I have long been aware of the lack of support experienced by the many early childhood centres in developing their own ‘local’ curriculum. I want to describe what a ‘local’ curriculum should look like, in particular, how an assessment/evaluation system should be established to make an integral part of the curriculum.
I work as an Advisory Teacher for a local authority and part of my role is to support settings to plan and organise the teaching and learning curriculum. Although the national curriculum for the key stage (EYFS) is adhered to, the setting adapts the curriculum but at the same time ensures all important elements are included to enable children to achieve best possible outcomes.
Thank you Susan for your answer. In your knowledge, do all settings develop their own curriculum or do some settings simply use others' for whatever reason? I am in the process of designing a study, and my assumption is that not all settings have the capacity to develop the local curriculum, and that is why Advisory Teacher like you is hugely important.
To my knowledge, most ECE centers concerned about meeting national standards will not develop their own curriculum, but rather will use one that has promised to be "aligned" or "cross-walked" to all the national standards. The most commonly used one in ECE that I know of is the High/Scope Curriculum which came out of the Perry Preschool project. If they don't use a curriculum that has an associated assessment, the next most common solution (in my experience) is to use a stand-alone assessment (not a curriculum), and create the curriculum around that. But the pre-existing assessment still serves as an "intermediary" between the national standards and the local curriculum. I agree with your assessment that regardless of the starting point, most ECE settings need capacity-building around curriculum - whether it is a local "implementation" of a pre-existing curriculum or a home-grown one.