Devon’s strategy for early years effectiveness
Early Years ONE Devon is the overarching strategy to support early years setting effectiveness in Devon.
Early Years ONE Devon vision: Devon Early Years and Childcare Service (EYCS) has the highest expectation for the achievement of all children in Devon. We believe this county should be a great place to start out in life, grow up and work; our children deserve the best care and learning opportunities possible. The aspiration is that Devon is one of the best places in England to thrive.
Early Years Consultants (EYC) work with Early Years Childcare Advisers (EYCA) to provide a holistic approach to drive improvement in outcomes for children. Our Early Years ONE Devon strategy supports all Early Years settings to become good or outstanding and ensures they meet the needs of all children. We have a strong focus on disadvantage and want to help everyone to access their right to an education, good quality care, and achieve their full potential.
We will promote a setting effectiveness approach that recognises and supports settings to be responsible for their own improvement.
The key principles of the Early Years ONE Devon strategy are:
- to work collaboratively with services to support a holistic approach and effective partnerships to support setting improvement
- to build leadership capacity across Devon to enable settings to manage their own improvement and identify when they need external support
Devon Early Years and Childcare Service will:
- always have the interests of children and families as its prime focus
- work in partnership with all stakeholders i.e. Ofsted, Department for Education (DfE)
- act openly and with transparency in all matters
- support and challenge early years settings to improve provision
Early Years ONE Devon process
- Devon EYCS setting data is collected and analysed at Devon, locality and individual setting level e.g. Early Years Pupil Premium (EYPP), number of funded 2-year-olds, OFSTED Inspection outcome
- Termly meetings attended by Early Years Consultants and Early Years and Childcare Advisers are held where setting data (e.g. Ofsted outcomes, sufficiency information, management or venue changes) and any support provided and progress to date are discussed and where appropriate support is offered to settings.
This support may include any of the following:
Early Years Consultant visits
- Support 2-year-olds (to evaluate the quality of the practice and provision in meeting the needs of 2-year-olds identifying strengths and priorities).
- Support children with Early Years Pupil Premium (EYPP) – improving outcomes for our EYPP children. Focus for development may include supporting early communication and language, emotional wellbeing and the home learning environment).
- New manager or new premises – supporting implementation of the EYFS Learning and Development requirements.
Early Years and Childcare Adviser visits
- Safeguarding and welfare requirements
- Leadership and management (including support for new managers)
- Financial and sustainability support
- Recruitment and retention
- Developing your business model
- Pre-Ofsted suitability of new premises visit
Post Ofsted Action Plan (POAP) visits
Where a setting receives verbal notification of a Requires Improvement or Inadequate judgement from Ofsted they should inform their EYCA and EYC immediately. A joint visit will be untaken by the EYCA and EYC where appropriate and an action plan developed. This information will be shared at the termly Early Years ONE Devon meeting to determine progress and future support agreed.
The Early Years Consultants are a highly qualified and experienced team of EYFS leaders and teachers meeting the needs of children from 0-5 years. We have a range of knowledge across the broad EYFS curriculum and an understanding of the unique pedagogical approaches of early years teaching and learning to provide you with the most current thinking and creative approaches to meeting the needs of all children. The Early Years Consultancy team can support settings to develop effective provision through our high quality and aspirational consultancy, training and professional development services.
Early Years Consultants contact details – link to Meet the Team page to be added
Early Years and Childcare Advisers are an experienced and qualified team who work closely with the Early Years Consultant team. They provide a holistic overview of themes relating to the day to day management and quality of your provision and are responsible for ensuring that all children and families have access to high quality early years and childcare provision that is flexible and affordable. They will support all settings to develop an accessible offer to parents to enable them to take up their full government funding entitlement while supporting settings’ business planning to assist in long term sustainability. They provide advice and guidance to all new and existing Ofsted registered childcare settings to support them meet a range of areas from registering with Ofsted, safeguarding, management, recruitment and retention.
We acknowledge that the Early Years and Childcare sector is very diverse, therefore, the EYCA team will work closely with a setting to develop tailored timely support in order to improve outcomes for children.