Early Years

Reception and Nursery

Early Years at Beaufort

Our Early Years Unit brings together our Nursery and Reception classes to create a warm, nurturing and stimulating start to school life. Throughout the school day, children take part in a balance of carefully planned, high-quality learning experiences. These include focused teaching sessions in early reading (through rich stories and systematic phonics), early writing and mathematics, alongside purposeful opportunities to explore, investigate and learn through play.

We recognise that young children learn best by being curious about the world around them. Our skilled and experienced staff carefully observe, interact and respond to each child’s interests and needs. We embed our school value of BRAVE throughout the Early Years curriculum, encouraging children to try new things, persevere when things are tricky and celebrate their achievements. This approach ensures that learning is sequenced, strengthened and deepened over time, enabling every child to make strong and meaningful progress.

Our Early Years Provision

We provide a broad range of meaningful experiences, guided by the three Characteristics of Effective Teaching and Learning:

• Playing and Exploring – being curious, investigating and having a go

• Active Learning – concentrating, persisting and celebrating achievements

• Creating and Thinking Critically – developing ideas, making links and solving problems

We offer a balance of adult-led and child-initiated learning throughout the day. Skilled adults interact with children to model language, extend ideas and guide new learning.

Indoor and outdoor environments are available in both Nursery and Reception every day. Activities are practical, hands-on and designed to support children’s interests, curiosity and understanding of the world. As children gain knowledge and skills, our continuous provision is adapted to give them purposeful opportunities to practise and apply what they have learned.

We nurture independence by encouraging children to choose resources confidently while receiving support to extend their thinking and learning.

Our Early Years Curriculum

We aim to give every child a positive start to their school journey and foster a lifelong love of learning.

Communication and language is a high priority within our curriculum. We ensure that all children—whatever their background—have rich opportunities to develop vocabulary, language structures and confidence through both planned learning and independent exploration. Our approach builds strong foundations so that children can apply their skills in different contexts and are well prepared for the next stage of their education.

We follow the Early Years Foundation Stage Statutory Framework in Nursery and Reception, which progresses into the National Curriculum from Year 1 onwards. For Religious Education, we use the Derbyshire and Derby City Agreed Syllabus for Religious Education 2025–2030. Links for further information can be found below:

• EYFS Statutory Framework

• National Curriculum Programme of Study

• Religious Education

Beaufort Curriculum Plans

Curriculum plans have been built for children to focus on the prime and specific areas of learning from the Early Years Foundation Stage Statutory Framework.

Our curriculum plans include long-, medium- and short-term planning built around engaging topic themes. More detailed plans can be found in the curriculum section of our website.

EYFS Curriculum

We use a range of high-quality schemes to support teaching and learning in the Early Years:

• Essential Letters and Sounds (ELS) for phonics

• White Rose Maths

• KAPOW for personal and social development, understanding the world, and expressive arts and design

Learning is underpinned by our progression of skills and knowledge for Nursery (FS1) and Reception (FS2), which can be accessed here:

EYFS Progression of knowledge and skills - FS1 - Nursery

EYFS Progression of Knowledge and skills- FS2- Reception

Assessments

Most assessments are made through the daily activities for learning that children access. Teachers and teaching assistants will use communication and language and characteristics of effective learning to check progress of knowledge and skills gained.

Statutory assessments will include:

• Reception Baseline assessment- completed within the first 6 weeks.
• Early Years foundation stage profile – completed in the summer term at the end of reception.

Partnerships with Parents

We recognise the importance of working closely with our Parents and Carers.  We encourage parents to support their children in their education through our reading diaries, sharing children’s learning through Class Dojo and inviting parents into school for special events and regular stay and play sessions. Children are encouraged to take books home to read with their Parents and Carers.

Admissions

For reception pupils we follow the Derby City Admissions Criteria.

https://www.derby.gov.uk/education-and-learning/schools-and-colleges/school-admissions/primary-school-admissions/how-primary-places-are-decided.

If your child has a nursery place you will still need to apply for a reception place as above.

Nursery Waiting List/Admissions

To join our Nursery, parents first need to put their child’s name on to our waiting list. Forms are available from the school office. Parents are welcome to come and look around our facilities and can make an appointment with the school office.

Children are entitled to 15 hours free Nursery education in the term after their third birthday if places are available within the Nursery.  We aim to admit children soon after their third birthday if places are available.  We also offer 30 hours free Nursery education to those children who qualify for this.  See https://www.childcarechoices.gov.uk/  for further details about childcare options.

For 15 hour entitlement:

Morning Sessions Mon-Fri 8.45 – 11.45 am

Afternoon Sessions Mon-Fri 12.15 – 3.15 pm

Monday and Tuesday all day and Wednesday mornings 

Thursday and Friday all day and Wednesday afternoons

For 30 hour entitlement:

Mon – Fri 8.45 am – 3.15 pm

Our 30 hour places are currently limited to 16 children.  11.30 am – 12.30 pm is the lunchtime part of the session.  Children may bring their own packed lunch or order a healthy school lunch.