Teachers have raised concerns that, particularly since the pandemic, the number of children arriving at school with low ‘school readiness’ is increasing.
During the first five years of development, children acquire a variety of key skills including language, communication, and social/emotional capabilities. These contribute to their school readiness at age five.
Research indicates that these early learning-related skills significantly predict children’s academic growth, so getting early education and care right is essential.
In this blog, we look more closely at what it means to be ‘school-ready’ and what the evidence says about the impact of the home learning environment (HLE). The HLE includes the physical characteristics of the home, but also the quality of the implicit and explicit learning support children receive from caregivers.
We also describe work taking place under the Early Years Special Initiative.
The Early Years Special Initiative
Creating a positive HLE has been a key feature in several programmes within the Early Years Special Initiative (EYSI). This is funded by The Charity of Sir Richard Whittington of which the Mercers’ Company is Corporate Trustee and supports a range of programmes that work to improve the educational attainment and life chances of children and families facing disadvantage in London.
The role of the Education Policy Institute (EPI) as a learning partner is to highlight lessons learnt across the programmes and support organisations to evaluate their programme implementation. The National Children’s Bureau (NCB), Peeple, and Speech and Language UK are three programmes that, as part of this initiative, are all delivering evidence-informed programmes to support children’s school readiness and the impact of the HLE.
What it means to be ‘school-ready’
The meaning of school-readiness varies significantly depending on context. Recent policy in England has largely focused on school readiness in the child, defined by how prepared a child is to succeed in school: cognitively, socially and emotionally.
This refers to the full range of developmental measures and milestones, not simply a narrow measure of early ‘academic’ attainment. For example, teachers expect children to arrive in reception able to feed and dress themselves, share with other children and communicate basic needs.
Alternative perspectives instead focus on the school’s readiness for children such as using high-quality instruction, awareness of the needs of individual children, strong leadership and early intervention for children falling behind.
Family and community support also contribute to school readiness. Suboptimal health and low income are strongly related to vulnerability at school entry. Therefore, support such as prenatal care, comprehensive health checks, optimal nutrition, physical activity, preschool access, and daily learning time with parents is key.
As we will begin to see from the work being done by the EYSI programmes, including these broader understandings in our policy approach could help to address the school-readiness challenge.
Evidence of HLE impact
Developmental skills are shaped and nurtured by a child’s environment. Firstly, this includes basic needs such as food, shelter and clothing. Secondly, children need strong nurturing relationships with their families, communities, and peer groups.
Three crucial elements of the HLE that foster a child’s educational growth are their active engagement in learning activities, the calibre of interactions between parent and child, and access to educational resources and materials.
Warm and nurturing parenting behaviours that encourage children’s natural curiosity and support learning are especially strong predictors of children’s school achievement, over and above parental income, parental education and socioeconomic status.
Improving the HLE can also reduce the occurrence of externalising behavioural conditions in preschoolers. Studies show that everyday conversations, make-believe play and reading activities are particularly influential features of the HLE. Activities like daytime routines, trips to the park and visits to the library also play a part.
EYSI programmes working with families
NCB, Peeple, and Speech and Language UK are three organisations funded by the EYSI that share a common focus on supporting parents and improving the HLE. Through their experiences, valuable lessons have emerged, shedding light on how effective programme implementation has worked to support the aims of each initiative.
Reaching the most vulnerable families has been a priority for these programmes and they have adopted a multi-faceted approach to break down barriers and ensure equitable access. Here we concentrate on the value of building strong partnerships between parents and practitioners, keeping in touch with practitioners and settings beyond the training sessions and offering a combination of digital and physical resources.
Building strong practitioner/parental partnerships
Equipping practitioners with the knowledge and tools to build strong parental partnerships was instrumental in the success of these initiatives. By emphasising the value of these relationships and providing practical strategies for effective collaboration, the training empowered practitioners to engage parents as active partners in supporting their children’s learning and development journey.
Peeple’s Exploring Together programme, designed to nurture STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics) skills in young children, exemplifies this approach. After their training, practitioners went on to deliver the 8-week Exploring Together programme to parents, encouraging them to identify and make the most of STEM opportunities that are part of their everyday lives that they can explore with their children in fun and engaging ways.
Keeping in touch
The programmes recognised that it is important to provide ongoing guidance and support beyond the initial training sessions as participants begin implementing their newly acquired skills and knowledge in practice. This continuous reinforcement plays a crucial role in solidifying the learning and ensuring sustainable impact.
NCB has put this into practice by training early years practitioners and teachers to deliver Making it REAL (Raising Attainment in Literacy) and sharing the REAL approach with parents to help them support their children’s communication, language and early literacy development. NCB’s training model for this programme has included ongoing support that practitioners receive from the Making it REAL project team through termly network meetings, as well as contact via email, phone and in-person visits.
Using physical and online resources
The COVID-19 pandemic presented a significant challenge, prompting these programmes to swiftly adapt their content and delivery methods to ensure online accessibility. This transition led to an increase in their outreach, as video resources could be disseminated to a wider audience than would have been possible through traditional in-person sessions. Consequently, this digital shift potentially improved the reach of the programmes to influence the HLE for a larger number of families.
However, the programmes recognised the digital divide could potentially disadvantage some children. For this reason, they maintained a strong emphasis on providing physical resources to parents and practitioners. This approach ensured that all families could benefit regardless of their technological access.
Speech and Language UK’s project exemplifies this balanced approach. The project centers on developing and extending their existing Early Talk Boost programme aimed at 3–4-year-old children who are struggling with talking and understanding words. Speech and Language UK are equipping educators and families with online and physical resources including a programme manual, a sack of toys and puppets and ‘Jake and Tizzy’ storybooks to increase inclusivity and longevity of use.
Conclusion
Addressing inequalities in the HLE is intrinsically linked to tackling income disparities. It is imperative to ensure that all families have access to adequate resources to support their children’s growth and development, enabling them to thrive.
Initiatives funded by the EYSI are actively working towards this goal by adopting a holistic approach that involves supporting parents, training practitioners, and in some cases incorporating wider health services to meet the diverse needs of families and children across London.
A significant factor contributing to the success of these initiatives has been their emphasis on empowering parents to create positive HLEs. Research has shown that the quality of interactions and learning activities shared between parents and children can hold greater importance than socioeconomic factors. Providing families with access to good-quality learning materials and fostering positive parent-child relationships can significantly contribute to children’s school readiness and support their academic growth.
Organisations and settings that work with children in the early years play a vital role in supporting the HLE and, consequently, reducing inequalities and gaps in school readiness. By equipping parents with the necessary knowledge, resources, and support, these initiatives are breaking down barriers and creating an environment where all children, regardless of their family’s income or background, have more opportunities to reach their full potential.
With proper funding and a collaborative effort involving parents, practitioners, and support services, we can begin to address the systemic issues and underlying inequalities in the HLE. By providing families with the tools and resources they need to nurture their children’s development, we can increase school readiness and create a more equitable foundation for future academic success and personal growth.
