Borough’s youngsters to benefit from funding success in early years pilot programme

Councillor Kieran Heakin, cabinet member for children's services

Rochdale has secured funding from the Department for Education which will see health visitors trained to support children most at risk of starting school without basic language and communications skills.

Health visitors are well positioned to carry out this work as they routinely assess children’s development at age two to two-and-a-half; and thanks to the new funding bid they will now receive additional training to further identify speech, language and communication needs (SLCN) early on, with a new assessment and support package.

School-readiness is a major part of the Greater Manchester Strategy, which includes the city-region’s five-year aim to exceed the national average for the proportion of children reaching a ‘good level of development’ at the end of reception.

Rochdale has seen the highest rise in Greater Manchester in the national measure of school readiness and child development. Rochdale’s increase in Good Level of Development (GLD) is higher than any other authority, increasing by 2.4% on last year.

The Secretary of State for Education, Damien Hinds MP,  has set the ambition to halve the number of children who do not achieve the expected level of communication and language standards for early years (from 28% to 14%). One key area of focus for central government is the early years settings and improving practice in pre-reception settings and schools.

In November 2018 the council held its first School Readiness Conference to show its commitment to ensuring that the borough’s young people are school ready. The conference brought together practitioners from across the early years settings and was attended by Mayor of Greater Manchester, Andy Burnham.

At the conference Mayor of Greater Manchester, Andy Burnham, congratulated the council on its work around school readiness saying Rochdale was the highest performing borough in Greater Manchester and that this increase had contributed to making a positive difference to the lives of an additional 200 children across Greater Manchester. This new funding will further this work.

Councillor Kieran Heakin, Rochdale Council’s cabinet member for children’s services, said: “Making sure children are ready for school is so important, I saw during my time as a head teacher the impact not being school ready has. I am really proud of the work we are doing as a council and to have the Mayor of Greater Manchester commend us for our work is really pleasing. This new funding to further train health visitors will be vital in supporting our school readiness strategy.”

A number of health visitors will be being trained up in March who will then cascade the training across health visiting practitioners.