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Supporting Leadership in the EYFS

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Vision and Ethos

A vision is central to ensuring that a setting is moving forward and enables everyone to have a clear understanding of what they want the setting to look like. Ensuring that those with oversight of governance and all stakeholders in the setting work together in a collaborative process enables a shared vision to continually improve outcomes for children.

A vision

  • Should describe a better future that is consistent with high standards of quality and education for all children
  • It should motivate people and provide a sense of purpose and direction for the setting
  • Should reflect the values and culture of your setting
  • This should be evident in the setting's action plans and self-evaluation
  • Should be realistic and shared with everyone who is part of the setting

“Create the highest, grandest vision possible for your life, because you become what you believe.” - Oprah Winfrey.

The setting’s ethos should describe the set of ideas and attitudes that are currently associated with the setting and should reflect your pedagogical approach.

An ethos

  • It should describe the reason your setting exists
  • It should state any pedagogies you relate to
  • It should be succinct
  • It should be realistic
  • Everyone should be aware of it and have ownership of it

Management and Staff Development

Staff development should be a two-way process of working together to identify areas of strengths or for improvement and the ways that these could be addressed. Practice and knowledge should both be considered. Staff development should be an ongoing process, incorporating many different elements such as supervision, training, coaching, peer observation or mentoring.

The early years foundation stage (EYFS) statutory framework requires that early years practitioners are engaged in a cycle of effective supervision:

“Providers must put appropriate arrangements in place for the supervision of staff who have contact with children and families. Effective supervision provides support, coaching, and training for the practitioner and promotes the interests of children. Supervision should foster a culture of mutual support, teamwork, and continuous improvement, which encourages the confidential discussion of sensitive issues.” (paragraph 3.22).

The Early Years Service and its partners have published guidance ‘Staff supervision in early years and childcare’ to support early years and childcare settings to establish appropriate arrangements for the supervision of staff. This booklet includes the following model documents and templates that settings can adapt for their own use.

This guidance provides information, advice, and examples to support early years and childcare leaders and managers to carry out workplace supervision.

EYFS Supervision 2022937KB–pdf
Size: 937KBFile format: pdf

Peer observation can take place in several different ways and is strongly recommended to understand the quality of interactions between practitioners and children. Peer observations can feed into supervision or honest and supportive reflective discussions. Peer observations can also be used to support members of staff in self-reflection.

Agreeing a focus for the observation in advance can be supportive and ensure that the reflective discussion is effective. For the observer, peer observation helps them to reflect on their interactions and can help improve their communication skills during the feedback process.

Care must be taken to ensure that feedback is both honest and constructive and that thought is given to how to support and develop the practitioner further if this is needed.

Benefits for the setting can include improved quality of teaching, developing an open and sharing culture among peers and enabling practitioners to make changes in their practice that they have self-identified.

As a leader, it is important to be a good role model and demonstrate how this is carried out effectively.

Identifying training needs for individuals, through supervision, to raise the quality of teaching and keep staff up to date with current and relevant research in the early years sector is vital to ongoing professional development. Alongside this having an overall view of the training needs of the setting is essential to ensure that you can provide a broad and balanced curriculum. Using cohort analysis to identify any areas of weakness can provide a rigorous method of recognising training needs.

CambsEYC strongly recommends that settings utilise their Professional Development Programme to ensure that practitioners are aware of local processes, especially regarding SEND and Safeguarding.

Bespoke training can be offered to settings at a cost or as part of your membership package, please contact your Early Years Adviser for more information.

Coaching is instructing a person to achieve a specific goal or skill – usually a formal process

Mentoring is guiding, counselling and supporting improvement – usually has a broader outcome and is more informal.

Both coaching and mentoring have key roles in supporting quality improvement in the setting. Coaching will normally be carried out by a manager or senior leader, whilst mentoring can be assigned to any member of staff who has the appropriate skills to support the mentee.

CambsEYC Leadership and Management Toolkit6.9MB–pdf
Size: 6.9MBFile format: pdf
Induction Programme Template - March 2025327KB–pdf
Size: 327KBFile format: pdf