It has been a tumultuous few years for everyone working in the early years, with the multiple challenges of Covid-19, lockdowns, and their impact on our children and our staff teams.
As the director of East London Research School, and the head teacher of a maintained nursery school, I spend a lot of my time considering the best available evidence, and how we should act on it. But, when we consider the unprecedented challenges of the Covid-19 pandemic, it is difficult to find robust evidence.
Face-to-face research was impossible, and many settings had to drop out of research because of high levels of staff sickness.
With these words of caution in mind, the report from the Education Endowment Foundation, The impact of the Covid-19 pandemic on children’s socio-emotional wellbeing and attainment during the Reception Year, which came out in May, is still important. What’s more, it has implications which go beyond the Reception year to the whole of the EYFS.
The key findings of the Education Endowment Foundation (EEF)’s research include:
Most parents and most schools felt that children had been disadvantaged by the Covid-19 pandemic, but as children returned to school, they settled back positively and there was some recovery of lost learning.
The children most negatively affected appear to be those learning English as an additional language.
Girls seem to have been affected more than boys.
Children eligible for free school meals do not appear to have been affected much more than all children.
HOME LEARNING
The EEF report also includes some positive findings, which match our own findings at East London Research School about families with children aged two, three and four years old attending Sheringham Nursery School.
First of all, the large majority of parents appreciated the support which was offered to their children. The most-appreciated type of support was ‘live’ – where staff interacted with children through online group sessions, or one-to-one, using online video and classroom platforms and WhatsApp. However, a significant number of parents did not feel confident supporting their child’s learning at home, in line with the suggestions received, or did not find this enjoyable. The exception to this is that many parents enjoyed joining in with physical activities.
Parents also said that they would have appreciated more physical resources to help their child’s learning at home, beyond just interactions with staff on screen. At East London Research School, we found parents especially appreciated the play resources we shared via our partnership with Boromi. Boromi put together boxes of play materials, and local practitioners helped families to enjoy the resources through pre-recorded videos, and through live video calls.
As we look forward, this suggests we should consider the merits of introducing or further developing the following approaches:
Encouraging parents to be physically more active with their children, using technology to model and promote activities.
Supporting home learning by sharing play materials and guidance on how children might play and learn with the resources.
GETTING PARENTS INVOLVED
At Sheringham Nursery School, we have been working hard on both fronts, with strong signs of early success. We have adopted the physical activity and nutrition coordinator (PANCo) role, devised by PurpleBee, with Rahima Begum from our team completing the Level 4 training programme. Following the lead of London Early Years Foundation (see Nursery World’s July special report, p. 41), Rahima has worked with a local social enterprise called Bikeworks to lend bikes to parents. This is successfully encouraging parents and children to be more active together.
This focus on community leadership and family involvement builds on the evidence that families are eager to engage with this, and can be supported well online as well as in person. This has gone hand-in-hand with our work using the Movement Environment Rating Scale (MOVERS) for two-six-year-olds to ensure that our provision for physical development and health is continually improving. We have found that this focus on physical health also spins off into benefiting children’s emotional wellbeing and confidence.
The positive parental response to Boromi has led to a stronger focus on supporting children through the summer holiday, before they start Reception. With a particular focus on those children who may find the transition hard, we are running a summer programme which includes face-to-face sessions alongside online support and sharing resources for families to use at home.
These approaches appear to be widely acceptable, and can have a positive impact on children’s learning, health and wellbeing.
A bike lending scheme at LEYF brings parents together parents together (photo Isabelle Johnson)
EAL CHILDREN
The EEF’s research suggests that children learning English as an additional language (EAL) have been especially affected by lockdowns. The report notes that ‘the proportion of EAL children achieving a good level of development in our sample was 16 percentage points smaller than the proportion in the 2018/19 cohort’. Similarly, Lambeth Council in London concluded that EAL children in the early years ‘may be very negatively affected’.
As a result, it is especially important that we reflect on best practices to support this group of young children in the early years.
Learning English is very hard work for young children. At first, probably because it is difficult to come into an environment where everyone is speaking a different language, EAL children tend to be quiet. This is sometimes described as a ‘silent phase’, during which children are soaking up English like sponges. In fact, the best evidence suggests that to learn a language, you must speak it and use it regularly.
At East London Research School, we have been thinking hard about our work with EAL children who have fallen behind in learning English. Coming out of this reflection comes a new way of thinking about the adult role, which we have called the SHREC approach. This emphasises the active role that adults must take. Fliss James, one of our evidence leads in education, describes the approach in this way:
Share attention
Showing genuine interest in what a young child is focused on is a powerful way to establish a connection. It lets them know that you value them and want to spend time with them. By getting down to their level and engaging in their choice of activity, you can tune in and crucially pay attention to what they look at, what they do, and what they say. Sensitively joining in with a child’s play motivates children to communicate with you.
Respond
How we respond to a child once we have established joint engagement is dependent on our knowledge of them as a unique individual. Sensitive, supportive and stimulating responses need to be adaptive and informed by our understanding of the child’s development.
What might an attuned response look like? Responding involves noticing how the child communicates and acknowledging these verbal or non-verbal communications warmly. It involves being aware of your body language.
Responses can involve making appropriate eye contact, looking expectantly, nodding, smiling. Equally, it could be narrating their activity, a relevant comment that describes what the child can see, hear, feel, or articulating the link between their activity and previous learning or experiences.
Expand
Once the ‘back and forth’ rally of engagement is getting under way, the adult and child are sharing attention; the adult is responsively following the child’s lead.
This is where modelling and scaffolding begins with the adult pitching their language just above the level of the child. For example, if a child gives a one-word response such as ‘dog’, the adult should expand on it by repeating and building on this utterance by adding a more words. This helps children to use more complex utterances: ‘Yes, it’s a dog. A big/small/friendly/brown dog!’ Your knowledge of the child will inform what key word/s may be helpful to model.
Conversation
Sustained conversations that involve many turns are the goal. The beauty and power of conversation is that it offers children an opportunity to practise talking and to receive feedback from an adult. To encourage rich conversations, comment more, question less.
It is important to note that questions can be useful in helping children to cue turn-taking in conversation. Consider how to use questions sparingly so they are most effective. ‘W H’ and open questions are the most useful as they invite children to elaborate. As children’s conversational skills develop, adults can sensitively challenge children, shaping the conversation to incorporate more abstract topics that are removed from the here and now.
FIND OUT MORE
Find out more about Boromi
Find out more about the PANCo training programme
The East London Research School is part of the Research Schools Network, a network of schools that support the use of evidence to improve teaching practice. Find out more
REFERENCES
References
- Demie, F., Hau, A., Bellsham-Revell, A. and Gay, A. (2022). ‘The impact of school closures on pupils with English as an additional language’. Online: available at
- EEF (2022). ‘The impact of the Covid-19 pandemic on children’s socio-emotional wellbeing and attainment during the Reception Year’. Online: available here
- Grenier, J., Foster, L., and James, F. (2021). ‘How did the spring term lockdown affect children’s development in the early years?’. Online: available here
- James, F. (2022). ‘The ShREC approach – 4 evidence-informed strategies to promote high quality interactions with young children’. Online: available here
- Siraj, I. and Archer, C. (2017). ‘Movement Environment Rating Scale (MOVERS) for 2-6-year-olds Provision’. London: UCL IOE Press
Julian Grenier, director of East London Research School and head teacher of Sheringham Nursery School
