But a challenge for early years will be to deliver more for children and families within ever-shrinking budgets.
Traditionally, staff in childcare settings have focused their attention on the children in their care rather than on children and their parents generally. The review of the EYFS is a golden opportunity to make sure that engaging with parents is expanded from just a box-ticking exercise and that the sector makes best use of all the strategies at its disposal, from involving families in policy-making to enabling parents to learn English and ICT skills.
In collaboration with the Campaign for Learning, we are bringing out a new study at the end of 2010 into the most effective ways for practitioners to help families give their child the best start in early home learning. The research will generate examples of best practice that can be shared more widely.
Early findings suggest that the relationship with parents is undervalued in some centres, with parents not even regularly invited into the nursery when they pick up their children. Despite the limitations of EYFS, the study suggests that without a structural basis for engaging with parents, it is far less likely to happen.
The research aims to be grounded in parents' everyday experience, and interviews with parents have already revealed that some of them feel under great pressure to ensure their child's success in learning right through to higher education and employment. They will need help in this because of the increasing de-mands on their lives - unemployment, family separation and the impact of the recession. It will be even more important that practitioners step in to support families at the earliest stage so that they can do the best for their children.
The project, 'Provider influence on the home learning environment', is finding out more about the ways of working parents; strategies that encourage learning; and practitioners' capacity to provide the support parents need for home learning.
- Anne Page, policy and public education manager, Family and Parenting Institute.
