From September 2024, working parents of children aged 9 months old and over will be able to access 15 hours of support for childcare. This will increase to 30 hours from September 2025.

This childcare expansion has led to some settings considering extending their provision to enable babies to begin attending, whereas previously they may have accepted children from aged 2 or 3 years and over.

These changes have been introduced to support families to return to work, by reducing the financial implications of childcare and settings considering extending their provision to include babies is a positive step.

However, there are many things to consider logistically when adding a new age group, and this blog investigates each of these to support providers in their decision making and set up.

Ratios

Children under the age of two are much more reliant on adults with very few independent skills, therefore, the ratio for children under the age of 2 years old is 1:3. With this higher staff to child ratio, you may need to consider hiring more staff or redeploying existing staff, as with all ratios, these are statutory and must be upheld.

Training

The Early Years Foundation Stage Statutory Framework states that ‘At least half of all staff must have received training that specifically address the care of babies’ (3.40). 
Understanding the developmental needs of babies, including the importance of attachment, the key person system, enabling environments and providing baby care requires a unique knowledge and skillset, and therefore it is recognised that practitioners working with babies must undertake specific training. 

This training is in addition to any childcare qualification, therefore, if you are considering offering places for babies into your setting, you must ensure that at least half of the staff who will be working with them have accessed baby training. 

HFL provides training that covers this statutory requirement with two courses, ‘Working with Babies’ and ‘The Baby Room in Action’ which can be found on the HFL Hub
The framework also states that the member of staff in charge of the baby room, must have suitable experience of working with under twos, therefore, when employing or redeploying staff, this must be taken into consideration.

Environment

In group settings, there should be a separate room for babies with 3.5m² for each child, which must be usable space, not thoroughfares, changing areas, cloakrooms etc. Therefore, you require a bigger space for less children compared to your 2, 3 and 4-year-olds. 

An environment that stimulates and provides safety for a baby also looks very different to the environment for children over the age of two. Babies will spend most of the day on the floor, so consideration must be given to how comfortable that is.  It is essential that babies have soft, cosy spaces beyond a few cushions and teddies, but places for them to lay, roll, crawl, and play safely and comfortably. 

Secure furniture that enables the children opportunities to pull themselves up, cruise and select their own resources is essential along with décor and displays that are not over busy, bright and overstimulating, as this is known to raise children’s blood pressure. Ideally, we want babies to be surrounded by neutral tones in a homely ‘living room’ style atmosphere. 
Have you thought about visiting settings that offer child care for babies? This is often a great way to gain inspiration and build a network.

According to the EYFS Statutory Framework, ‘each child must be assigned a key person’ (3.34) and for babies and their families, this role holds significant importance. A key person system must be established and embedded, with practitioners clear on their role of forming attachments with babies to enable them to feel safe, secure, and happy. This begins with building relationships with parents and carers by being a consistent presence and port of call for information sharing. In practice, a key person should build an attachment with the baby demonstrating ‘professional love’, such as carrying out care routines, having sociable interactions and responding to their voice, including non-verbal cues, with affection. Home visits before a baby starts at the setting are an invaluable way of building the foundations of an effective key person relationship.

Sleep

Sleep is one of the most important aspects of the day for babies and can also be a very vulnerable time. The Lullaby Trust has published guidance for settings and is a great place to start when considering your sleep space and safer sleep policy. Babies must have safe and restful naps as this contributes to their brain development, good health, and their mood. Safe places for babies to nap are either cots or sleep mats/beds and children must be checked on regularly. Babies should never sleep in bouncy chairs, swinging chairs, pillows, beanbags, car seats or buggies.

Training the team on what they are looking for when checking sleeping babies is imperative.

Resources made of plastic have a place in a baby room, as plastic is easily cleaned after being mouthed, we want children to gain authentic experiences from materials and resources that provide different sensory feedback. So, when gathering resources for your babies, put yourself in their shoes and consider how something feels, smells, tastes and sounds when banged or dropped and use this as your guide to resourcing. 

Be aware of small and sharp parts that can cause a choking hazard or injury but do not be afraid of appropriate loose parts and interesting textures. 

