Priority 1: Early Years

Our aim

Our aim is for children to get a head start in life through a high quality early years education.

Why is this is an area of focus?

• Early education is a critical and lasting foundation for children’s success through the rest of their schooling.
• 400 children across the North Yorkshire Coast did not achieve a good level of development across the Early Learning Goals (ELG) in 2016.
• Disadvantaged children on the North Yorkshire Coast perform particularly poorly in the core skill areas of both reading and arithimatic, compared to similar children nationally.
• Early years professionals in nurseries and schools highlight concerns about delayed speech and language skills and a rising prevalence of speech disorders. These issues are are not being addressed quickly enough because of delays in referrals to therapeutic services.

Our targets

• Increase the percentage of children reaching a good level of development to 70% for all children.
• Increase the percentage of children who are eligible for free school meals achieving a good level of development to 55%.
• This will mean in 2020/21, 75 more children reach this level than was the case in 2016.

Successes to date

• 32 Speech and Language ‘Champions’ have completed a stretching level 3 course online. In their role as a Champion, they will share their learning with colleagues to embed good practice within their early years setting. The aim is to develop all practitioners’ ability to identify children with speech, language and communication needs, and to put in place the appropriate support for each child.
• 40 practitioners have delivered the Early Talk Boost intervention with groups of children in their setting, with fantastic results. From a cohort of 86 children receiving the intervention, average pre and post assessment scores increased across all areas:
  • Attention and Listening scores increased by 49%
  • Language (understanding) scores increased by 33%
  • Language (speaking) scores increased by 46%
  • Communication scores increased by 45
• Developmental assessments have been carried out in over 20 early years settings across the Coast. These assessments are based on the well-evidenced ‘sustained, shared thinking and emotional wellbeing’ framework to support practitioners to improve the quality of their interactions with children. The assessments have led to the development of both setting-wide and individual staff development plans. A follow up CPD course will also run in October, more details here.
• Family learning sessions are now up and running in Scarborough, Whitby and Filey. These sessions are based on the PEEP learning together model, and support parents with children under five to encourage learning and development in the home. To find out more, or sign up to a session, click here. To date, 103 families and 126 children attended family learning workshops.