Training opportunities for Early Years professionals

Making it REAL (Raising Early Achievement in Literacy) is a training programme developed by the National Children’s Bureau and aims to support early years practitioners to build parents’ knowledge and confidence so that they can help children with reading and writing, and create a positive home learning environment.

The training has so far been delivered to 12 locally based professionals across Early Years settings. Network meetings and support for practitioners will continue as they embed the work this academic year.

The training has allowed early years staff to develop their support of children and their families, including activities around oral literacy, books, writing and environmental print. Other agencies involved in supporting the States Early Years Team to deliver the yearlong project include Guille-Alles Library, Le Rondin School, the Speech and Language Team, and the Child Development Service Team.

The National Children’s Bureau derived the programme from The REAL Project. It uses a framework called ‘ORIM’ which is based on the idea that there are four main ways parents and carers can help their children’s literacy development – Opportunities, Recognition, Interaction and Model.

Early Years professionals involved in the project will provide learning opportunities for children that involve parents either at home or in the setting. These could include activities such as sharing books, developing language, and looking at print in the local environment.

Practitioners will support parents to recognise and value their children’s achievements by highlighting and celebrating the small steps that children take towards learning to read and write.

Through all of the opportunities given to them, parents will be interacting with their children, acting as powerful models. By making their use of literacy explicit, children are likely to want to copy or join in.

Ruth Sharp, Head of the States Early Years Team, said: “Making it REAL is a brilliantly focused and fun programme steeped in esteemed academic research. This is a fantastic opportunity to upskill local practitioners and has proved to be extremely effective elsewhere in eliciting long term improvements with literacy.

“We’re very proud to have helped facilitate the training and look forward to seeing its positive impact in the years to come. We will continue to support this by
further investment in training as many early years professionals as possible with the support of the NCB to ensure the skills, knowledge and impact can be shared across the Bailiwick moving forward.

“Our continued focus on improving outcomes for our children by working in partnership with parents, carers and specialist services is part of our action planning.

“This project is evidence of action under several commitments in our Education Strategy such as Meeting the Needs of the Community – Working in Partnership to support our learners, our staff and community – and High-Quality Learning & Excellent Outcomes – Championing early intervention. The Education Strategy enables us to ensure a joined-up approach along with links to the Partnership of Purpose, the SEND recommendations and ultimately the Government Work Plan.’’

A representative from Every Child Our Future said: “We’re very excited about the programme and would like to thank everyone who has supported us and been working behind the scenes to make it a reality. Amongst those, of course, are our partners within Education who have been a joint driving force behind the project, and also our wonderful corporate sponsors – PwC, Specsavers, Rothschilds & Co, and KPMG. Without their support this work wouldn’t have been possible.”