Blog: Working with parents and young children to help them reach a Good Level of Development

The Department for Education has set a milestone: by 2028, 75% of five-year-olds in England should reach a ‘Good Level of Development’ (GLD) when they start Year 1 – up from 68% now. That’s encouraging news for children, families, schools and wider society, showing how important the early years are for giving every child the best start.

Best Start Family Hubs are expanding across England as one of the key ways to achieve this. They highlight the importance of parents and carers working alongside practitioners across early years education, health and family support. This approach builds on the evidence from Sure Start Children’s Centres and decades of research on the huge benefits of early support during the first five years of brain development.

At Peeple, we know that working together with parents – recognising their knowledge and experience, and building their confidence in supporting their child’s learning – makes a real difference to outcomes. This is especially powerful for children from less advantaged backgrounds, as shown in the Peep Learning Together RCT Study, helping to narrow the attainment gap and improve opportunities for all children.

The 12 Early Learning Goals that make up a Good Level of Development sit within five key areas of children’s learning. These are basically the same five strands of development covered by the 74 topics in the Peep Learning Together Programme (LTP); the additional wording in the LTP strands is in brackets:

• Personal, social and emotional development
• Communication and language
• (Health and) Physical development
• (Early) Literacy
• (Early) Maths

We’ve mapped the 12 Early Learning Goals to related Peep Learning Together Programme topics. Here’s an example of how the Literacy goals connect with Peep topics:

You can explore the full list for all 12 goals in the LTP section of our website.

Want to find out more?

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