The Early Intervention Foundation’s recent report, Realising the Potential of Early Intervention, makes for sobering reading. It starts with some startling facts: poverty and economic disadvantage have a “particularly negative impact” on children’s cognitive, social and emotional skills. Gaps in development can be seen as early as two years old, and these gaps persist and grow throughout primary and secondary school.
However, the report goes on to assert that these gaps are not set in stone and there is growing evidence about what can help: early intervention (read the report at bit.ly/EarlyIntervene). So what is early intervention? The report defines it as identifying and providing support early, quickly and responsively. It means working to prevent problems occurring, being alert to the signs of them developing and tackling them head-on before they get worse. It means making it our business to know and watch out for the warning signs, and having a range of possible approaches to provide proactive and preventative support to address the issues.
There is no one-size-fits-all approach. As the report highlights, in some cases, ongoing, careful support and monitoring will be needed throughout childhood and adolescence. Equally, early intervention does not just apply to what occurs in the early years - it can happen at any point in a child’s education. Dynamic, diagnostic assessment should be the bedrock of every teacher’s assessment repertoire.
As the Education Endowment Foundation’s Guide to Assessing and Monitoring Pupil Progress highlights, we need to place a heavy emphasis on identifying children in need of additional support and determining the exact nature of their difficulties (read the guide at bit.ly/AssessMonitor). Let’s be clear, this is not the easy option. Diagnostic assessment demands a high level of expertise and skill in observing not only what a child knows and can do but also the processes they use to learn. We need to explore both process and product - or, to put it another way, cognition and metacognition.
Helpfully, this report also summarises a range of early intervention programmes and approaches that have been rigorously tested in order tell us what forms of support can be effective. Directing our efforts to develop children’s physical, cognitive, behavioural, and social and emotional development will have important long-term benefits. Many of these approaches will need considerable time and investment to ensure they are effective, and will require us to work together as a profession, acknowledging the collective effort it takes to support a child from the early years through to GCSEs.
In times where funding is scarce, surely the only responsible decision we can make is to use programmes that have been proven through careful evaluation to improve outcomes, rather than take risks with untested approaches. Working collectively, we can ensure progress is sustained and built upon. We need to place the child at the heart of the decisions we make, because whatever is going on in the world around us, these young people will be the future.
Megan Dixon is director of literacy at the Aspire Educational Trust
