ERO Reports: Positive Foundations for Learning: Confident and Competent Children in Early Childhood Services and Literacy in Early Childhood Services: Good Practice

Date: 02/02/2012

The Education Review Office (ERO) released two early childhood national reports today: Positive Foundations for Learning: Confident and Competent Children in Early Childhood Services and Literacy in Early Childhood Services: Good Practice.

These reports contain useful information for the early childhood sector and highlight the importance of strong leadership, respectful relationships and well established self-review processes in early childhood education.

Positive Foundations for Learning: Confident and Competent Children in Early Childhood Services reports on ERO’s evaluation of how effectively early childhood services helped children to develop social competence, emotional well-being and an understanding of appropriate behaviour. Eighty three percent of the early childhood services reviewed had highly or mostly effective practices to help children develop social and emotional competence.

Social and emotional competence is about children understanding emotions and learning to work with others. Children learn to understand their own emotions and those of others at an early age.

“Developing strong social and emotional competence is essential for children’s everyday well-being, as well as for engagement and learning in school and beyond,” said Di Anderson, National Manager for ERO.

Literacy in Early Childhood Services: Good Practice provides examples of high quality literacy teaching and learning in 13 early childhood services. A Government priority for education is that every child achieves literacy and numeracy levels that enable success. As evidenced in this report, quality literacy teaching and learning practices are meaningful and engaging. Literacy is encouraged through purposeful play that reflects the child’s expertise and incorporates home literacy practices.

This is the companion report to Literacy in Early Childhood Services: Teaching and Learning February 2011.This report highlighted the wide variety of early literacy practices across the early childhood sector and the need for a better understanding of the theory, philosophy and practice of literacy teaching and learning in early childhood settings.