Last week was a big one for us. Since the end of last year, the team at Hempsall’s and Coram Family and Childcare has been busy setting up our approach to our new role as Department for Education Early Years engagement partner. Alongside the role of information sharing via the Foundation Years website, newsletter and social media, we have online and face-to-face events to deliver. Last week, on 28 February 2023, we held our first online event, during the evening from 6.30-8.00.
It was important for us to share the values integrated throughout all our work, and to offer real opportunities for engagement across Foundation Years. We know the sector likes to hear directly from DfE and we were pleased DfE provided updates on the EY child development training, Early years child development training : Home page (education.gov.uk) and some aspects of the much-needed Covid Recovery programme Early years education recovery programme – GOV.UK (www.gov.uk). DfE colleagues couldn’t have been more welcoming of feedback and commentary on their work and proposals so the voice of practitioners could be included. Many delegates had already started or completed the training and fed back how useful and interesting it had been for them.
Each of our events will focus on an aspect of Early Years Foundation Stage practice. Last week, Jan Dubiel, international early years expert and Programme Director for hey! was the keynote speaker. He set out how effective observations should lead to meaningful assessment within the context of the 2021 EYFS reforms and reduced recording, funnily enough still often referred to as ‘paperwork’. The big message here for us was reinforcing confident practitioner judgement, knowing children’s learning and development progress, recording for self, and extending outcomes. This was all about spending time engaging and interacting with children as the priority over evidence collection. Jan shared resources to use to help all of this happen, and delegates shared resources they too had found helpful.
Our events will vary throughout the year. Online events allow for up to 1,000 people to attend, and this one was fully booked. Face-to-face events are smaller, with up to 120 places at each. That’s why we will also extend the engagement, connection and sharing of best practice through informal online 30-minute ‘newsletter lives’ to bring our monthly email newsletters to life with its contributors and writers, and practitioner produced vodcasts in settings sharing their real experience of EYFS delivery.
Face-to-face events will have time for discussion and debate with speakers and the network of people who attend, there will be break outs and round tables to unpick latest policy and issues being experienced in the sector, to support the feedback loop.
Larger online events rely upon chat functions, emails and online surveys to facilitate the debate and feedback. At our first event we enjoyed a rich stream of useful debate. We were delighted that 100% of delegates rated the session good or excellent in our survey, with 76% reporting there were lots of useful ideas. It was clear that very many were inspired by the practical, confident, and pragmatic approaches shared, and were identifying actions to take:
“This was a common-sense approach to early years. It was fab to hear it from those speaking”.
“Such a breath of fresh air to know that we should trust our own knowledge and be confident in what we know about our children”.
“It was good that so many people have come together, and it has been really informative and empowering”.
Don’t worry if you missed the event, you can find the recording and the slides on Foundation Years. Use the links below to sign up to the newsletter and follow us on social media to hear about opportunities to join us throughout the year, on different days and times, everyone in the sector will be very welcome.