The Early Years Foundation Stage Framework is statutory guidance for early years providers. The EYFS framework:

In the EYFS, there are seven areas of learning. The areas of learning are:

There are only three mandatory assessments in the EYFS framework:

Progress check at age two
When a child is aged between two and three, you or the child's health visitor must review their progress, and provide parents with a short written summary of their

child’s development in the prime areas of learning (communication and language, physical development, and personal, social, and emotional development).- EYFS 2021
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Reception Baseline Assessment (RBA)
The Reception Baseline Assessment (RBA) is a short assessment, taken in the

first six weeks in which a child starts reception- EYFS 2021

Early Years Foundation Stage Profile (EYFSP)
Each child’s level of development must be assessed against the early learning goals Practitioners must indicate whether children are meeting expected levels of development, or if they are not yet reaching expected levels (‘emerging’). This is shared with the child's year 1 teacher, and their parents.

Before staff are able to make observations and assessments, you must give them Child Development related permission in the app. To do this:

Manage observations

If you would like staff to be able to create observations/assessments, but require them to be sent for review before they are posted, check the first box 'Manage observations' only. This first box must be checked in order to use any of the Child Development features.

Review and send observations

If you would like staff to also be able to review and send the observations, check the second box 'Review and send observations'. This also allows staff to post directly to the parents, without review.

Access to basic child and employee info

In order to use the Child Development features, staff will also need the basic permission 'Access to basic child and employee info', which is found higher up in the list of permissions.

Assessment is ongoing through your observations of the children in your care, however, you can also record summative assessments in Famly, to create a general snapshot of a child's current development.

The first record of an age-band refinement in an assessment will be saved as the child's baseline. This record can then be used as a comparison in the future.

To make an assessment, follow these steps:

You can complete the progress check for 2-year-olds in Famly (this can only be done once per child). To do this:

Two-year checks are structurally very similar to Assessments. Once a 2-year check has been created it will appear as a fixed box in the child's learning journey and can also be found in the 'Overview' of the 'Child Development' app. If a 2-year check has been sent for review, another 2-year check cannot be started.

An Observation can be made directly on the News feed or on the child's profile. More information about Observations can be here:

The Journey tab is where you'll find all Assessments and Observations made about a child, in chronological order. Learn more about the Journey tab here:

You can now tailor the reference material your staff see when creating observations and assessments for children.

To do this, head over to Settings. Once you’re in the settings menu, select Child Development, and then Reference Material.

The documentation you have toggled on will then display for your staff to refer to when writing observations and assessments.

NB: to access this page, you will need to have the new Child Development features switched on, and have the staff permission ‘Manage enabling/disabling features.’