This comprehensive Development Matters course supports early years practitioners, leaders, and childminders to understand and apply the guidance confidently in everyday practice.
Designed for self-paced, stop-and-start learning, the course follows Development Matters chronologically, breaking the guidance into manageable units.
It focuses on professional judgement, safeguarding culture, inclusion, and child-centred decision-making, moving practitioners away from checklist thinking towards meaningful observation, curriculum intent, and responsive teaching.
Module overview:This module builds clarity and confidence by helping practitioners understand what Development Matters is, how it should be used, and how it supports professional judgement without increasing workload or pressure.
Module 1.1 – Introduction to Development MattersExplains the course pathway and introduces what Development Matters is and is not.
Module 1.2 – Who Development Matters Is For
Explores how Development Matters applies across roles and settings, reinforcing that all early years professionals are trusted to use it confidently and appropriately.
Module 1.3 – Development Matters, the EYFS, and the Curriculum
Supports practitioners to understand how Development Matters complements the EYFS and informs intentional curriculum thinking beyond activities and timetables.
Module 1.4 – Development Is Not Linear
Develops understanding of broad ages and stages, helping practitioners recognise uneven development and prioritise depth of learning over pace.
Module 1.5 – Assessment Without Overload
Explains how observation and professional judgement support purposeful, proportionate assessment without unnecessary paperwork or data collection.
Module 1.6 – Working With Families and Professionals
Highlights the importance of partnership with parents and professionals to support children’s learning, development, and early intervention.
Module overview:This module translates Development Matters guidance into everyday early years practice, focusing on inclusion, relationships, curriculum intent, pedagogy, assessment, and partnership with parents.
Module 2.1 – The Best for Every ChildExplores inclusive ambition, early disadvantage, and SEND identification, helping practitioners act early and hold high expectations for every child.
Module 2.2 – High-Quality Care and Relationships
Examines how emotional security, responsive care, and consistent relationships create the foundation for learning and wellbeing.
Module 2.3 – The Curriculum: What Children Learn
Supports intentional curriculum thinking by clarifying what children should learn over time, beyond activities and timetables.
Module 2.4 – Pedagogy: How Children Learn
Builds confidence in balancing play, guided learning, and teaching through effective environments and professional judgement.
Module 2.5 – Assessment, Self-Regulation, and Parents
Brings together purposeful assessment, support for self-regulation, and partnership with parents to enable reflective, whole-child practice.
Module overview:This module shifts the focus from what children learn to how they learn, helping practitioners understand learning behaviours, motivation, and thinking through the Characteristics of Effective Teaching and Learning.
Module 3.1 – Understanding the Characteristics of Effective Teaching and LearningIntroduces the three Characteristics of Effective Teaching and Learning and explains how they support a deeper, more accurate understanding of children’s progress beyond age bands and outcomes.
Module 3.2 – Playing and Exploring
Explores how curiosity, choice, repetition, and exploration support children’s understanding and learning across all areas through play.
Module 3.3 – Active Learning
Focuses on motivation, persistence, routines, and emotional regulation, helping practitioners recognise behaviour as communication about learning.
Module 3.4 – Creating and Thinking Critically
Examines how children develop ideas, make connections, and solve problems through pretend play, reflection, and sustained concentration.
Module overview:This module supports practitioners to apply Development Matters confidently across each Area of Learning, using the guidance to inform thinking and practice without turning it into a checklist or coverage exercise.
Module 4.1 – Orientation: How the Areas of Learning Are Laid OutExplains how the Areas of Learning are structured and intended to be used, helping practitioners move away from target-driven use towards informed professional thinking.
Module 4.2 – Understanding the Layout of the Areas of Learning
Breaks down age ranges, developmental statements, examples, and observation checkpoints, showing how these elements work together to support observation and response.
Module 4.3 – Supporting Communication and Language Development
Explores how communication and language underpin all learning, focusing on interaction, language-rich environments, sustained shared thinking, and English as an Additional Language.
Module 4.4 – Supporting Personal, Social and Emotional Development
Examines emotional security, self-regulation, and relationships, supporting practitioners to understand behaviour as communication and development as relational.
Module 4.5 – Supporting Physical Development
Supports understanding of gross motor development, fine motor development, movement, independence, and care through everyday routines and meaningful physical experiences.
Module 4.6 – Supporting Literacy Development
Explores literacy as developing through comprehension, storytelling, phonics in context, and mark-making, without rushing formal reading or writing outcomes.
Module 4.7 – Supporting Mathematics Development
Focuses on building number sense, recognising patterns, and embedding mathematics naturally within play and daily routines.
Module 4.8 – Supporting Understanding the World
Supports practitioners to notice and develop children’s understanding of time, people, culture, communities, and the natural world through real-life experiences.
Module 4.9 – Supporting Expressive Arts and Design
Explores how creativity develops through exploration, imagination, and open-ended materials, with assessment focused on process, engagement, and confidence.
Brings safeguarding, inclusion, assessment, and professional judgement together, supporting practitioners to use Development Matters with confidence, clarity, and purpose.
