Essay from the year 2014 in the subject Pedagogy - Nursery Pedagogy, Early Childhood Education, grade: 71, University of Cumbria, course: Secondary Maths Teaching with QTS, language: English, abstract: The Departmnt for Education enunciates that the Early Years Foundation Stage (EYFS) is a set of statutory guidelines which all childcare providers (including schools, nurseries and children’s centres) must adhere to in catering for children between the ages of 0 to 5, upon which time they will enter full-time education. The EYFS has been in circulation for several years, undergoing numerous revisions and amendments. The most recent version was published in September 2014 and is a simplified version of past documents, by having four overarching principles which is guided upon: every child is unique, children become strong through building positive relationships, children learn and develop well in ‘enabling environments’ and finally that children develop and learn at different rates. These 4 areas will provide the structure for this assignment. The EYFS seems to comprehensively cover all the needs which children may have in their formative years. It is also concurrent with previous initiatives the government have devised, such as SEAL (Social and Emotional Aspects of Learning), which implored teachers and practitioners to adopt a holistic stance in educating their pupils and Every Child Matters, which stressed that each child was an individual and should be treated as so.