The Children’s Partnership
Strategic Partnership for Early Years
and Childcare
Sue Robb
Head of Early Years, 4Children
The Children’s Partnership – DfE’s
strategic partner
• Adoption and Children in Care – NCB and
Barnardos
• Early Years and Childcare - 4 Children
– Families – Families and Childcare Trust
– Safeguarding - NSPCC
More Affordable Childcare
Building on from “ More Great Childcare”
Triangulation of –
QUALITY
AFFORDABILITY
FLEXIBILTY
What does quality, flexibility, affordability
mean to you
Statutory Assessments
The EYFS requires early years practitioners to review
children’s progress and share a summary with parents
at two points:
• In the prime areas between the ages of 24 and 36
months (the Progress Check at Age 2)
• Integrated review - 2015
• At the end of the EYFS (the EYFS Profile).
• Consultation on Primary Assessment and
Accountability
The Integrated Review:
Update on progress
Recap on the Integrated Review
• July 2011 - DfE and DH jointly
published “Supporting Families in
the Foundation Years”
• It includes the commitment for
DH/DfE to explore integrating
health and education reviews for
children aged 2 to 2 ½ by 2015
Background: Why an integrated review?
• Early intervention is a key focus for the Government
• Age 2 – 2 ½ is a crucial stage – problems with speech,
behaviour etc. become visible, yet there is time to make a
real difference
• Currently the two reviews can be very different – but
parents need a whole picture of the child
• There can be confusion and duplication between the
health and education systems for 2 year olds
The Context
• DfE policies mean there will be more 2 year olds in early
education (free places for most disadvantaged 40%) and
they could take advantage of an integrated review
• Increase in Health Visitors will mean integrated review
can be provided universally
• Commitment to a public health outcome measure at 2
– 2 ½ - which will be measured during/as part of the
integrated review
• Report of Information Sharing Task and Finish Group
due shortly
The Integrated Review Development Group
The Integrated Review Development Group
(IRDG) includes:
health and education experts
five Development Sites (a subset of the
Health Visitor EIS sites)
The IRDG has been in place since autumn
2011 and has been considering the complex
issues around integration
Working groups reported in July 2012, and a
draft resource pack has been developed.
Timetable
JULDEC
2012
Develop content,
Testing prep
Testing
Consultation
Develop elearning
modules,
Comms, Training
Implementation
JANJUN
2013
JULDEC
2013
JANJUN
2014
JULDEC
2014
JANSEPT
2015
SEPT
2015
Content Development
The Child - looking at:
•speech, language and communication
•personal social and emotional
development
•physical development
•learning/cognitive development, and
•physical health
The Child in Context - taking account of: parenting,
home learning environment, family circumstances,
social/community circumstances, etc.
ASQ-3
questionnaire
Wider Review of
The Child
Wider Review of
The Child in
Context
The
Community
The
Child
The
Child in the Family
The Family
The
Child
In
Context
Testing models for the Integrated Review
From January, our five pilot sites
will start testing models of the
Integrated Review across their
area for 12 months.
• Islington
• Leeds
• Medway
• Norfolk
• Northamptonshire
Testing models for the Integrated Review
Alongside the pilot sites, we have five Pilot Partners whose
role is to
- Stay close to the testing process
- Share good practice
- Act as a sounding board
There will be regular meetings for pilots and pilot partners to
share progress
- Bristol, Hackney, Manchester, Rotherham, Warwickshire
Designing a local model
Sites need to consider:
• WHO will undertake the reviews? (health visitors, early years
practitioners, a combination)
• WHERE the reviews will take place? (SSCCs, the child’s home, early
years settings, health clinics, etc)
• HOW to arrange the integrated reviews (coordination by SSCCs, HV
teams, etc) – getting this right can be key to moving towards greater
integration.
• How to communicate and train staff to undertake the testing
• How Information Sharing will work
What will the output of pilot testing be?
The evaluation will be carried out by an independent third party.
The approach is expected to be:
– Collecting the number of integrated reviews completed (as
a proportion of the total number of 2 year olds)
– In depth interviews with 5 health and 5 early years
practitioners
– Focus groups with parents, and with health and education
staff
– An understanding of the costs and benefits
– Ultimately provision of a case study for the area, offering a
narrative on how the model is performing.
Consultation:
Primary assessment and
accountability under the new
national curriculum
Launched: 17 July
Respond by: 11 October
https://www.gov.uk/government/consultations/newnational-curriculum-primary-assessment-andaccountability
Question 6:
•Should we introduce a baseline check
at the start of Reception?
• Key stage 1 tests, at the end of year 2, are not a genuine baseline for
primary schooling. Measuring a baseline from the end of key stage 1 gives
schools no credit for the crucial work they do in reception, year 1 and year
2. There is also a perverse incentive for schools not to focus resources on
early interventions, in order to maximise their progress measures. We
could instead take a baseline shortly after pupils entered reception.
Progress measures would therefore reflect the whole time that a pupil
spent in a school, and would reward schools which taught well from the
very start. It could also provide valuable national information on the
effectiveness of different types of early years provision.
• We could introduce a simple check at the start of reception, to be used as
a baseline to measure progress and to inform schools about each pupil’s
strengths and weaknesses on entry. Schools often assess what pupils can
and cannot do when they begin school. The baseline check could be
administered by a teacher within two to six weeks of each pupil entering
reception and would be subject to external monitoring similar to that used
at key stage 1. The results of the check would be collected to provide the
baseline for progress measures. We would develop or procure a statutory
baseline check.
Question 7: Should we allow schools to
choose from a range of commerciallyavailable assessments?
.
Question 8: Should we make the baseline
check optional?
• Another approach we could consider is to allow schools to
choose and administer a baseline check from a range of
providers, and report the results to be used as a baseline.
Research studies would be required to ensure that the
available baseline checks were comparable and consistent.
We could also consider whether the reception baseline
check could be optional for schools. Schools that were
particularly concerned about the assessment burden at the
start of primary could choose not to administer the check
to reduce the amount of testing. These schools would be
judged by attainment alone in performance tables and floor
standards. They would still track pupils’ progress internally
and make this data available to Ofsted
Question 9: If we take a baseline from the
start of reception, should end of key stage 1
national curriculum tests become nonstatutory for all-through primary schools?
.
• If we measured progress from the start of reception, the
need for key stage 1 assessments to provide school
accountability measures would reduce. End of key stage 1
tests would continue to provide an important
accountability measure for infant schools and should
remain statutory for them. Infant schools’ key stage 1 test
results would provide the baseline to measure progress in
junior schools. However, we could consider making end of
key stage 1 national curriculum tests non-statutory for allthrough primary schools. Since key stage 1 tests provide an
important way for schools to benchmark themselves
nationally and identify pupils at risk of under-performance,
the Standards and Testing Agency would continue to make
them available for use on an optional basis
www.foundationyears.org.uk
Contact
• Email us: foundations@4children.org.uk
• Visit our website: www.foundationyears.org.uk
Do not
throw the
baby out
with the
bath
water!!