| East Ayrshire Council |
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| Strategy |
| The Early Intervention
Initiative within East Ayrshire has four main elements: |
- the development of a skills profile for use in pre-school
establishments
- the development of nursery to primary transition procedures
- the establishment of primary one screening systems
- the implementation of projects to enhance the development of
literacy and numeracy skills in both nursery and primary school establishments.
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| Statistical Information
|
| The Early Intervention
Initiative in East Ayrshire is being introduced over a 3 year period (1997-2000),
with additional schools and nursery establishments joining in each phase. The following is
an outline of the cumulative totals of establishments involved: |
| Phase 1: 11 nursery
establishments and 12 primary schools participated, involving 1019 P1 and P2 pupils
and 756 pre-school children. |
| Phase 2: a total of
21 nursery establishments will be involved, together with 32 primary schools.
|
| Phase 3: from August
1999, all nursery and primary establishments within East Ayrshire will be part of the
Early Intervention Initiative, a total of 30 nursery establishments and
45 primary schools. |
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| Achievements and emerging lessons
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| The Early Intervention
Initiative has provided an opportunity to increase the pace of the dissemination of good
practice across the authority. By the end of Session 1998/99, East Ayrshire will have in
place a Skills Profile for use in all pre-school establishments which will allow both
monitoring of a child’s skills development as well as assisting in the planning of
supports for ‘next steps’ development. The nursery to primary transfer process
will also be enhanced through policy guidelines and examples of good practice for nursery
to primary liaison and primary one induction procedures. A pilot project has already
highlighted that parents felt that becoming familiar with the primary one teacher and the
primary one classroom, prior to their child starting school was particularly helpful for
both themselves and their child. |
| Staff development has played a
central role in assisting nursery and primary establishments re-examine teaching
approaches, gain information on new resources and share ideas. A rolling programme of
staff development training will be ongoing throughout the 3 years of the Initiative.
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| Support from the project team of
teachers and nursery nurses to individual establishments has assisted the implementation
of individual projects and initiatives. These have included parental involvement projects
of paired reading, story sacks and play-along maths; increased use of computer assisted
learning in both nursery and primary establishments: and curricular enhancement through
phonological awareness approaches, including rhyming projects within nursery and primary
one classes. Feedback from nurseries involved in the rhyming projects highlighted that
children are making more use of the book corner and more conscious of the
language of books and can be seen and heard talking and telling the story. |
| Parental involvement plays a
central focus within East Ayrshire’s initiatives. Projects within both nursery
establishments and primary schools have been set up to foster increased parental
participation in the development of early skills through play opportunities or through
structured parental support. Parental commitment has been high with close to 100% of
parents (or another relative) attending the workshops. The response from parents has been
enthusiastic. Paired reading projects have been set up for parents of primary 1
pupils and have produced increased enthusiasm for reading before it was a struggle to
get him to do this reading homework but his attitude to reading has improved greatly; she
enjoyed choosing the books and wants everyone to hear her reading. The reading
attainments of the pupils taking part also demonstrated improvement; 77% of pupils were
reported by parents as reading more and making fewer mistakes and 73% of parents
reported that their child was enjoying reading more and showing more interest in books,
as well as choosing a wider range of books. In addition, parents expressed increased
commitment to working with their children: as a result of the project I will be much
more involved - having learned quite a lot. |
| It has become clear that there
are overriding policies and practices which should be adopted as good practice across all
institutions. However, it is then important to ensure that new initiatives being
introduced both meet a perceived need as well as contribute to the nursery’s or
school’s own priorities, systems and structures. |
