Foundation Years - Sure Start Children's Centres

Written evidence submitted by the National Children’s Bureau (NCB)

 

1. The National Children’s Bureau (NCB) is a leading research and development charity working to improve the lives of children and young people, especially the most vulnerable. We work with children, for children to reduce the impact of inequalities, by influencing government policy, being the voice for 200,000 front-line professionals, and inspiring practical solutions on a range of social issues including health, education and youth justice, through our extensive research and evidence work. Every year we reach more than 100,000 children and youn g people through our membership scheme, links with voluntary, statutory and private organisations, and the 30 specialist partnership programmes that operate under our charitable status.

For more information visit www.ncb.org.uk

2. We have chosen to focus our inquiry submission on the following 2 themes:

a) How to define and measure good practice in family and parenting support and outreach, including the effectiveness of the Government’s payment by results trials, and what measures of child development and school readiness might be used.

b) How to increase the involvement of families (especially fathers, disadvantaged families, minority ethnic groups and families of children with SEN and disabled children) in their regular activities.

3. NCB recommendations for the Select Committee:

· Children’s Centre staff to undertake initial training [1] and regular CPD in parental and family engagement, particularly around disadvantaged and/or vulnerable families so that they have the skills and confidence to engage with parents and families.

· Children’s Centres to focus early intervention on supporting children’s early learning with a particular focus on literacy, and engaging parents as partners to achieving good outcomes for children.

· Children’s Centres to engage in regular home visits that have a focus on supporting learning and literacy in the home, and aim to build relationships between parents and practitioners.

· Children’s Centres to be informed of children’s attainment in the EYFS profile to support Centres to measure the effectiveness of their early intervention initiatives.

a) How to define and measure good practice in family and parenting support and outreach, including the effectiveness of the Government’s payment by results trials, and what measures of child development and school readiness might be used.

4. The National Children’s Bureau’s Early Childhood Unit has extensive experience in defining and measuring good practice in family and parenting support. Parents, Early Years and Learning (PEAL) originated as a consortium project of the National Children's Bureau (NCB), Coram Family and the London Borough of Camden. The aim of the project was to identify and disseminate existing effective practice in engaging parents, and to develop a core model on which training support for practitioners could be based. The training which began in 2006 continues to be delivered; thousands of practitioners in hundreds of settings have received this training.

5. Practice example and outcomes of effectiveness of PEAL in Sandwell
Sandwell booked two-day sessions of PEAL training for local authority lead practitioners, and cascaded learning from the training to over 400 practitioners within the local authority.  Practitioners attending the course were provided with a work book to complete before attending the course; this included questions to help them reflect on their engagement with parents. Sandwell adapted PEAL’s pre-training reflective questions into quality standards and used them to evaluate and improve support for parents. Success in engaging parents in children’s development has been noted in inspection reports, and improvements in children’s outcomes are becoming apparent. One primary school has seen marked progress in Early Years Foundation Stage Profile assessments.  Following their attendance at PEAL training, 6 practitioners worked with the whole staff team to make changes to aspects of foundation stage practice within the setting. This included setting up play sessions for under 3s, making home visits before entry into nursery (with interpreters provided for children with English as an additional language), creating a welcoming family space in the nursery, and making activity boxes and story sacks for families to borrow.  The percentage of children meeting the expected attainment in the EYFS profile increased from 33% in 2008 to 56% in 2009.

6. Practice example and outcomes of effectiveness of PEAL in Peterborough
PEAL training has been accessed by 66% of private, voluntary and independent (PVI) settings and 33% of maintained nurseries in Peterborough since March 2009. Early Language Lead Practitioners took on the role as named member of staff for parental involvement. A self-evaluation of practice using PEAL materials was used to evaluate priorities for improving parent partnerships.  The early years team also used it to evaluate the impact of PEAL across the city through introducing a RAG ratings system [2] that was divided into several sub-categories, and used to highlight future strategic priorities [3] .  The impact has been seen in Ofsted judgments with 24 out of 25 settings receiving good (64%) or outstanding (32%) in parental partnership and engagement between March 2009 and September 2010.

b) How to increase the involvement of families (especially fathers, disadvantaged families, minority ethnic groups and families of children with SEN and disabled children) in their regular activities.

7. The impact of NCB’s Making It REAL project on parental and family engagement in their children’s learning
The National Children’s Bureau’s Early Childhood Unit has recently completed the third year of its Making it REAL (Raising Early Achievement in Literacy) project. Funded by The Big Lottery Fund the project is based on the REAL approach and ORIM framework developed by Professor Cathy Nutbrown and Professor Peter Hannon at the University of Sheffield. REAL builds on what parents already do at home to help children learn. Friendly relationships are developed between practitioners, parents and children, and practitioners engage in home visits and host fun events that engage children, parents and their extended families in purposeful and imaginative early literacy activities – such as environmental print walks and rides; visits to book shops and libraries, book sharing and story-telling; shopping, cooking, and making recipe books; writing letters and posting messages, and singing and recording nursery rhymes and songs.

8. Making it REAL has been highly successful. 389 children were enrolled on the core project over three years and made real gains across the four strands of literacy, and in general confidence and concentration levels. The figures for reading this year are indicative of this with 73% of children involved in the project sharing books every day, and 99% at least once a week. Moreover, there has been a strong impact on the development of younger siblings; over the course of the three year project 137 additional children have been in regular attendance at home visits, benefiting from activities and their parents increasing engagement.

9. Parents’ confidence in talking to teachers has increased each year, as has the rate of participation in events. 91% of parents now regularly attend events, as a result of practitioners developing more confidence in working with parents, and parents hearing the ‘good news’ about REAL from other parents.

10. Levels of participation in home visits have been consistently very strong, with families continuing activity between home visits. Over the course of the three years, 479 parents, carers and grandparents regularly took part in home visits (89 of these were fathers taking either a lead or joint role), and many other members of the extended family were at some home visits and events. Parents and practitioners both consistently cited home visiting as the most important factor in establishing good relationships, trust and the consequent successful outcomes for children. Families showed a real desire to engage, persevere and help their children’s education. This is a remarkable contrast to other family literacy interventions.

11. As a result of participating in the Making it REAL project, parents have developed their skills in:

· communicating and demonstrating increased knowledge in how to support their children’s learning

· providing more learning opportunities for their children and building these into daily life

· playing and interacting with their children

· recognising their children’s progress and providing literacy models.

12. 59 teachers and practitioners have gained skills, knowledge and confidence in outreach work and working with families. They have developed a passionate commitment to working in a different way, and are determined to sustain the approach in their own individual practice, and influence their centres, schools and authorities to maintain the programme and support the early home learning environment in the most effective way.

December 2012