Starting School Together

• The Professional Association for Childcare and Early Years has been helping childcare staff and teachers in Waltham Forest to ease children's transition to school
• They have co-produced a new transition document outlining key information schools need about children to help them settle, engage and learn
• It is being used for September's new school intake

ACTION

In April last year, the Professional Association for Childcare and Early Years (Pacey) delivered seminars on findings from Starting School Together, a £350,000 government-funded project helping schools, childcare professionals and families in Cambridgeshire and North Yorkshire jointly improve school-readiness.

Among those inspired was Heather Rick, early years school improvement consultant for the London borough of Waltham Forest, where early years "health checks" had shown a need to strengthen school transition. "While we've got [early years] practitioners and schools doing sterling work, it often didn't match and come together," she recalls.

So the council commissioned a £10,000 project from Pacey to build partnerships and revamp the borough's transition document, a child's profile compiled by early years staff for schools, to increase its usefulness for all involved. "Teachers were saying: ‘If we've got 90 kids joining, we don't have time to read four pages for each," recalls Rick.

"Childcare providers were saying the document was too long and complicated," adds Pacey service manager Vicky Wright. "Schools were saying it wasn't useful; it didn't really tell them about the child, just what they could do. There wasn't as much mutual trust and respect as we would've liked."

The borough's six primaries without nurseries were enlisted, alongside 12 neighbouring early years settings and five childminders. The nine-month project started in October with co-ordinator Fiona Comish visiting participants, building understanding of their different contexts and challenges. A series of workshops followed from November, the first involving childcare staff and teachers jointly scrutinising transition documents in mixed groups. The authors explained what they were trying to communicate and teachers indicated the most useful information. "Some were going into detail about what children could do, such as writing their name, but schools work that out for themselves within the first week," explains Wright. "Schools were saying they needed to know things about the child to help them support his or her learning. They also wanted to know family details, like being an only child, challenges they'd had or things that might prevent a positive experience at school." Comish adds: "Settings and childminders had often built up an idea in their head of what schools wanted. But when face-to-face with teachers, they realised ‘it's my knowledge of the child they want'."

In February, participants used this information to create the single-page document All About Me. The first side outlines details about important people in a child's life, personality, strengths and talents, things important to him or her, home life details and "characteristics of effective learning"; how the child is best supported to learn and develop.

The second side measures the child against the Early Years Foundation Stage "prime areas", personal, social and emotional development, communication and language and physical development. It also details any special educational needs and disability (SEND) support, whether there is an education, health and care plan, and any support from other agencies. Support plans or specialist reports can be attached. "Schools had been saying they had no idea when some children joined that they had additional needs," recalls Wright. "They didn't know what had already been done, tried, and what had worked, so could spend weeks trying different strategies. But this information helps them support the child effectively from day one, making a huge difference to learning and development."

Childcare professionals trialled this new document in April for a sample of children, an exercise reviewed at a workshop in May. Rick delivered a June workshop guiding childcare staff in ensuring their judgments about a child's development level are robust enough to stand up in the classroom.

Comish ensured childminders were involved through separate evening and drop-in sessions, helped by a childminding development officer enlisted to the project. She sees partnerships between childminders, nurseries and schools increasing in importance with the September introduction of the government-funded 30-hour childcare entitlement, because "not everybody will be able to have those 30 hours at one setting."

Ongoing support for schools and childcare staff is now available through an online "transitions hub". It offers resources including a transitions timeline outlining what early years staff and schools can do separately and together to improve school readiness.

IMPACT

Rick says she has seen mutual respect and understanding increasing between everyone involved, praising Comish's "amazing" work in bringing childminders into the transitions process, a group traditionally "on the periphery". She adds this has given the borough's four childminding development workers a more central role within its childcare team.

Rick will be evaluating the project's impact in the autumn by establishing how widely the new transitions document has been used, and how accurate and useful teachers are finding the information. She predicts it will be "really successful", as it has been "so welcomed from both sides".