The Parental Community Support Project will encourage parental participation in children's centres and other early years settings and provide better support for parents to engage with their children's learning.
It will be run by NCB's Early Childhood Unit in partnership with the London Borough of Camden and the children's charity Coram Family.
The two-year project, commissioned by the DfES, has been awarded 500,000 of Government funding.
During the first year, the NCB will identify existing methods of engaging parents effectively. In the second year, this information will be used to develop a core model of good practice and roll out a national training scheme for practitioners in children's centres.
The project will be based in the London Borough of Camden. Coram Family has also worked closely with Camden council. Camden has five government-funded Sure Start local programmes and is due to have opened 12 children's centres by March 2006.
Sue Owen, director of the early childhood unit at the NCB, said, 'This project will place real emphasis on parental participation and help to make parents feel like equal partners within early years settings. I think that involving parents in their children's education has always been important, but recently it has become a high Government priority.
'We warmly welcome the Government's recognition that good parenting is vital for children's educational outcomes and development. In his pre-budget report, Chancellor Gordon Brown stated that "parents should be able to receive support long before compulsory schooling begins". We hope that this project will help make the chancellor's aspirations a reality.'
The project will begin when the NCB has appointed a project manager. The NCB is now in the process of recruiting. Full details are available on the website www.ncb.org.uk/opportunities.