Working Together: Newham’s Early Years Hub

Sue Finch

Overview of the Newham Early Years Hub• Led by Sheringham Nursery School and Children’s Centre

• In collaboration with the other 6 maintained nursery schools across Newham plus two primary schools

• Linking to each Newham neighbourhood to ensure coverage

• Involves over 100 PVI settings

• Links to ‘Collaborative Early Years’ - Newham’s model for sector-led early years improvement

We aim to

GLA is funding three early years hubs in London – in Barnet, Newham and Wandsworth + Merton (Wandle) - for three years from 2018-20 to:

• Improve the quality of early education settings

• Increase take-up of Free Early Education for 2 year olds

• Improve and increase the early years workforce

Improving quality in Newham

Peer support

• Six nursery schools each release Deputy/Head teachers half a day a week to support and mentor practitioners in local settings, arrange network meetings, and offer and share professional development opportunities

• Each of the Mentors undertakes ITERS-3 audits with local settings to develop reflective practise

• L.B.Newham has now commissioned 2 outstanding PVI settings + a school to mentor and support quality improvement in local settings

• Aim = a self-improving system

Improving quality

We have completed the pilot year of Manor Park Talks and

early indications are positive. We are now seeking to roll this out

through the Hub across Newham

Improving quality

• Inclusion is at the heart of quality

• We have developed closer working links with the specialist Health Visitor team, whose lead is now on our Steering Group

• Training for 15 HVs in identifying speech and language difficulties

• Improved join-up so that HVs signpost families to FEE2 places

• More children with SEND now accessing places under the discretionary eligibility criteria in Newham’s code (12 in May/June)

• Through the Buttercup group at Sheringham’s Children’s Centre, a further 11 children with SEND have FEE2 places this year

Improving Free Early Education uptake

• Newham had second lowest uptake of Free Early Education for 2 year olds in London - 43% - before the Hub started in 2018

• And the second highest eligibility – due to high levels of disadvantage

• In spite of all partnership efforts, we still only reached 50% in early 2019 – compared with 61% take-up across London, 72% nationally

• Yet take-up had risen to 66% by the end of December – so parents were taking up the offer, but dropping out. Why?

Improving uptake

• Drop-out is a barrier to increasing uptake – 9% of children drop out of their place, mostly in PVI settings

• This may be connected with a lack of priority being given to children’s emotional wellbeing and the key person approach

• We arranged sessions based around the SSTEW scale for our mentors and they are cascading those sessions in their locality networks

• Our aim is that an improved emphasis on emotional wellbeing will reduce dropout and so increase our overall uptake figure

Increasing the workforce

• New partnership with Newham Adult Learning Service (NALS) to provide adult learning around basic skills, employability and English

• Level 2 and 3 offer from NALS to supplement our continuing apprenticeship programme with Protrain

Evaluation

We set ourselves big targets for 2020:

• Improving quality of local settings to national average for outstanding

• Increasing take-up of Free Early Education for 2 year olds to 65% by the end of 2018, 70% by the end of 2019, 75% by the end of 2020

• More Newham residents entering the early years workforce

These will be independently evaluated – but we can already see that a key benefit of the early years hubs will be new cross-sector partnerships. In spite of the 60% cuts to LA funding, these are already providing peer support for change and better outcomes for children.

Partners in the Early Years Hub

Partners include:

• L.B.Newham

• East London Partnership Teaching School

• Nursery schools, including the SEND hub

• Primary Schools

• PVI settings (nurseries and childminders)

• Health

• Newham Adult Learning Service

Newham Early Years Conference

• 9th and 10th January 2020

Speakers

• Sir Kevan Collins (9.1.20 only)

• Jan Dubiel

• Gill Jones and Wendy Ratcliffe

• More speakers and workshops to be announced

• Block discounts available