With travel restricted, many of us are dreaming of visiting beautiful seaside towns such as Whitby in North Yorkshire. But the North Yorkshire coast, with its picturesque harbours and windswept beaches, is not the best place for disadvantaged children to grow up. In 2016, the region ranked 312 out of 324 districts on the Government’s social mobility index.
Only 64 per cent of children from this area reached a good level of development at the end of the Early Years Foundation Stage, compared with 70 per cent across North Yorkshire as a whole. Disadvantaged children performed particularly badly in the core skills of reading and numbers.
The North Yorkshire Coast Opportunity Area, one of 12 across England, hopes a Government-funded three-year investment in early years, phonics and maths will improve outcomes. Last year, the Government committed to extending funding for a fourth year, but the Opportunity Areas are still uncertain as to how much money will be coming their way.
‘When we started, speech and language from early years to the end of secondary school was an issue that was constantly raised,’ says Richard Benstead, programme director for North Yorkshire Coast Opportunity Area at North Yorkshire County Council. ‘In primary schools we found a backlog of unmet speech and language development needs.’
Early Talk Boost
Around 50 early years practitioners have received free training and resources to deliver I CAN’s Early Talk Boost intervention, which usually costs around £1,000 per setting and is aimed at three- and four-year-olds with delayed language.
Children selected to take part attend three sessions a week, each lasting 15 to 20 minutes and delivered by an early years practitioner. The sessions include activities that cover the foundation skills that children need for learning and understanding new words and having conversations. Resources include story books that have been specifically designed and written for the intervention and access to an online tracker tool to measure and analyse children’s progress.
Within the initial cohort of 86 children receiving the intervention, their scores increased:
- 49 per cent for attention and listening
- 33 per cent for understanding language
- 46 per cent for speaking
- 45 per cent for communication.
‘There are some really positive signs,’ says Mr Benstead.
Practitioner training
Around 40 early years practitioners are also completing an online Level 3 qualification in early years speech, language and communication, and acting as speech and language champions in their settings. Unfortunately, however, Covid-19 has thrown a spanner in the works.
‘There is frustration as we were getting to the stage of being able to embed a lot of this in early years practice, and then coronavirus came along,’ says Mr Benstead.
PEEP Learning Together
Children from 90 families in Whitby, Filey and Scarborough may, however, continue to benefit from Opportunity Area-funded work even during lockdown. Coast and Vale Community Action (CaVCA) has been funded to deliver evidence-based PEEP Learning Together sessions to parents and carers in the community, aimed at encouraging under-fives’ learning and development through a range of fun activities and play.
Two CaVCA practitioners received training and were able to access a range of online resources including child development information, practical guidance, hand-outs and activities.
PEEP sessions include five elements: a hello/goodbye song, songs and rhymes, storytime, talk time with parents to answer questions or provide support on different issues, and activities to try at home.
Like the National Children’s Bureau’s Making It Real programme, adopted by Oldham Opportunity Area, PEEP Learning Together is based on the ORIM framework of Opportunities, Recognition, Interaction and Modelling – the four practical ways parents and carers support their children’s learning and development. ‘Involving a locally led organisation like CaVCA was key to engaging a high number of families,’ says Mr Benstead. ‘It was not exclusively targeted at disadvantaged families but there was a high take-up from deprived areas.’
‘We stood in the school playground giving out leaflets, we went round early years settings, libraries, doctors’ surgeries, clinics,’ explains CaVCA home learning environment practitioner Jane Mynard.
‘A shopping precinct let us use an empty unit, so we set up children’s activities to get them in and talking. The health visitors have really helped, they are on the ground floor with the mums. We are hoping to expand into running one-to-one sessions as it is daunting for young mums especially to walk into a new place.’
Mr Benstead adds, ‘We are hopeful that the work done to date and the skills developed will enable parents to support their children at home during this time.’
