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An overview of the new version of Child Development
An overview of the new version of Child Development
Julia Rose avatar
Written by Julia Rose
Updated over a week ago

Settings using the EYFS can turn on the new version of Child Development in Famly, on web and in the app.

How to toggle off the new version of Child Development in Famly

To make this change, you'll need the 'Child development' permission enabled. To begin using the new way of observing and assessing in Famly:

  • Enter the 'Settings' menu and click on 'Child Development'

  • Click on 'Set up'

  • Choose whether you would like to disable the new version of child development for only you, or your whole setting.


What are the changes?

Observations

Below is how the new observations look. There are several changes to these:

  • Observations now take up the whole page, for a clearer view.

  • You can still link to the seven areas of learning from the EYFS, but not individual curriculum statements.

  • You can now view reference material on the same page, for example:

    • Existing curriculum guidance, such as Development Matters and Birth to Five Matters

    • Children's past observations and assessments

    • You can also create your own curriculum using the Curriculum Builder

  • The 'Next Steps' box is now an optional section called 'What's next'


Assessments

You'll have access to the new way of assessing, including two default assessment options, designed specifically to work with the Development Matters guidance and the Birth to Five Matters guidance respectively. You'll also be able to perform two-year checks.


The new custom assessment builder means you'll now be able to decide exactly what will appear in your assessments, and how they'll look. You can use this exclusively, or in combination with the default assessment options.

To create your own assessment configuration, head to Settings → Child development → Assessment settings. From here, scroll down to Create your own configuration.

  • Give your configuration a title

  • Enter any additional text by checking the Add extra text boxes which will allow you customise your assessment by adding your own text. These fields will subsequently appear when creating an assessment:

  • Choose which learning framework you'd like to assess against using the Assess against dropdown

  • You can choose to Add age bands and give these a name and range. You can add as many age bands as you'd like

  • You can also choose whether you'd like to include assessment options - simply choose the colour and enter a title

  • Lastly, choose whether you'd like to Include reflections by checking the box

You cannot update existing assessment configurations if you've already created any assessments with that configuration. So, if you'd like to edit an existing configuration to include custom fields, you need to create a new configuration, add the relevant additional fields and toggle this one on in your Assessment settings. Make sure to toggle off the original configuration. It's important to note this will reset reporting as well.


Reporting

You can now view your past refinement-based tracking, as well as reports based on assessments made in any new configurations. These will show the current best-fit judgements you’ve made on every child, and just like now, you’ll be able to click on a tile to see that child’s past assessments within that area. The new system is designed to show you those children you really need to focus on, rather than about filling it out so you know exactly where every child is.

However, because you can no longer link to specific curriculum statements, you will no longer have statement-based tracking as an option in your progress report, or on the child's journey (but we will have something soon in its place). You will, however, still have any previous refinement-based tracking reports, but without the 'compare progress' and 'compare to baseline' options.


Comparing cohorts is something we are specifically looking for feedback on. The current system is based on a subjective and arbitrary score and we want to do better than that. Please let us know what you’d like to see here:


Reference material

You can choose which reference material you would like to have available to you. Currently this is:

  • Development Matters

  • Birth to Five Matters

  • The EYFS Early Learning Goals

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