Tower Hamlets was one of 41 local authorities allocated additional funding by the DCSF in 2007-08 to 'establish innovative, effective and sustainable ways of securing parental involvement in children's early learning (particularly early communications, language and literacy)'. It turned out to be one of the most rewarding pieces of work that I've ever been involved with!
The team doing the work were all experienced nursery nurses, who proved themselves to be innovative and effective, and brought a huge enthusiasm to the project. As one member, seconded from a local nursery school, said, 'Working with parents has always been a part of my job, but I've never had the chance to see the difference it can make when I can really focus on supporting them to help their children.'
Building on experience
Working closely with parents and families has been a priority in the borough for years. We want to ensure they have access to the support they need, when they need it, so that children can benefit from confident, positive parenting from birth through to their teenage years. However, we know there are significant obstacles for some groups.
These obstacles include a variable understanding among parents about how they can support their young children's development and learning, together with a need to provide them with the confidence and skills to work in partnership with early years practitioners and other professionals to improve outcomes for their children.
So, we looked at how, with this additional funding, we could build on work already going on in children's centres, early years settings and schools to help remove some of those obstacles.
We focused on improving boys' emotional and language development across the curriculum, both within the setting and in their day-to-day lives, because boys do significantly less well than girls in reading and writing as they move into Key Stage 1. Our Foundation Stage Profile data shows that boys' poor language skills and emotional development are key factors in this.
How did we do it?
Once we had agreed this focus, the decision to promote active and outdoor learning as a means to improving boys' language development, self-esteem and well-being was obvious, given all the research we have into how most boys learn best.
From the beginning of the project, it was clear we had got that right! We did not do anything that you wouldn't expect to see happening in all good early years settings. We coined the title 'There's a story behind it' to make just that point. This wasn't a project that did new things. It was the 'why' and 'what difference did it make' that were the interesting story.
The team drew on the best of early years practice - and their own experience as successful early years educators - but in a targeted way, working with specific boys and their families. And there were some extraordinary stories behind those everyday activities.
Boys who had been identified as non-talkers came to life as they became super-heroes and created super-hero 'stories' as they ran around outside. Suddenly, they had something they wanted and needed to talk about.
Practitioners saw a rapid development in the boys' language, their confidence and their ability to form relationships with both staff and other children. We used the Leuven scales and recorded real gains in the targeted boys' well-being and involvement - a real measure of deep-level learning.
Involving parents
But the change we most wanted to make was in what parents did with their children. Parents not only joined in the super-hero play in the setting but continued it at home, playing and talking with their children and coming back full of enthusiasm for the way in which their boys had responded.
For some parents, particularly working parents, time was the biggest issue - time to spend with their children and time to get into the setting and talk to practitioners.
The team was creative, meeting parents at 7.30am, walking to the nursery with them, visiting in the evenings and at weekends, and using the time to talk about local places they could visit with their children or how washing-up or a trip to the shop could provide a good opportunity for conversation.
Photographs formed a good bridge. The boys took home a book with photos of what they had done in the setting, along with the resources to do the same at home. They took home disposable cameras and brought back photos of what they had done with important family members.
For parents, the change was a better understanding of how children learn in different ways, and that most boys learn better when they are active, particularly outside, where they can move around in large spaces.
Some settings found that children often arrived in unsuitable clothes for being out in the cold or rain, and parents were concerned they would catch cold if out in wet weather. Certainly, many parents did not understand the learning that was happening outside, and wanted their children 'taught' at a table, with pencil and paper to hand.
Workshops were very effective in some cases, but often the change came in much smaller groups or individually. We called our team 'early learning mentors' (ELMs) to describe not just the focus of their work but also the way they would work, as role models alongside practitioners and parents. Many of their successes were on a small scale, but they were working with those parents who often fail to attend sessions organised by the setting or take up opportunities offered by children's centres - because they feel that other people's two-year-olds behave better than theirs, or they are nervous of 'officialdom'.
Perhaps the biggest change for parents involved in the project was their growing realisation of how important they were to their children's early learning and an increasing confidence in their ability to support their language and emotional development.
As Jill Jeyes, the senior ELM, said, 'Parents work so hard to do the best for their children. We need to help them understand the importance of what they do and give them some ideas that fit in with their day-to-day lives and don't cost lots of money.'
What now?
In the DVD made to celebrate the impact of the project and for future training, Kevan Collins, director of children's services, said, 'We now need to embed this practice in the fabric of how the authority works with children and families'.
The work is continuing with local authority funding, and we are currently recruiting for permanent posts. The ELMs will continue to be based in our children's centres to help consolidate their role as the hubs of our provision for young children and their families.
We have made some changes to reflect the lessons we learned, including a meeting with the manager or headteacher before work begins and a training session for the whole staff. We will continue to monitor children's progress and expect to continue to see gains. And a very practical legacy is the amount of wet weather gear now out there in our settings and a higher level of challenge if the outdoor area isn't being fully used, whatever the weather!
For me, the key to future success lies in following through the clear lesson that we learned about needing to treat parents as unique, in the same way that the Early Years Foundation Stage requires us to work with children.
If what we offer a parent is not working, we need to think again and again. we owe it to our youngest children to make sure their 'first and most enduring educators' have the knowledge and confidence to take on this critical role. It is the only way we will make sure all children achieve their full potential.
Lesley Staggs works as an independent early childhood consultant. For the last two years she has been a Children's Centres Strategic Adviser with the London Borough of Tower Hamlets and acted as adviser to their PPEL project.
LINKS TO EYFS GUIDANCE
- PR 1.2 Parents as Partners
- L&D 1.1 Play and Exploration
- L&D 1.2 Active Learning
