The Early Years Foundation Stage requires practitioners to keep children safe from harm while at the same time encouraging them to be active learners. This inevitably involves taking risks.
While some practitioners struggle with the dilemma of knowing when to let children have freedom and when to protect them, experienced early years team leaders say the key is to involve the children in assessing risks while helping staff develop the skills to know when and how to intervene effectively and swiftly.
'It is not a question of just keeping children safe,' says Shelly Newstead, managing director of consultancy Common Threads and author of The Busker's Guide to Risk. 'If you just keep children safe they will never do anything. Life is full of risks and children have to learn how to take risks.'
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