The Early Years Foundation Stage Framework is the statutory guidance for all early years providers. It sets out what practitioners must do to ensure that children learn and develop well, stay safe and healthy, and gain the knowledge and skills they need for starting school.

In the EYFS there are seven areas of learning:

There are three mandatory assessments in the EYFS framework.

Progress check at age two
Between the ages of two and three, a child’s progress must be reviewed. A short written summary is shared with parents, covering the child’s development in the prime areas. This check can be completed by the setting or by a health visitor.

Reception Baseline Assessment
The RBA is a short assessment completed within the first six weeks of a child starting reception.

Early Years Foundation Stage Profile
Each child is assessed against the early learning goals at the end of reception. Practitioners note whether the child is meeting expected levels or still emerging. This information is shared with the year one teacher and with parents.

Before staff can create or review observations and assessments, you need to give them Child Development permissions.

To make sure staff members can access observations:

You'll want to enable the following permissions, based on the type of access you'd like staff to have:

Assessment takes place all the time through everyday interactions. In Famly you can also record summative assessments to capture an overview of a child’s development.

The first age band refinement you save will be recorded as the child’s baseline, and future assessments can be compared to this.

To make an assessment:

For an in-depth guide, check out our article on assessments:

You can also create a two-year check in Famly. This can only be completed once per child.

To do this:

Drafts save automatically, so you can come back to the two-year check at any point to continue working on it.

Once created, the check appears as a fixed entry on the child’s Journey and in the Overview of the Child Development app. If a two-year check has been sent for review, a new one cannot be started.

Observations can be made from the News feed or from the child’s profile.

You can read more about making observations here:

The Journey tab shows all assessments and observations made for the child, in chronological order. It is the main timeline of their learning and development.

You can customise which curriculum materials staff can see while writing observations or assessments.

To do this:

Toggle on the documentation you want staff to view. These materials will then appear in the reference panel when they are making observations or assessments.