In this article, expert early years practitioners Dixie-Louise Dexter and Nicola Middleton share the six principles of how their school placed the early years at the heart of its curriculum development process.
Designing a coherent curriculum for the early years brings unique challenges. A curriculum needs to progress clearly and logically, and be sequenced to help children acquire skills, knowledge and understanding so that they learn effectively over time.
That means leaders must balance statutory requirements, evidence-informed principles and the diverse needs of their pupils, all while making sure learning is meaningful and connected with a clear journey. Creating this coherence calls for a deep understanding of child development, strong collaboration among staff and a clear vision that links the early years with later learning.
At Ashby Hill Top Primary School, we wanted to build a curriculum that prepared our learners for life in the modern world. It needed to equip them not just with academic knowledge, but with the skills, understanding and values that would help them thrive.
Like many schools, we re-evaluated our curriculum in light of the research referenced in the 2019 Ofsted review. It gave a stronger focus to knowledge progression and cognitive science – particularly how children learn best and how working memory and retrieval influence long-term understanding.
From the outset, we recognised the importance of the early years foundation stage (EYFS). It lays the foundations for all future learning, so our aim was to design a curriculum that began from a child’s very first day at school and built coherently right through to their final day in the primary phase.
Six core principles guided every decision we made.
This case study is part of a series exploring the four overarching principles of the early years foundation stage: the unique child, positive relationships, enabling environments, and learning and development.
Six principles for creating a coherent early years curriculum
1. Listen to the evidence
As a school committed to staying informed by educational research, we started by exploring the latest thinking on how children learn. School leaders engaged deeply with research on cognitive load, retrieval practice and child development – elements that became central to our design.
In the EYFS, we drew on both statutory and non-statutory guidance, alongside widely recognised evidence. We shared a collective understanding that young children learn best through play, high-quality interactions and time to practise, revisit and consolidate their learning. By balancing what our children needed to learn with research-informed principles, we ensured that teaching was both purposeful and effective.
2. Think bottom up, not top down
Our research made clear that curriculum progression should build logically from the child’s starting point. Rather than beginning with the end of Year 6 outcomes and working backwards, we began with where children start in the EYFS and built incremental steps of knowledge and skill from there.
We asked:
- What foundational skills must children master before more complex ones are introduced?
- What prior knowledge is needed to enable higher-level understanding later on?
While the EYFS is a distinct phase, it is also the bridge to the national curriculum. We invested time for our EYFS team and senior leaders to design an early curriculum that would establish strong foundations for lifelong learning. This provided clear starting points and logical building blocks for every subject across the school, ensuring a sequential learning journey for every child.
3. Design a curriculum that works for every child
As a whole staff team, we reflected on our school’s unique demographic. The life experiences, cultural backgrounds and local environment of our children shape their starting points for learning.
The children in our school are largely white British, so we asked ourselves:
- How are we preparing our children to be respectful and successful citizens in a multicultural world?
- How many have experienced art galleries or know the work of famous artists?
- How can we use our local area to nurture pride in our town and understanding of its geography and history?
In the EYFS, this translated into a curriculum that recognised children’s lives and interests while introducing them to new ideas and perspectives beyond their immediate experiences. Each year, we reflect on our cohort’s starting points to ensure our curriculum remains relevant and balanced – offering both adult-guided and child-initiated learning experiences with clear, purposeful intentions.
4. Put child development at the core
An understanding of child development underpinned every aspect of our design. This ensured learning was developmentally appropriate – not only in content but in delivery.
We wanted children to experience a range of learning opportunities that promoted thinking, creativity and problem-solving. We embedded the characteristics of effective teaching and learning from the EYFS right through to Year 6. Eleven-year-olds, just like five-year-olds, learn best when they are curious, active and engaged in making connections.
Designing our EYFS curriculum with child development as its foundation meant it was rooted in the child, not just the content. Rather than simply planning around themes or end goals, we sequenced learning to reflect how children actually grow, think and make sense of the world.
5. Build links for deeper understanding
Children learn effectively through stories and narrative – pathways that help them connect new knowledge with what they already know. By intentionally building links across subjects and year groups, we support both retrieval and the integration of ideas.
Topic-based planning allowed for cross-curricular connections – for example, linking history with geography to build a broader understanding of time, place and change. Within each subject, we carefully sequenced skills and knowledge to ensure they developed year on year and paid attention to when concepts should be introduced and what prior learning they depended upon.
We also identified key themes to thread throughout the curriculum, acting as the backbone of core knowledge. For example, the theme of legacy appears in history, PSHE and science, allowing children to revisit and deepen their understanding over time.
Similarly, concepts are revisited in new contexts: learning the lifecycle of a sunflower in the EYFS reappears in Key Stage 1 art when studying Van Gogh’s Sunflowers, and again in Year 3 science when exploring plant biology. This purposeful repetition strengthens understanding and builds long-term memory.
6. Grow staff knowledge of the whole journey – starting in the EYFS
For a curriculum to be truly coherent, every teacher needs a working knowledge of the whole journey – what comes before and what follows after their own year group. Without that understanding, opportunities for meaningful connections can be missed.
To achieve this, we designed our entire curriculum collaboratively as a whole staff team. Each teacher contributed their expertise in both their year group and subject area, ensuring the curriculum met the needs of every learner.
We also recognised the importance of subject leaders having a strong understanding of the EYFS. Every subject leader was given dedicated time in the early years classrooms to see their subject in action – to observe how knowledge and skills are introduced, explored and assessed.
This first-hand experience enabled staff to appreciate how each subject begins in the EYFS and how early learning connects to later outcomes. The result was a shared understanding across the school that the EYFS is not a standalone phase but the starting point of the curriculum, which drives progression and coherence in every subject.
How this makes a difference
Through this process, our teaching and learning have become more consistent and connected across the school. Teachers now share a common understanding of core knowledge, revisit and extend vocabulary with intent, and make purposeful links between prior and new learning.
Children’s skills and knowledge are built up in a sequence that supports their success, allowing learning to deepen over time. With the EYFS at the starting point, our curriculum ensures that every child’s educational journey is coherent, meaningful and built to last.
