Overview of the Early Years curriculum

Design principles

The Cambridge Early Years curriculum has been developed by a team of early years and subject experts who have brought together best practice from early years education across the world. Common characteristics of education systems in countries which are continuously top or nearly top in performance in international surveys are:

The Cambridge Early Years curriculum provides a solid foundation for effective early years education. However, it is also important to ensure coherence between curriculum, pedagogy and assessment:

Developmental contexts

Effective early years teaching and learning requires a holistic approach that focuses on the whole child and connects their development with the world and people around them. The Cambridge Early Years curriculum reflects four contexts of development that are equally important and interconnected:

Curriculum areas

The Cambridge Early Years curriculum contains a comprehensive set of learning statements that provide a structure for teaching and learning in three stages: EY1 (for ages 3-4), EY2 (for ages 4-5) and EY3 (for ages 5-6). The learning statements are based on internationally established high-level developmental milestones for children aged 3 to 6.

The learning statements reflect well-established developmental milestones for children’s learning and development from ages 3 to 6. Milestones can never be an accurate indicator of what every child can do. Each child has their own developmental pathway which is shaped by many factors, including their home background and experiences. You should consider each child’s current level of learning and development when planning how they will reach the next stage. However, although children develop at different rates, some milestones are much harder to achieve later in their learning experience. Monitoring against the learning statements in the Cambridge Early Years Curriculum will help you to optimise each child’s progress and ensure that they have the best possible foundations for further learning.

The curriculum consists of six curriculum areas:

Between them, these curriculum areas comprehensively cover the four developmental contexts. Each curriculum area relates to all of the developmental contexts, for example, the ways in which the Communication, Language and Literacy curriculum area links to the developmental contexts include: 

• physical development – fine motor skill development supports pencil grip in literacy
• cognitive development – verbal communication of ideas helps children to develop their ideas further
• language and communication developmental context – a clear direct link
• social and emotional development – communication is crucial to children’s social interactions

All of the curriculum areas are equally important and interconnected, so you should avoid prioritising some curriculum areas, or parts of curriculum areas, over others. Although the curriculum areas are presented separately in the curriculum document, it is important your teaching and learning takes place in a holistic way, so children can apply and make connections between knowledge, understanding and skills in different curriculum areas. Using themes which span several weeks is one way of enabling a holistic approach (see Planning).

Progression in learning 

The Cambridge Early Years Curriculum is a planning tool. The learning statements within it are designed to promote progression in learning and development from EY1 to EY3 and onwards into Primary. It enables development of knowledge, understanding and skills through a spiral approach: by revisiting and engaging with topics and skills at deeper levels and in different contexts across the stages. 

As well as considering the progression of children’s learning and development across early years, it is also important to consider children’s transition into EY1 and on to primary school. 

Transition to EY1

Each of your children will have had different experiences before joining EY1 – some may have had no experience of learning beyond the home and others may have already spent time in another learning environment. You should take a child-centred approach to smoothing transition into EY1 which responds to individual needs. The following guidance will help with this:

• Making links with the home and wider community
• An inclusive learning environment
• A multilingual approach
• Differentiation

In addition, Transition to EY1 provides key developmental milestones and ideas for evaluation activities to support you in evaluating each child’s competencies as they enter EY1, and in planning an appropriate learning pathway for them.    

Transition to Primary

Children who are appropriately equipped to make a successful transition from early years to primary are not only more likely to adapt quickly to primary school life (e.g. processes, teaching and learning methods and rules) but are also more likely to progress well academically.

The Cambridge Early Years Curriculum is designed to provide children with knowledge, understanding and skills linked to well-established milestones for physical, cognitive, language and communication, and social and emotional development. It provides a solid foundation for any primary school curriculum.

Cambridge Early Years transitions to Cambridge Primary Stage 2 of the Cambridge Pathway. It includes the Cambridge Primary Stage 1 concepts, but supports more informal, play-based teaching and learning approaches and holistic planning, which may be more suitable for your early years setting. If your school uses the Cambridge Primary Programme, you can choose to use either EY3 of Cambridge Early Years or Stage 1 of Cambridge Primary for ages 5 to 6. Both prepare children well for Cambridge Primary Stage 2. For more information, see Transition to Cambridge Primary.