Development Matters is the guidance that was commissioned by Government to accompany the Early Years Foundation Stage (EYFS) curriculum when it was implemented in 2008. This document was intended as a reference guide about child development from birth to five years. The idea was that it be distributed to all settings along with the other EYFS documents so that everyone had access to some child development information, which would help them to support, assess and plan for children's progress.
When the EYFS was revised in 2012, Development Matters was updated to reflect the changes to the seven areas of learning and the reduction in the number of early learning goals. However, since then there has been a great deal of controversy over the document.
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