Avoiding food play is advised but providing well supervised opportunities for babies to explore sand, water, and playdough within continuous provision with exciting enhancements provide excellent sensory activities.

Other logistical factors to consider:

• Policies and risk assessments – existing policies will need to be reviewed, adapted and implemented to reflect the new age group. Examples could include a safer sleep policy, a milk preparation procedure, and a risk assessment for accessing babies accessing water play.  
• Outdoor space- including how babies will access this and how they can take part in walks.
• Milk preparation – including a place to make bottles and store breast milk. Additionally, a place for mothers to breastfeed if they wish to.
• Intimate care – including where nappy changes will be carried out and a selection of spare clothes for babies.
• Cleaning schedule – babies will mouth toys more often than older children therefore resources must be cleaned or sterilised regularly.

Resources:

EYFS Statutory Framework
The Lullaby Trust - Safer Sleep Awareness
Community Play - What happens in the baby room?

This blog is the third in a series looking at how children make progress within foundation subjects. Here, I will aim to exemplify how children might get better at geography, with a focus on the strand of ‘physical processes,’ which runs throughout the geography curriculum we teach.

A common conversation we have with subject leaders is: How do we ensure that year on year, our children are getting better at geography rather than moving through our units of work gaining an increasing number of unrelated facts? What links the units of work? What does progress look like?

In the Ofsted subject report, published in September 2023 - Getting our bearings: geography subject report, the first recommendation is:

Consider how pupils will build on knowledge, not only within a topic but over a series of topics, so that they can apply what they have learned in different scenarios.

Seeing the whole subject, and how knowledge builds, rather than individual topics or units, is helpful when we are thinking about how a child makes progress in their learning.

If we look at the diagram below, representing the whole of the geography curriculum, with all the learning that might be hidden under a topic or unit title, we can start to unpick the learning that takes place in geography, and it is here, I believe, we can begin to answer the question of progress.

Layers of learning in Geography

In the diagram, we can see the top layer of learning refers to the projects, topics or units of work. These are commonly found on a school’s long-term plan and are an overview of what the children will study in different year groups. Here, we may see topics such as, ‘Kenya,’ ‘rivers,’ ‘farming in the UK,’ ‘How is life in Mumbai different from life here?’ or ‘What is it like to live in the Amazon?’

The next layer refers to what we will call the concepts of geography: locational knowledge, place knowledge, human and physical geography and geographical skills and fieldwork are all identified in the national curriculum as components to be studied and are the pillars of geography. They are what make geography, geography. We cannot teach or learn geography without these central concepts.

The third layer, we will call threads. These are both concrete and abstract ideas that run through the curriculum. They appear in units of work, some repeating more than others and all of them help to break the larger concepts into smaller chunks.

Returning to the concepts layer, let’s take a deeper look at physical processes. The geography national curriculum has a heading of ‘Human and physical geography’ at Key Stages 1 and 2, which then goes onto to specify the learning that falls within this area. In an aim to make the teaching manageable, we might then create units, topics or projects, which take an aspect of the learning and explore it. But these aspects need to be still seen as part of a bigger whole, to see how learning progresses.

How might children make progress within the area of physical processes?

Physical processes are natural processes that change Earth’s physical features including forces that build up or wear down the Earth’s surface. They give rise to the spatial variation on our planet, meaning the changes that occur in specific areas or locations over space and time. Think continental drift, formations of mountains, ice caps melting or formations of rivers and how they change the landscape over time.

These spatial variations (changes in area over time) in climate, physical geography, natural resources etc have directly influenced human settlement patterns. Civilisations have flourished in fertile valleys, near rivers, lakes, shores, and coastal areas and near other highly productive ecosystems. It is physical processes that give rise to the formation of these areas and so directly affect where we live and how we live. I think this is a really important area of our geography curriculum but also a complex area to teach in enough depth for children to develop a strong schema.

The table below is an example of what a progression within learning about physical processes could look like. As children move through the curriculum, we can plan for them to encounter this through many real life, place-related examples and so bring their locational and place knowledge to the exploration. They become more proficient and adept at understanding physical processes.

