An update to Development Matters

The Department for Education (DfE) have published a revised version of Development Matters, government’s non-statutory curriculum guidance for the EYFS, to reflect feedback received from the Early Adopter schools that have adopted the reforms over the 2020/21 academic year.

It is important to note that changes to content are minor and you will not need to alter any planning based on the September 2020 version that you may have already made. No major changes have been made to the curriculum guidance under the seven areas of learning.

The changes include:

• Updated links, making minor tweaks to wording for clarification purposes
• Updates to the Introduction and Characteristics of Effective Teaching and Learning sections to ensure the wording is aligned with the aims of the reforms and reflects the most recent research and evidence
• Ensuring the document is accessible, inclusive, and easier to navigate. This includes a new design, layout and colour coding.

‘Development Matters was originally road-tested with over 200 early years practitioners, who gave extensive feedback. Their input changed the document for the better. Since then, over 3000 schools have been ‘Early Adopters’ of the revised EYFS. They have been overwhelmingly positive about the revised Development Matters, but their experience has highlighted some minor areas for improvement in the document. I would like to thank all those teachers and early years educators for being so generous in giving this time and sharing their expertise’ – Dr Julian Grenier.

The DfE hope that the new design will make it easier for practitioners to navigate and use for curriculum planning.