Inclusive enabling environments

"Babies, toddlers and young children thrive best in an environment that supports and promotes their active learning and development." (EYFS Effective Practice: The Learning Environment, 2007).

With such an important role in supporting children's learning and development, it is crucial that the environment is accessible to all children.

There are lots of ways in which the early years environment can be developed to be inclusive, so that it meets the needs of a wide range of children.

For this purpose, you can think about environment in a number of ways. For example:

Think about the:

  • available space (indoors and out)
  • layout of the space (indoors and out)
  • organisation of furniture
  • organisation of resources

Think about the:

  • level of natural light
  • artificial light
  • shadows
  • colour of the walls
  • displays
  • labelling/signage
  • visual clutter

Think about the:

  • sound of the room (reverberation)
  • levels of background noise from inside and outside
  • sounds of toys and resources

Think about the:

  • smell of the space (indoors and out)
  • smells at snack and lunch times

Equality Act, 2010

The 'reasonable adjustments' duty applies to all early years settings and requires that settings take reasonable steps to avoid disadvantage to disabled children.

The duty is anticipatory and continuing, meaning that settings are required to think ahead about the adjustments they may need to make and keep their planning and implementation under review.

"The essence of reasonable adjustments is that they anticipate where disadvantage may arise and are put in place to prevent that happening."

(Disabled Children and the Equality Act 2010: What Early Years providers need to know and do: Council for Disabled Children, 2023)

Environmental audits

You can reflect on the inclusiveness of your environment by completing an environmental audit. Where you highlight areas for further development, you can use this to inform your setting development, if you have one, or to devise an access action plan.

Access action plans

An access action plan can help you to organise and plan the actions you need to take to make adjustments to your "provisions, criteria or practices" and "physical features*" (* the duty to alter physical features does not apply to schools),

You can find examples of access action plans in the Early Years SENCO Handbook: