Making reasonable adjustments: what early years leaders need to know

The Equality Act 2010 applies to all early years settings, including schools, private, voluntary and independent (PVI) providers, and childminders, whether or not they receive government funding.

One of the key requirements of the Act is the duty to make reasonable adjustments for disabled children.

What are reasonable adjustments?

Reasonable adjustments mean:

• changing what we do, how we do it, or the environment and support we provide
• when this is reasonable, 
• so that we are removing or reducing barriers that would otherwise put a disabled child at a substantial disadvantage.

It’s important to note that the duty is anticipatory. That means settings should think ahead about the barriers disabled children may encounter and take reasonable steps to remove or reduce them. It isn’t enough just to respond to the difficulties you observe children having (important though that is).

Early Years Leadership: How to Improve Outcomes for Every Child

A child’s early years are a period of extraordinary growth: the brain reaches around 90% of its adult size by age five, creating foundations for increasingly complex thinking and learning. 
For school leaders, Reception and early-years provision should therefore be a strategic priority, and not simply one phase among many.
The evidence reinforces this. High-quality early education and care is particularly beneficial for disadvantaged children, pupils with special educational needs and boys across many social and behavioural outcomes. Higher-quality education and care between ages two and four is also associated with better academic results at the end of Key Stage 1.
As we focus on tackling persistent disadvantage gaps, this really matters. Acting early - before gaps grow - is essential to giving every child a fair start.

What high-quality practice looks like

Quality in the early years is shaped by everyday interactions. Back-and-forth conversations help develop children’s communication while extending their thinking and learning. Scaffolding enables children to succeed at tasks that are currently too difficult to complete independently.

Small Moments, Big Impact: Supporting Children’s Learning at Home

A child’s learning does not begin when they start in their early years setting. 

Long before then, children are learning through stories, songs, conversations, play, movement and everyday routines at home. 

The research is clear: these ordinary moments can have an extraordinary influence on children’s language, confidence, self-regulation and later success in school. 

For early years settings, that makes the home learning environment one of the most powerful places to start when working in partnership with families.

Research shows that children’s Home Learning Environment (HLE) plays a major role in their early development. 

There is considerable research showing the importance of children’s Home Learning Environment (HLE). In fact, the HLE may even more impact on children’s learning than high-quality early education and care. 

What is the Home Learning Environment (HLE)?

The HLE refers to the opportunities for learning that occur in the home. This includes toys to play with, books to share, and paints, pencils and crayons to draw with. The most important learning opportunities occur through conversations and play between the child and others at home. The activities which have the strongest impact are those in the area of language and literacy. These include conversation, pretend play and shared enjoyment of books, songs and nursery rhymes.

How to make the most of the EEF’s Early Years Evidence Store

The Education Endowment Foundation’s Early Years Evidence Store is a fantastic resource for early years leaders and educators.

It brings together research evidence, practical examples and video clips to help educators explore what can make a difference to children’s learning and development.

But there’s a question I’m often asked in my work with early years settings and schools:

How do we move from reading the evidence to actually using it to improve practice?

That’s the focus of my new free 30-minute video guide.

A practical guide to using the Early Years Evidence Store

In the video, I walk you through:

• What the Early Years Evidence Store is, and how it fits with the wider EEF resources for early years
• Who it’s for, and why it can be useful for both leaders and practitioners
• How to use it for quality improvement rather than simply as a source of information
• A worked example showing how you could use the Evidence Store with a team to identify priorities and support improvement
• Practical next steps to help you put what you've learned into action

The aim isn't simply to help you get familiar with research evidence.

It’s to help you use that evidence as part of a process of professional learning, reflection and improvement.

Free resources to help you get started

I've also created a set of free resources to accompany the video, including:

• A downloadable PDF of the PowerPoint
• Quick links to key EEF resources
• An action planner to help you turn the evidence into practical next steps

Understanding the key person approach: a quick guide

Babies, toddlers and young children in the early years need consistent, warm and responsive care from the adults they spend time with. Consistency matters for all children, and especially for the youngest.

The key person approach is a powerful way of ensuring that each child can be known, cared for and treasured by a special person. It’s also an important way of ensuring that parents feel confident and know who to talk to if they have any concerns or important information to share. 

An effective key person approach builds on attachment theory. Every child needs warm, loving and consistent care from their special adult. That strong relationship helps children to become more confident and to develop a wider web of relationships with other children and with adults. 

Choosing childcare and early education for your baby or toddler? Here are 8 key things to look out for

Recently, quite a few friends and colleagues have asked for advice on choosing childcare and early education for their baby or toddler, usually when returning to work. 

Drawing on my 30 years' experience working in early years, here are 8 key things to look for when you visit a nursery or childminder setting.

1. Trust Your Instinct: Above all else, prioritise your feelings about the setting. Ask yourself if the environment feels safe, kind, and supportive. While reputation and online ratings are important, your parental instinct combined with careful observation is a highly reliable guide to making the best choice for you and your child.
2. Check for the Key Person Approach: Look for a setting that understands the Key Person Approach as a way to build a strong emotional bond between the early years educator and your child. Ask what happens when the key person is not there—for example, is there is a 'co-person' backup? Or is it a small team so every staff member can get to know your child well. Childminders are naturally well-placed to offer this type of strong, consistent care, but check that the childminder understands the Key Person Approach and will not be over-stretched by adding your child to their setting.

Bridging Research and Practice: Lessons from ShREC and REACT in Early Childhood Education

 A new collaborative project in East London is boosting children’s early language development through evidence-informed professional development.

Initial challenges had revealed the need to balance language strategies with emotional wellbeing. The result? A streamlined, research-based framework delivered through an iterative process.

These approaches improved adult–child interactions and created a collaborative 'third space' where research and practice inform each other.

Find out more about lessons learned from this valuable experience.

Julian Grenier and Lynn Ang

Supporting children’s early language development is a key aim for early education and childcare. Research evidence tells us that better vocabulary at age 5 is associated with improved progress in learning to read, better exam results aged 16, more likelihood of gaining a degree, and even better health at age 42 (Shuey and Kankaraš, 2018).

That’s why a group of us working in an economically disadvantaged area of East London felt it was a moral imperative to do more to help children develop stronger language and communication skills in the early years. Child poverty is strongly associated with poorer language development: could making improvements to the quality of early education and care help children to succeed against the odds?