CaVCA is using its ‘Peep Family Workshops’ Facebook page to share activities that children can take part in at home, such as treasure hunts, and information about child development, such as play patterns and schemas. ‘We want to make sure we don’t shove resources at parents and teachers and expect them to decipher them and implement them at a challenging time,’ says Mr Benstead. ‘We are putting things in place to engage with parents, but we are being realistic about the impact.’
Adult-child interactions
A number of other schemes have been funded by the Opportunity Area, including a National Literacy Trust Hub, which aims to inspire parents to share stories with their children every day, and developmental assessments based on the Sustained Shared Thinking and Emotional Wellbeing (SSTEW) framework, which aim to support practitioners to improve the quality of their interactions with children.
‘It has not been without its challenges,’ says Mr Benstead. ‘There have been a lot of questions, with practitioners worried that this is just another thing that will come and go. We have needed to show commitment and that this will have an impact in settings and schools. We have been trying to avoid the situation of a DfE programme coming in and imposing something on the area that practitioners do not want.’
Phonics hub
Emma Flockton has been a primary school teacher for 22 years and is currently co-head teacher at Childhaven Community Nursery School in Northallerton. She is also a specialist leader of education at Scarborough Teaching Alliance, with a responsibility for early years CPD. She was able to use Opportunity Area funding to set up an Early Years Phonics Hub to provide training and support to PVI settings.
‘I felt there were no opportunities for staff in PVIs, many of whom are highly skilled and talented practitioners, to access high-quality CPD,’ she says. ‘Also, phonics was perceived as something schools do, and sometimes people are reluctant and nervous to take it on, but it is actually something that starts from birth.’
Early years phonics is about developing listening skills through activities involving rhyming and alliteration, rather than rushing children on to graphemes, says Ms Flockton.
‘It frustrated me that we had children coming to Reception clearly developmentally ready to access school-based phonics, but who had not had the right preparation,’ she says. ‘This is not only affecting children in challenging situations but across the board.’
Listening skills
Children are increasingly visually dependent, often due to use of screens, and have to be encouraged to develop key ‘tuning-in skills’ to listen to what is happening around them, Ms Flockton says. Without these skills they lack the ability to access phonics because they can’t hear the differences in sounds.
‘Listening is a key skill and has to be encouraged and honed,’ she explains. ‘It needs motivated and well-trained adults who understand what listening really means.’
In setting up the Hub, Ms Flockton was recreating an early years partnership which had disappeared due to local restructuring. ‘We used to bring PVIs and school-based nurseries together half-termly to improve pedagogy in early years,’ she says. ‘Sessions ran in the evening, so settings didn’t require any cover. It was a great shame when that disappeared as we had developed a community in early years practice.’
Ms Flockton contacted settings to find out what they would want from a phonics hub. ‘The idea is it is there for them to access in a supportive and collaborative way, not something imposed from the top down,’ she says. The Hub has so far held three sessions, but is now on hold due to lockdown.
‘Unfortunately, Covid-19 curtailed everything,’ says Ms Flockton. Even if sessions could be held online, the fact that settings are closed means practitioners would not be able to put what they have learned into practice, she adds. She does hope, however, that the Hub will be able to provide vital support with many of the issues that may come into play when children return.
‘I hope this is something that can continue and maybe extend beyond the remit of the Opportunity Area,’ she says. ‘There is a definite need for this.’
TARGETS AND ACHIEVEMENTS
Targets for 2020/21
- 70 per cent of all children to reach a good level of development.
- 55 per cent of children who are eligible for free school meals to achieve a good level of development.
Achievements
- Around 50 practitioners have been trained to deliver the Early Talk Boost intervention in their setting.
- Around 40 early years practitioners, including five childminders, are undertaking a Level 3 qualification in early years speech, language and communication.
- 25 early years settings have received a developmental assessment to improve the quality of adults’ interactions with children.
- 30 practitioners have undertaken training on effective adult-child interactions.
- 30 practitioners have enrolled in an early phonics hub to improve understanding of early phonics.
- 91 parents with 100 children have signed up to family learning sessions.