Highscope was developed by Dr David Weikart in America, in the early 1960's.

He discovered that children living in deprived neighbourhoods were achieving low scores as a lack of opportunity rather than low intelligence levels. Early intervention was seen as the best way to improve this. In 1962 the Perry Preschool Project was set up. Through debate the staff devised the basic framework of the Highscope curriculum, at its core was active learning & the belief that children learn through their own key experiences, gained from the world around them and their own discoveries. The project also felt that parents played a key role in their children's learning.

Dr. Weikart & his team continued to develop the Highscope approach & in 1970 the Highscope Educational Research Foundation was founded.

The FIVE elements of Highscope learning are:

  1. The quality of adult – child interaction, there is a philosophy of shared control between adult and child.

  2. Highscope has both child-initiated time (plan-do-review) & adult-initiated (small group times) where support can be given to children.

  3. Practitioners are trained in the approach & are able to learn from the children through key experiences.

  4. A high level of parental engagement, through two-way information sharing & sharing of child observation records.

  5. A discipline/behaviour policy, which supports children in rationalising & talking through conflict. The use of encouragement & a problem solving approach to conflict between children is promoted.

Highscope links neatly with the Early Years Foundation Stage (EYFS), a framework for children, from birth to the end of their reception year education.

Highscope practitioners will use the early learning goals within the EYFS alongside the key development indicators & observations & interests of the children, to inform their planning of activities for the children in their care.

Highscope Preschool Curriculum Content

  • Making & expressing choices, plans & decisions

    Solving problems encountered in play.

  • Talking with others about personally meaningful experiences.

    Describing objects, events & relations.

    Having fun with language: listening to stories & poems, making up stories & rhymes.

    Writing in various way: drawing, scribbling & using letter like forms, invented spelling & conventional forms

    Reading in various ways: reading storybooks, signs & symbols, and one's own writing

    Dictating stories

  • Taking care of one's own needs

    Expressing feelings in words

    Building relationships with children & adults

    Creating & experiencing collaborative play

    Dealing with social conflict

  • Moving in nonlocomotor ways (bending, twisting, rocking)

    Moving in locomotorways (running, jumping, hopping)

    Moving with objects

    Expressing creativity in movement

    Describing movement

    Acting upon movement directions

    Feeling & expressing steady beat

    Moving in sequences to a common beat