Understanding what this might look like in different age phases could help us sequence our curriculum effectively and therefore pitch our lessons appropriately; it could then underpin our assessment too.

Of course, this is one example, not an exhaustive list of possible objectives, and your geography curriculum may have sequenced the content differently.

Some learning here is sequential in its nature and needs to form the foundation of a child’s experience with physical processes. Some learning, further in the curriculum journey, is about strengthening and securing a child’s schema around physical processes by meeting the learning in many contexts. This is achieved by providing many contextualised examples, thus widening the child’s understanding, and creating a strong schema.

What might this look like in the classroom?

In EYFS, the learning is experiential and provides the foundation for all future learning. A child may be busy observing and discussing weather with an adult. They may notice that puddles form when it rains. They will discuss what clothes to wear on a hot day or a cold day. A child may engage in play with soil, sand and water noticing some of the properties of these materials and engaging in a simple discussion with an adult. They will begin to point out and name physical features of the school grounds and build their repertoire of vocabulary. This will also be developed through play, stories, video clips etc. of other places. These types of experiences are essential and a foundation to future learning about the weather and other physical processes.

During KS1, a child may engage in a daily class activity recording the weather. They will learn that the weather relates to the seasons. They will also begin to make links between the seasons and growing plants. They will build on the work in EYFS and extend their vocabulary by identifying a greater range of physical features through studying the local area and other places.

Also in KS1, a child may build on the prior learning above by identifying hot and cold places in the world and relating these to the position of the equator and the poles. They will expand their vocabulary further when identifying physical features especially when studying a place very different to their own in their non-European study. Here, children may encounter physical features that are not in their own locality and begin to identify some significant physical features in the world (deserts, mountains, coasts, rainforests, jungles, etc)

This learning, within Early Years and KS1, provides the basis for future learning. As children move through the curriculum step by step, all future physical processes knowledge will be built on these foundations.

As children move into lower KS2, they progress from identifying and labelling physical features to exploring physical processes. The learning from KS1 provides a bedrock foundation for new learning to sit and stick. Without these first steps, children will struggle to understand other content. For example, early experiences with seasons relating to plant growth and knowing there are hot and cold places on the planet provide the basis of a schema in which knowledge about vegetation belts and climate zones will later sit.

A child in lower KS2 may study the water cycle. They might relate this to the formation of rivers. They will understand that the formation of rivers has changed the landscape. They might link this to their Year 3 science topic of rocks. They may also link their learning to the local river where they may undertake investigative fieldwork identifying and labelling the river parts, making sketches and measuring water flow etc. They could also contextualise their learning by exploring, ‘what is it like to live near a river?’ in a study of the Amazon River for example.

Children in lower KS2 may also learn about mountains and how they are formed. To understand this, they will need knowledge about tectonic plates. This will rely on knowledge about the continents studied in Year 2. They will recall prior learning about significant physical features of the world and may remember some well-known mountain ranges. They will understand how mountains are formed and may investigate a region in Europe that contains mountain ranges. They may also investigate earthquakes and how the friction between tectonic plates causes them. To contextualise learning, they may study a region that has suffered from earthquakes and discuss their impact on people and land. Teachers could help children create strong schema by making the link between rivers and earthquakes as two physical processes that change the Earth’s features and impact the way we live.

Children in upper KS2 may investigate how volcanoes are formed; they could link this learning to prior learning about tectonic plates. They will draw on their expanding location knowledge to use more complex maps to locate volcanoes around the globe and begin to analyse patterns. To contextualise their learning, children may investigate the question of, ‘why do people choose to live near volcanoes?’ Here they may link their learning to case studies of one or more places. For example, farming in the Naples region of Italy can sometimes be difficult due to the limestone basement rock. However, due to the lava-rich soil, they are able to grow vines, vegetables, flowers etc. In Iceland, geothermal energy is used to heat swimming pools and buildings. These case studies are two examples of how human and physical geography are interconnected; they bring classroom learning to life and take the learning about physical processes from an isolated knowledge bank into a more real life, rounded view of the processes being studied and their impact on humans.

As children move towards the end of the planned curriculum in upper KS2, they will be able to weave together much of their substantive knowledge and make links between different areas of learning. They may investigate different vegetation belts and explore case studies, by, for example, returning to look at the Amazon River as a South American place study, recalling knowledge of rivers and moving to looking at what crops can be grown and how the land is used. This links physical and human geography. They may look at case studies of coffee farmers and explore cash crops and fair trade. Children may also return to look at their local area in more depth undertaking fieldwork linking together all four concepts of geography.

In the examples above, we can see that the knowledge secured in EYFS and KS1 provides a foundation for future learning; a place for new learning to connect to and stick. The learning provides the foundations necessary for what comes next.

When children reach KS2, the learning about physical processes broadens and deepens. Here, it might be less important what order some of the learning is presented in and more important to focus on schema development – connecting learning by presenting the knowledge of physical processes in a range of contexts, linking to real places studied and combining with the other concepts of geography. Here the teacher needs to narrate the learning; drawing children’s attention to where ideas have been met before, and how things connect.

With this approach to building a strong schema, the key is to highlight, and relate all learning to prior learning. This is how children make sense of their learning and begin to connect the different knowledge bases of geography. This is making progress. The stronger the schema, the better the recall and the deeper the understanding.

The stronger the schema, the better the recall and the deeper the understanding.

This blog by Tom Sherrington is useful for thinking about schema if you want to delve further.

The important point here is that we can view the way children make progress within the thread of physical geography in more than one way:-

• In a more sequential, linear manner; with each year and topic they study, they become more proficient as their skills build incrementally.
• In a manner more like mastery where children develop a rich schema around the thread by meeting it many times in many different contexts throughout the curriculum.

In summary, if we want these teaching moments to be meaningful, we need to draw the children’s attention to the learning where they have met it before. Highlighting the prior learning and where they will meet the ideas again in subsequent topics, ensures that a constant thread is pulled through the geography curriculum enabling children to progress.

In answering the question, how do children get better at geography?  here are three factors that leaders may wish to think about:-

1. Children can get better and make progress within the concepts that underpin geography hierarchically, if these are planned for in an incremental way, as shown in the example progress table.
2. They can develop a rich schema around these concepts, to master the ideas, by purposefully meeting knowledge in many contexts, weaving the four concepts of geography together, with the adult drawing their attention to the concepts as they are revisited.
3. The points above might work best when we purposefully plan the opportunities and highlight them to the children. ‘Do you remember when you looked at tectonic plates and how their movement may cause earthquakes? Well today, we are going to look at how tectonic plates play a part in the formation of mountains…’, which might require a combination of both points 1 and 2.

In your school;

• Is there an understanding of the geographical concepts that underpin learning in geography (location knowledge, place knowledge, human and physical geography and geographical skills and fieldwork)?
• Do adults purposefully draw pupils’ attention to these concepts and where they have been met before (to allow pupils to develop schema)?
• Do adults understand how this learning might grow and develop over time as pupils mature (thinking about the progression table idea)?

In subsequent blogs, we will exemplify further concepts in other foundation subjects asking the key question, what does it mean to make progress?

“Do you remember when you came to my house?” I was asked by a Year 6 pupil, seven years after the visit. I absolutely did remember. The child and their parent/carer had made me fairy cakes with blue icing, and I was taken on a tour of the garden to see their new trampoline. It wasn’t the first time I had met the child, but it was clearly an important enough meeting for this child to remember at 11 years old as they were starting their next big transition to secondary school.

Over the years, there has been a decline in the number of schools facilitating home visits as part of their transition procedures for valid reasons. The impact of the pandemic exacerbated this further, and it seems to be an area that is yet to fully recover. I am therefore on a mission to bring back home visits for all nursery and reception starters by exploring some of the barriers and ways to mitigate them.

Time constraints

Where schools are facing challenges with staffing and recruitment, trying to cover any time away from the classroom is difficult. As with everything in school, forward planning is key. Keep transition on the agenda all year, not just in July and September as this is too late and puts a lot of pressure on everyone.

