Issue - meetings

Report by the Director of Children’s Services

22.1     The Committee were provided with an update on the implementation of the Integrated Progress Review for children aged 27 months. 

22.2     The Committee noted the report.

Report by Director of Children’s Services

26.1    The Director of Children’s Services introduced the report by noting the much improved position that the Department is now reporting regarding Early Years Attainment.

26.2     The Committee thanked the officers in the Department for their hard work in securing the progress identified in the report and then debated a number of issues which are summarized below.

Comments and Questions

• Integrated Progress Review Pilot.     With regard to Recommendation 2 in Appendix 1 of the report (page 32), the Committee asked to be kept informed of progress on the roll out of the pilot and indicated that they wanted to be kept informed of any developments relating to the changing nature of Children’s Centres.   In response Ruth Szulecki (Early Years Development Manager) informed the Committee that the Pilot looked at 4 different areas with early years settings and health visitors.  The goal being to see if strategies could be developed for bringing together the assessment that takes place by Health for a child aged 2 and the progress check that takes place in an early education setting.  Parents often don’t understand why two separate assessments are undertaken and feedback from them on the proposed changes was very positive.  Parents were also involved in looking at communication and helped co-produce a leaflet which has been used during the pilot.   The Department are now at the point of going forward with the proposal for an integrated review that will take place with health and early education providers at aged 27 months.    The key tool to help with this process will be what is commonly known as the Red Book (more formally, the Personal Child Health Record).  The Red Book will act as the means via which communication will take place between parents and health and other agencies that are involved with the child.   This means there will be a shared, integrated progress review record which will help facilitate open conversations between a health visitor and a parent in an early years setting.  The Department feel this has been a very positive project and are very encouraged by how communication has improved between health and early years.  

• Good Level of Development.   The Committee noted the difference in levels of achievement between boys and girls (Recommendation 5 – Summary of Progress Update October 2015) and asked what steps were being taken to address this.    In response, Ruth Szulecki explained that over the last year in particular the learning environment for boys in the early foundation stage has been looked at more closely.   Often boy’s learning at this stage is more physical and some of the environments have not been especially supportive of this.   However, the pace of improvement for boys has kept up with the overall pace of improvement, which is significant.   More progress is still needed though.  So, for example, there has been a programme of training for teachers which focuses on challenges around boys learning.  This too is having an impact.  

• 2 Year Old Capacity.   In response to a question about whether  ...  view the full minutes text for item 26