Working with stakeholders, these professional learning modules have been developed to support current practice in early education and the implementation of Curriculum for Wales from September 2022.
They will help you continue to strengthen your practice in supporting our youngest children in their learning and development, and support them in their continuing journey throughout education.
The modules are designed to complement Curriculum for Wales, including the curriculum for funded non-maintained nursery settings.
While the modules have been developed with the needs of practitioners working with children aged 3 to 8 in mind, the underlying principles can be equally applicable across a wider age range and development stages, and, where appropriate, may be applied to learners up to the age of 16.
Following the implementation of Curriculum for Wales, the use of the term ‘Foundation Phase’ (and ‘key stages’) was removed from the curriculum to reflect a continuum of learning without stages or phases.
‘Foundation Phase’ referred to a ‘curriculum’ and was used to identify and discuss practice and pedagogy for children aged 3 to 8. We now refer to the practice and pedagogy as ‘foundation learning’, which forms part of the 3 to 16 Curriculum for Wales.
Throughout the modules you will find some resources, such as case studies, which may reference Foundation Phase and/or key stages. As these are published resources, we are unable to change the terminology but the practice and pedagogy demonstrated continues to support Curriculum for Wales and the curriculum for funded non-maintained nursery settings, and so we have retained them to reinforce the learning demonstrated within the modules.