• Put transition events on the whole school calendar so that everyone is aware of them.
• Consider restricting school trips on the days where home visits are planned to be carried out to ensure sufficient adults are available in school.
• Give enough notice to any adults that might be required to cover in EYFS and remember to check ratios and qualifications for covering nursery classes.
• Consider using non-contact time to facilitate the visits (PPA, subject leader, management time etc) or using INSET days.
• Consider carrying out home visits for nursery children moving to reception in the summer term and for all new starters at the beginning of the autumn term.

Safety concerns

In some cases, schools have indicated that carrying out home visits might not be safe. If we are concerned with the safety of our staff being in the home then we should be just as, if not more, concerned about the safety of the children. Whilst schools offer opportunities for children and families to visit the school through induction meetings, stay and play sessions and other transition events, what about the families that do not access any of this? How are you ensuring the safety of the children?

• Ensure risk assessments are in place for every home visit and make adaptations for individual situations as required.
• Ensure two people carry out home visits. This may usually be the class teacher and teaching assistant. However, if there are concerns it may be appropriate to have a member of the senior leadership team accompany the teacher instead.
• Conduct doorstop/garden visits and insist on seeing the child. You might consider organising a series of shorter visits to bring resources to the family to support transition.
• Consider finding a more neutral ground to meet, such as a local library or family centre.

Children already in nursery

As someone whose background is in teaching mixed aged classes, I can honestly say that no two home visits are the same, even for the same child! There is no harm in offering a home visit to families that are already accessing EYFS provision at your school, but you may find that not offering it has a detrimental impact.

• Offer a home visit to all families moving from nursery to reception.
• Take the opportunity to build relationships as the new teacher, especially if you have separate nursery and reception classes.
• Use the home visit to inform parents/carers of how to best support their child with transition through the summer. 

I remember the home visits I have participated in with fondness and privilege. I recognise that I am lucky to have not faced any seriously challenging situations but know that home visits can be invaluable for ensuring the safety of children as well as enabling a more successful start to school. Offering a home visit to every family gave me a more realistic view of their daily life and made me reflect on the provision I put in place for when they started.

If you would like further guidance with developing your transition procedures, the HFL Education Supporting Smooth Transitions toolkit is available with a wealth of resources that can be used to supplement your school’s transition. 

DfE guidance: Mobile phones in schools

We are where we are for better or worse so why now the rush to formal guidance. I think it’s a lot to do with the increased ownership of phones, which for many years, in the recent past, was a rite of passage just for those moving up to secondary education. This has now trickled down to junior and infant age children leading to well documented impacts on behaviour and wellbeing for so many of our young students. According to the DfE 97% of 12 year olds now own a mobile phone with Ofcom reporting in March 2023 that mobile phone usage and ownership rose to 20% of 4-8 year olds, rising to 50% for 9 year olds and 60-80% for 10-11 year olds. 

In early reaction to its publication various education commentators stated that most schools already do this, so the guidance is unnecessary, but I think a more accurate portrayal is most schools have something in place but of course there was no DfE guidance to base that position on so policy was produced in a vacuum. In publishing, not only guidance, but also case studies and a toolkit it provides a firm footing upon which schools can tweak, update or put in place a policy, firmly rooted in their Behaviour Policy, that will allow the implementation of a ‘mobile free’ school. 

The DfE are advocating an approach that falls into one of four approaches schools have taken on the issue of mobile phones in schools, namely:
1.    No mobile phones on the school premises
2.    Mobile phones handed into staff on arrival at school.
3.    Mobile phones kept in a secure location, which the pupil does not access throughout the school day.
4.    Mobile phones are never used, seen or heard whilst at school.

I guess in descending order that reads extreme, impractical, how on earth and wishful thinking but looking at the DfE case studies, schools are making one or more combinations of these work.

