About Early Years - Building on Success
Early Years – Building on Success is a follow on from our successful Early Years Professional Development Programme. The programme is aimed at improving practitioners' understanding and skills in supporting the development of the most disadvantaged children between the ages of 2 and 4. In response to the Covid-19 pandemic, the programme has been tailored to address the needs that have been heightened during this time.
Who is Building on Success for?
The programme is fully funded by the Department for Education, including backfill for practitioners’ time to take part. Pre-reception practitioners from schools and private, voluntary and independent settings (PVI) are eligible, with priority given to applications from Settings that meet certain criteria.
Practitioners will receive high quality, evidence-based CPD (continuous professional development). The training supports practitioners to improve outcomes on school readiness, early language, mathematics, and PSED. The programme is comprised of key components of the existing high quality Communication and Language content, an enhanced version of the Maths content and new content to support children’s Personal, Social and Emotional Development (PSED) needs that have been heightened as a consequence of the pandemic.
What is its purpose?
The programme in its first instance will aim to offer specific in-depth training for practitioners in the post-pandemic era, taking on 2,000 Early Years Professionals from over 50 Local Authorities. It offers a comprehensive package of professional development that is based on practitioners’ current early years pedagogy, as well as the skills and knowledge to enhance the quality of adult-child interactions through sustained shared thinking.
The programme also provides support for practitioners to improve engagement with parents and carers to support the home learning environment, improve skills to identify children at risk of speech, language and communication needs, provide an understanding of the theory of child development in Early Mathematics, and vitally the skills to support children’s self-confidence, relationships, and self-awareness through expertly developed Personal, Social and Emotional Development training.
Practitioners will receive an OCN London-endorsed CPD certificate on the completion of the programme, which recognises key competencies achieved by participating in the programme.
Eligibility criteria
The Building on Success programme is available to eligible settings from 51 local authorities across England. Eligibility criteria includes settings and childminders who meet two of the three following criteria and who are level 3 qualified and offer childcare to children between the ages of 2 and 4 years:
- provide to at least one child with an EHC Plan or Disability Access Fund indicator
- provide to at least one child in receipt of EYPP
- provide to at least one disadvantaged two-year-old
What does the training entail?
• A total of 10 days of online training between January and July 2022.
• The training will be broken down into modules for speech, language and communication, Maths and PSED.
• Modules will consist of eLearning sessions, online facilitated webinars, access to curated resources including video exemplars, articles and recommended reading, mentoring support and peer support opportunities.
All participants will gain:
• A comprehensive package of professional development that is based on current early years pedagogy to support them as they continually improve their practice.
• The skills and knowledge to enhance the quality of adult-child interactions through sustained shared thinking
• Support to engage with parents and carers to support the home learning environment.
• The skills to identify children at risk of speech, language and communication needs.
• An understanding of the theory of child development in Early Mathematics, developed by subject experts, and how to support children’s early mathematical learning in everyday practice.
• The skills to support children’s self-confidence and self-awareness, managing feelings and behaviours, and making relationships through expertly developed Personal, Social and Emotional Development training. Practitioners will receive an OCN London-endorsed CPD certificate on the completion of the programme, which recognises key competencies achieved by participating in the programme.
About Education Development Trust
Education Development Trust is an international not-for-profit organisation that transforms lives around the world by improving education and delivering careers and employability services. We have been working with governments, donor agencies, schools, leaders and teachers to effect and embed sustainable change for 50 years. As part of our charitable mission, we invest annually in a major programme of education research, which is available to download from our website. The insights from this research inform the projects we deliver, as well as influencing policymaking and supporting practitioners around the world.
Find out more about our research
Here in England, we have worked extensively with the Department for Education for over 20 years. Our Accelerate teaching programme, for example, is providing professional development to hundreds of early career teachers, while our Future Teaching Scholars programme recruits and trains students to become specialist maths and physics teachers.
We also work with more than 1,300 schools across England through our Schools Partnership Programme and have just helped the Welsh Government to set up its National Academy for Educational Leadership.
Further afield our teams are; coaching teachers in informal slum schools in Nairobi, developing the skills of English and maths teachers in every primary school in Rwanda, helping Jordanian school supervisors to use research evidence to improve teaching in government schools, and supporting expert teachers in Brunei to improve the practice of their peers.
About Elklan
Elklan was established in 1999 by two experienced speech and language therapists Liz Elks and Henrietta McLachlan in response to a demand for training for education staff to enable them to be more effective in their support of children with speech, language and communication needs (SLCN).
Since 2001 Elklan has trained over 1,400 speech and language therapists as tutors and over 700 specialist teachers as co-tutors.