt the principles of this model aligned closely with what we were looking to achieve – and she was right!

In his work, Bronfenbrenner proposed that child development occurs within a series of interconnected environmental systems, each influencing the child directly or indirectly. This consisted of:

• Microsystem: Immediate environments (e.g., family, school, peer group, classroom).
• Mesosystem: Interactions between microsystems (e.g., parent-teacher relationships).
• Exosystem: Indirect environments (e.g., a parent’s workplace, local authority policies).
• Macrosystem: Cultural and societal norms, laws, and ideologies.
• Chronosystem: The dimension of time, including life transitions and socio-historical events (e.g., the COVID-19 pandemic).

Bronfenbrenner’s model highlights the importance of context, relationships, and environmental responsiveness in child development—making it a powerful framework to guide Early Years and KS1 pedagogy within our school. Where many of these systems in children’s lives were disrupted by the pandemic, his theory underscores the need to rebuild supportive networks and prioritise soft skill development through:

• Play-based, child-initiated learning which respects the child’s voice and agency within their microsystem. This also allows for learning to be contextualised in their everyday experiences, thereby fostering intrinsic motivation and personal relevance.
• Community projects and local explorations targeted at engaging children in learning that reflects their lived environment (linking microsystem and exosystem).
• Opportunities to practice collaboration, resilience, and independence in authentic contexts (something important in linking each of the preceding systems to the macrosystem over time).

With support from Kath, the school’s leadership team was able to combine our non-negotiables with Bronfenbrenner’s model to create a framework to shape both content and practice in our school.

From this, the next step was to bring the wider leadership team into the conversation and begin to work with teaching staff. At each stage of this process, it was crucial for us to be clear to staff about why we felt curriculum change was important. As a relatively new leadership team, it was felt that change was inevitable; but, as leaders, we needed staff to feel that this process was being undertaken with them, rather than done to them. So, throughout the previous academic year, we planned CPD sessions targeted at increasing teacher ‘buy-in’ to the process, carefully building their knowledge and understanding of what we were looking to achieve.

Initially, these sessions focused on teachers reflecting honestly on why the need for change existed and exploring the theories underpinning the direction we were choosing to take. We also discussed what might be missing from our existing curriculum and things we wished to include more of (see Figure 1).

Figure 1: A word cloud based on thoughts and feedback from teaching staff about what we wished to include in our revised curriculum.

As the year progressed, so did the work undertaken by the teaching team, along with the independence and confidence with which they approached it. Time was given to carefully consider individual subjects and the content taught in each year group. Teachers were encouraged to establish closer links with the relevant subject associations and draw on the knowledge and expertise of others, considering the appropriate disciplinary and substantive knowledge required by the children at each stage and how this would build over time.

Whilst the importance of planning has never been in question, what was crucial for us as leaders was to show staff how much we valued this process. Therefore, the majority of staff CPD was dedicated to this process. We alsoStaff were also encouraged to collaborate with colleagues in other year groups to ensure there was alignment and shared understanding of what came before and after for the children. This was not solely the subject lead’s responsibility, but the responsibility of all.

As we moved forward, staff were encouraged to reflect on our established non-negotiables. For example, staff were to ensure that curriculum content was firmly rooted in a world our children could relate to and make links with. Our aim was to reclaim the world around our school and encourage the children to view themselves as part of the community.

Meanwhile, plans were put in place to revise our learning environments to better support our curriculum vision. Too often, the barrier to truly realising a school vision stems from not having the right tools – often linked to financial constraints. With the support of our community, our Parent-Teacher Association (PTA) and carefully researched funding sources, the school has been able to evolve our building alongside our curriculum. With teaching staff tasked with focusing on the explicit curriculum, the wider leadership and staff team ensured the children’s day-to-day surroundings reflected the implicit curriculum and values of the school.  A primary focus has been carefully planning classroom layout, design and resourcing to maximise opportunities for focused adult-child interactions, whilst also allowing children in KS1 to pursue their learning independently and with a greater emphasis on collaboration and communication.

Whilst this work is still in its early stages, initial anecdotal feedback from teachers, children and parents has been positive. For teachers, it has allowed them time to get to know their children in a more holistic way and better utilise a child’s interests and experiences to enhance their learning. Giving greater thought to how the learning environment is structured, has given greater confidence to children who initially were lacking in this area when coming into school. We have found our children to be more nurturing towards each other and are seeing increased interaction between peers – something particularly important to those who may have come to us with language and communication issues. Finally, informal parental feedback, has indicated that they are grateful for the nurturing environment we have created for their children, most notably the way in which staff really take their time to get to know the children and understand their needs Whilst these early signs are encouraging, we as a school will continue to monitor the progress and outcome measures for all of our children to ensure that what we are striving to achieve remains in the best interests of our learners.

Conclusion

To date, we have invested two years in this process and been grateful for the support of the CCT and all of those who have worked with us. We are now in a position where our school vision is starting to be realised. However, meaningful change does not happen overnight; it takes time to plan, reflect upon and adjust where necessary. Central to this has always been how we as a school view our children and what we feel constitutes most effective teaching and learning for them. For me, this this was always a key element of Rethinking Curriculum and its aims – there is no one-size- fits-all answer to the challenges in education. Instead, we as a nation and a profession need to think carefully about

Because, after all, things nowadays are different to how they used to be…

References

• Bronfenbrenner, U. (1979) The Ecology of Human Development: Experiments by Nature and Design. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
• Education Endowment Foundation (EEF). (2021) Impact of school closures and subsequent support strategies on attainment and socio‑emotional wellbeing in Key Stage 1. [online] Available at: https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED620409.pdf [Accessed 18 Aug. 2025]
• Education Endowment Foundation (EEF). (n.d.a) Impact of Key Stage 1 school closures on later attainment and social skills: A longitudinal study. [online] Available at: https://educationendowmentfoundation.org.uk/projects-and-evaluation/projects/impact-of-key-stage-1-school-closures-on-later-attainment-and-social-skills-a-longitudinal-study [Accessed 18 Aug. 2025]
• Education Endowment Foundation (EEF). (n.d.b) Impact of COVID‑19 disruptions in primary schools: Attainment gaps and school responses. [online] Available at: https://educationendowmentfoundation.org.uk/projects-and-evaluation/projects/covid-19-disruptions-in-primary-schools-attainment-gaps-and-school-responses [Accessed 18 Aug. 2025]
• Kindred². (2022) Annual School Readiness Survey. Available at: https://kindredsquared.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2022/05/YouGov-Kindred-Squared-School-Readiness-Report-2022-1.pdf [Accessed 18 Aug. 2025]
• Ofsted. (2021) Education recovery in early years providers: Autumn 2021. [online] Available at: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/education-recovery-in-early-years-providers-autumn-2021 [Accessed 18 Aug. 2025]
• Pascal, C. and Bertram, T. (2020) COVID-19 and Social Mobility Impact Brief #4: Early Years. Sutton Trust. [online] Available at: https://www.familyandchildcaretrust.org/sites/default/files/Resource%20Library/Implications%20of%20Covid%20for%20ECEC%20in%20England%20-%20June%202022_0.pdf [Accessed 18 Aug. 2025]
• University of Oxford (2021). Co-SPACE Study: COVID-19 and Young People’s Mental Health. Available at: https://cospaceoxford.org/findings/young-peoples-mental-health-during-the-covid-19-pandemic/ [Accessed 18 Aug. 2025]