Flying starts in reception classes at primary school are what teachers, parents, and sometimes the starters themselves earnestly desire, but don't always get. Now a clever, economical scheme operating at a school in York shows how a few simple measures can sharply reduce the number of children feeling unready to brave the school gates.
The originator of the scheme is ex-head teacher Sue Robinson and it is funded by the Gatsby Charitable Foundation. When she ran a school, Sue observed how speech and language problems prevented children from accessing the curriculum immediately. She recalls, 'I wanted an active early intervention programme. For example, I saw how early assessment by a speech therapist made a big difference for some children.'
Poppleton Road Primary in York, a school with a socially-mixed catchment area, was chosen for the experiment, which focused on last September's intake and continues with this year's new pupils.
The project started with parents and children attending a meeting at the school, at which the under-fives explored the contents of a specially prepared, brightly-coloured pre-school bag.
In the bag were a puppet with a tongue (which helps to get the right mouth positions for speaking), a mirror (useful when the child is asked to draw a self-image), an outsize pencil (good for getting the right grip), magnetic numbers for the fridge, ten coloured building blocks, a jigsaw, a leaflet for parents about preparing their child for school, and some popular stories to read to children, including Pass the Jam, Jim by Kaye Umansky (Red Fox, Pounds 4.99).
Then in June last year parents and child had a home visit from the prospective class teacher, accompanied by either an educational psychologist or a speech therapist. These two teams saw nearly 60 children over several days, breaking the ice each time by presenting the child with the pre-school bag, now with his or her name on it, for keeping. The same procedure is happening now with this year's intake.
Louise Bodkin, who is a co-ordinator of speech and language therapy for the local NHS Trust, accompanied one of the class teachers and saw half of this year's intake. 'It's wonderful to take the school to the child's home.
Parents and children normally come to our clinic when something's wrong, so it was good to play a supportive, positive, preventive role,' she says.
Louise would usually play with the pupil-to-be, using the contents of the bag, while the teacher talked to the parent. 'Some assessment was going on, but it was a very informal occasion,' Louise says. 'Of course, there are costs - supply time for the teachers, and the sessions by speech and occupational therapists have to be bought from the local NHS Trust.'
Penny Taylor, the educational psychologist on the team, explains how the bag's contents were used. 'For example, we put the bricks on the floor and asked the child to build a tower, then make a train out of them. We asked them to recognise colours and we got them to use the big pencil to draw a cross, a circle and a triangle. Before we left the homes we were able to suggest ways that parents could help the child's development in the months before school began. Then at the beginning of term we can check what progress has been made.'
The parents generally find the scheme helpful. Val Atkinson's son Matthew was introduced to the schoolbag last June. 'It was a very relaxed way to have the first contact with Matthew's teacher at home. And he gleaned a lot from what was in the bag - in fact he learned number recognition in the ten weeks between June and last September when he started school,' she says. 'I felt it really brought him on; he settled in superbly.'
The head of Poppleton Road, Sue Eland, is delighted with the way things have gone. She says, 'By the beginning of the autumn term we have a very clear starting picture and we can address the individual needs of each child straight away. I feel that the project helps to establish very important home-school partnerships, and that it is a good way of involving the parents and carers in their children's education.'
Sue Robinson says she feels that the project has worked well. 'In the first year we identified 11 children as needing speech and language support, and they got it. Parents generally were delighted with the progress made by their children in the ten weeks of using the schoolbag before their school careers began. And the idea of a multi-agency steering-group - combining the LEA, school and an NHS Trust - has generated great enthusiasm among those involved.
'We have already presented the project to LEAs and to those working in Education Action Zones. Middlesbrough and Lewisham EAZs, we know, are going to take up the idea, and others are likely to follow. We want the scheme to be widely adopted - not just stop when the funding ends in York at the end of this year. We have contributed the research time to provide a model; now we want to establish partnerships that will make it a sustainable part of school practice.'
To make the scheme even more effective and more widely disseminated, the Gatsby foundation is now producing a two-section CD-Rom, one part to be used by parents and children at home, the other by teachers in school.
It's hard to see why within a decade the pre-school bag, and all the backup that goes with it, shouldn't be delivering flying starts in reception classes in every primary school.
