The Foundation Stage Forum was initially set up in early 2003, in response to a perceived lack of support for practitioners and other professionals involved in the Foundation Stage of education.
The forum began with a small team of practitioners involved heavily with foundation stage and early years education. This involvement has taken several forms:
During the last year the forum has grown dramatically, and the original founders have been joined by an amazing team of enthusiastic participants, who lend their advice and experience to the community. That experience encompasses all aspects of Foundation Stage education, from childminding to Reception and Year 1, from practical to theoretical and research. Members with interests in NVQ assessment, Special Educational Needs, Foundation Stage Profiles, and many other areas haunt the forums, and if the founders were ever able to say that they were the main cause of the liveliness of this community, it has been some time since they could make that claim!
It's probably worth pointing out that we are independent of any other organisations. We take no sponsorship, governmental or charitable funding. No external board of directors dictates either the content of the site, or what we can and cannot discuss in the forum.
Involvement to the point of obsession frequently results in skewed perceptions of the world, and a consequence of this for us has been the growing belief that the world of early years education badly needs an online gathering place, where it is possible to find not only information and news relevant to the profession, but where experiences can be shared, frustrations voiced and questions asked, in an open forum dedicated to disseminating good practice for the sake of our children and our world.