If today’s devices were the size of the original mobile phone, slung over the shoulder with a large power pack and running off mains power, then without a doubt all the arguments for and against would simply founder on the impracticality of allowing hundreds of such devices into schools. It’s worth pondering that a secondary school with 1000 students means that there will be upwards of 900+ mobile phones on site with a combined value running into the hundreds of £1000s! Despite the quantum leaps in sophistication, reach, smart applications it appears that it’s the size reduction that has enabled unfettered access into our schools. If we consider the ‘misuse’ of mobiles enabling a tsunami of control, coercion, bullying, grooming, radicalisation, county lines, easy access to pornography and misogynistic content to name but a few, how is it we have allowed them on site? Schools are absolutely united in banning cigarettes, vapes, weapons and alcohol for obvious reasons and yet mobile phones are often cited as enabling behaviour(s) that can lead to suspension, exclusion or worse. In more extreme cases the ‘weapon of choice’ for bullying behaviour is the mobile phone contributing to a wave of mental health and wellbeing problems being experienced by our students. 

Peer pressure is another area of concern, it’s hard to comprehend the pressure on both parents and students to not only have the latest ‘must have’ device but also a suitable contract to support it. In these straightened times, given the eyewatering costs of both these, how must this impact on family finances in trying to do the right thing realising that schools are the catwalk that shames those that can’t or don’t want to equip their children with mobile phones? Whilst we can’t control what our students access beyond the school gates, we can try to do everything in school to limit access to harmful content to reduce phone related incidents.  

There are very clear circumstances where the possession of a mobile phone may be absolutely essential whether to support with medical need, particular learning applications and technologies and where students have caring responsibilities. With these the use is unarguable, clear and controllable in the classroom and wider school given that only a small number of students will require them. 

Students need to be able to contact home and friends on their way to and from school, this is the most commonly advanced argument for allowing them into school. I think for the vast majority of students they, as previous ‘phone less’ generations did, make their way to and from school with little or no need of a phone for emergencies – those that don’t either head straight to school or home afterwards are enabled by mobile phones to pursue whatever behaviour they choose – perhaps we need to consider far more urgently the part that mobile phones play in the contextual safeguarding challenges that result?

So, what to do? A total ban, handed in & locked away, switched off and not to be seen or maybe with a ‘school lock’ installed Block Mobile Phones At School with ParentShield.   Or simply trust our students to ‘do the right thing’. If you develop a policy around banning mobile phones, as suggested by the DfE, and you underpin this by banning them in your Behaviour policy, then bags can be searched, phones can be confiscated, and sanctions applied. 

Consider that in schools we ask our staff to model great behaviours and be role models but one thing that it’s almost impossible to do is model how students should be with their mobile phone. Furthermore, the wider world of home, community and online offers such a poor or distorted example of how mobile phones can/ should play a positive role in a person’s life but rather sucks them into dependence and sometimes addiction to the virtual world they hold in their hands. The idea schools, that in so many ways prepare students for the world of work, find it is so difficult to do so in terms of mobile phones where the tolerance of personal phones in the workplace ranges from outright bans through to no rules at all. As ever so much of how mobile phones impacts students in our schools is reliant on their own self-control and discipline and how the use of phones is modelled in the home.

So where does all this leave us? Well as governors we need to carefully consider this non-statutory guidance issued by the DfE. If mobile phones are an issue in your school, then parents and Ofsted will want to know what you have done in response to manage their impact. Simply banning them without a policy and/ or adding them to the list of banned items in your behaviour policy (whilst carefully describing the exceptions) will not pass the litmus test. The DfE toolkit provides useful facts and figures to present to parents together with suggestions on how to communicate them and how to introduce and enforce a policy limiting the presence of mobiles in your school. As governors are you aware of what low and high level disruption mobiles are causing during the school day, levels of confiscation and more critically where behaviours are impacted and/or lead to suspensions and exclusions were enabled by mobiles?

Maybe it shouldn’t be so much a question of banning mobile phones in schools but rather why did we ever allow them into schools in the first place? Locking the stable door after the proverbial horse has bolted may best describe where we are. To do nothing is not an option, to do something is critical and whether and how to implement an outright ban or similar option should be an agenda item until agreement is reached. Should serious thought be given to running support sessions for parents and carers? When it comes to mobile phones all our students are vulnerable for a variety of reasons, let’s be sure that whatever we put in place ensures as best possible that our schools are a safe and protected environment.