SOS - Help deciphering nursery feedback!!

[hulahoopqueen]

Hi, I have a DSS age 3. He's in nursery 2 full days per week. Nursery aren't fantastic with day to day communication, but we get feedback every so often in the form of a filled out sheet. Problem is, I have no idea what it means!
If anyone can shed light as to what system it might be that they're using that would be amazing!
DSS's mum isn't bothered to find out, and DH (who does all nursery pick up and drop offs) keeps forgetting to ask 🙃

They're the EYFS Early Learning Goals. I would presume that where a raget has a number next to it then it means that your DSS has met a target relating to that area. I'm no good with links but if you do some googling you should be able to find some PDFs outlining the areas.

Be aware that it's all changing from September though so don't invest too much time memorising it all!!

Target not raget...

I would suspect that these are references to observations they have made linked to each aspect of the Early learning Goals. Which is useless unless they also give you access to the observations. Do you have an app that you use to communicate with school?

I don’t know what the numbers mean - I assume certain skills/targets are assigned numbers, but this EYFS guide will give you an idea of the categories that they are looking at (first column)
www.foundationyears.org.uk/files/2012/03/Development-Matters-FINAL-PRINT-AMENDED.pdf

Is it how many obsetrvations are linked? The characteristics have a number too.

Tbh that's a pretty rubbish EYFS report to give to a parent! It's very unhelpful....

In my experience, ignore. I got really stressed because DS wasn't meeting some of the EYFS milestones. Except when I looked into it further, he absolutely was. Nursery staff just hadn't seen it. For example they told me he "had just taken his first few steps" when he was running all over the place and wasn't saying many words when he was coming out with all sorts at home. At first I was worried but then realised I know my child better than them and it won't be going on his CV!

This is really rubbish of them, but I think the numbers in the first section relate to the months age band that the child is 'working within' eg 16-26, 22-36. The coel are characteristics of effective learning and are scored 1-3, low to high, so a 3 is good/ age expected. They should have given you an explanation along with the report

I've just realised the coel numbers go higher than 8. I was looking at it as how I would have used it at the end of reception, so not sure for a 3 year old. Can you ring the nursery next ask for clarification? It's a waste of their time filling it in if it makes no sense to the parents.

They should have provided an explanation. EYFS = Early years & foundation stage, which covers children in nurseries/preschool & reception year.
The letter abbreviations are for the categories in which development is measured. Off the top of my head I can't tell you them all but there will be 'personal, social & emotional', 'literacy', 'mathematics', one on physical development and so forth.
The numbers relate to months, so 24 = an average 2 year old, etc.

the numbers don't make sense for it to be used like that, it's an 8 in people and communitoes and a 41 in moving and handling. Thats a major gap. And some of the categories haven't been graded at all, theres nothing for maths, literacy or psed, and psed is a prime.

As pp said, could the numbers be relating to observations? So for example where 2 have number 24 against them, there could be one observation (24) where the child was speaking about their personal care that would cover both goals, so something like 'dc said to staff member 'we wash our hands when they are dirty'' (Sorry if that's wrong, I'm in Early years but not front line staff).

For DC1 end of nursery report we got given pages of observations that proved they had met the early learning goals. The observations would frequently cover 2 or more goals.

Mum or dad needs to speak to them. I’m a practitioner and I’ve never seen a report like that. How can anyone decipher it with no frame of reference?

Thank you all for your help! I think I will have to speak to them as it's just making no sense to me!
The numbers in the EYFS corresponding to months old makes sense, but then I'm not sure how he his "people and communities" awareness can be that of an 8-month old 🤨
Thanks again!

I'm not certain what they've done with this either. Definitely ask.

Might be different but where I work when we link a ob to the statement we write a number next to the statement and on the observation sheet so can see what observation links in where. Might be different here though.

There is the EYFS framework which covers ratios health and safety, policies, day to day running, meal times etc all of the legal requirements to keep children safe and learning. This is statutory and legal. Then there is the development matters, this covers all areas of development and is guidance only. Development matters (DM) is split into age categories and areas of development. Prime areas are
Communication and language
(Understanding Language, speaking, listening and attention)

Physical Development
(moving and handling, health and self care)

Personal, social and emotional development
(managing feelings and behaviour, making relationships, self awareness and confidence)

These are probably the most important areas

Then there are the specific areas
Literacy (reading and writing)
Maths (numbers, shape space and measure)

Understanding the world (people and communities, the world, technology)

Expressive art and design (exploring materials and media, imaginitive play)
I have put sub categories in each area in brackets) as if that wasn't enough then each category has an age bracket with statements of development. This is only a guide and all children develop at different rates but these are as follows
0-11 Months
8-20 M
16-24 M
22-36 M
30-50 M
40-60M
Early learning goals
The EYFS framework and development matters is for education, child care and child minders and is for children up to the end of reception all of this is called foundation stage.
I would say that report is not detailed enough to give a clear explanation of development and I can understand why you are confused. I would ask for more clarification. My immediate thought is it could be observation in those areas but I don't understand why there are gaps. I hope this makes sense and is clear.

And COEL is characteristics of effective learning. This tells a practitioner how effective the learning was for that exercise/activity giving an overview of what makes the child tick and how best to develop activities to engage and further develop learning.
And as of September 2021 there is new development matters being released. So it's going to be even more confusing

I would guess that the numbers correlate to an observation that they made so somewhere they'll have a list of what they observed and number 8 would be about the people and communities section