School Readiness.

School Readiness means each child enters school ready to engage in and benefit from early learning experiences that best promote the child’s success. Children are ‘school ready’ when they are resilient and confident, with a keenness to learn and have effective personal and social skills.

At Queens Crescent we have based our definition of ‘School Readiness’ on UNICEF’s model of the three elements of school readiness:

• Children’s readiness for school
• Families and communities’ readiness for school
• Settings readiness for children

These three elements are related and should connect together to ensure each child is ready for school.

Preschool  settings: Children’s readiness for school.

We support our diverse and vast number of preschool settings through regular contact, meetings and training throughout the year as part of our Transition Cycle. This has been developed over many years by our FS2 leaders and reflects our expectations of ‘School Readiness’. As well as supporting clear and accurate transfer documentation on Development Matters and thorough transfer meetings we also require all of our preschool settings to complete our ‘School Ready’ document. This allows every child to have the same information documented about their readiness for school and have areas of concern to be highlighted

Ready settings:

At Queens Crescent we support all of Preschool settings in the good practice below whilst also ourselves developing it further throughout the FS2 year (and beyond).

• Communicate and share information about every child’s unique development with parents and other relevant partners.
• Provide challenging and meaningful learning opportunities for each child, whilst giving them confidence in becoming a learner.
• Demonstrate high expectations for each unique child by providing challenge, promoting resilience and raising aspirations.
• Enthuse, engage and motivate all children and allow them the opportunity to make decisions.
• Understand the different stages of development and plan accordingly for each child, responding to the different ways that children learn and reflecting this in provision and practice.
• Track individual children’s progress and share outcomes at regular intervals.
• Share ideas about how to support home learning with parents.
• Respect and respond to the children’s backgrounds, circumstances and culture.
• Consider the changing school readiness needs of the children as they enter the different phases of their education; from preschool to FS2 and FS2 to Year 1.
• Ensure all children are supported to and achieve their full potential.

Ready families:

Parents are children’s first and most enduring educators. When parents and practitioners work together the impact on children’s learning and development is immense. At Queens Crescent we agree to the above and we would very much like all of our parents to continue to be supportive and provide stimulating home environments. We have formulated our own ‘FS2 Home school agreement’ and provide a copy of this for all of our families to read and use to support their children.

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