Transcript Document

Partnership with Parents/ carers.
EYFS and Parents
•Working with parents as partners in children’s
early learning and development is central to the
EYFS. It sets out clear principles and
commitments to practice within the theme of
Positive Relationships.
•These include the requirement for each child to
have a key person who should work to form a
warm, trusting and respectful relationship with
that child and their family.
EYFS (contd)
EYFS commitment 2.2 states:
•Parents are children’s first and most enduring
educators. When parents and practitioners work
together in early years settings, the results have
a positive impact on children’s development and
learning.
EYFS - Creating the framework for
partnership working
Close working between early years
practitioners and parents is vital for the
identification of children’s learning needs and to
ensure a quick response to any area of particular
difficulty.
Parents and families are central to a child’s
well being and practitioners should support this
important relationship by sharing information
and offering support for extending learning in
the home.
Assessment within the EYFS
•As judgements are based on observational
evidence gathered from a wide range of learning
and teaching contexts, it is expected that all
adults who interact with the child should
contribute to the process, and that account will
be taken of information provided by parents.
• An essential feature of parental involvement is
an ongoing dialogue, building on the partnership
begun by any previous practitioner(s).
•Settings should report progress and
The Effective Provision of PreSchool Education (EPPE)
•EPPE is a study of 3000 children, tracking the
impact of their early years experience.
•It shows that by the age of three, there are
already marked differences between individual
children’s social and intellectual development.
•An important factor that impacts on this
difference is the quality of the early home
learning environment. This effect continues
through to the age of seven.
•What parents do at home has a major impact
EPPE (contd)
EPPE concludes that:
•What parents do is more important than who
parents are.
•All parents who regularly involve their children
in early home learning activities that ‘stretch a
child’s mind’ can enhance their children’s
learning and development. (Sylva and others
2004)
Parental Involvement
Desforges (2003) confirms:•that what parents do at home with children is
critical.
•Research consistently shows that what parents
do with their children at home is far more
important to their achievement than their social
class or level of education.
•Parental involvement has an impact across all
ethnic groups and social classes.
Home Influence
•Home influence is powerful because it is
enduring, pervasive and direct. Children absorb
enthusiasm and a positive attitude towards
learning from their relationships with adults at
home.
• A parent who feels it is his or her role and
believes they can make a difference, models
positive interest in learning.
•In the early years, children also pick up skills
and knowledge directly from parents and carers.
Activity 1
In groups of 4
Consider the ways in which your setting meets
the EYFS requirements to:
•Share information with parents
•Extend learning in the home
•Take account of parents’ views and
observations on their child
•Maintain an ongoing dialogue about individual
children’s progress?
Activity 2
In groups of 4
Consider some of the
barriers to effective
parental engagement.
What stops involvement
Some Factors include:Work commitments. Time and pressures in
busy lives. Childcare needs.
Pressures due to lack of money, illness,
disability, single-parent status.
Own education level, confidence that you can
make a difference. Knowledge of what to do.
Negative feelings about schools from own
experience. Own literacy and numeracy levels
poor. English not first language. Attitudes – ‘it’s
How do the best settings work
with parents and carers?
Strong leaders – and staff – understand the importance of
establishing good relationships with parents and of involving
them in their children’s learning .
Getting it right first time -Achieving and maintaining highquality early years provision
(Ofsted 2013)
Good Practice
• Some examples of good practice include:•Staff in settings use the initial home visits to
start the process of involving parents in their
child’s learning and development by assessing
what children can already do, know and
understand.
•In other settings, through the local children’s
centre, staff start to get to know parents and
build productive relationships before enrolment
in the nursery.
Good Practice(contd)
•leaders routinely share information about
children’s learning and progress through regular,
scheduled reviews where they discuss
assessments and look at children’s work
together. These include meetings based around
the progress check for two-year-olds.
•Provision of workshops and drop-ins for
parents on topics such as story-telling helping
parents to find ways of supporting their
children, focusing especially on ways of
Supporting the Home Learning
Environment.
Invitations to parents of children where there
are concerns to work with the teacher at the
Children’s Centre to plan an educational
programme that best meets their child’s needs.
Staff support parents with arrangements for
transition when the children move from the
Children’s Centre into private day care, or from
day care into school.
Staff use discussions and displays to show
parents ways of supporting their child’s learning
Activity 3
In pairs:•Consider the ways in which you have already
supported the home learning environment.
•How might you develop this further?
Useful Ideas and Resources.
•Parents, Early Years and Learning (PEAL) project
was funded by the Department for Education
and Skills (DfES) for two years April 05-April 07
•contact details:- www.peal.org.uk
•or email - [email protected].
References
•Desforges, C and Abouchaar, A (2003) The
Impact of Parental Involvement,Parental Support
and Family Education on Pupil Achievements
and Adjustment: A literature review, Research
Report 433. London: DfES.
.Getting it right first time -Achieving and
maintaining high-quality early years provision
(Ofsted 2013)
•Sylva, K., Melhuish, E., Sammons, P., Siraj-