Achieving Early is a two-year, coaching-based improvement programme for early years practitioners, which in this trial will be delivered to nursery and Reception classes in schools. It uses specialist early years coaches to conduct monthly visits to train practitioners and improve pupil outcomes. During initial visits, the trained coach meets the early years leaders in school and conducts a needs analysis. This is used to design a bespoke action plan. Coaches then support a nominated champion to deliver the action plan in subsequent visits.
Action plans focus specifically on four areas:
- leadership and management;
- progress and learning;
- health, happiness and well-being; and
- working together to improve parental engagement.
Also included is online support and one meeting per term of peer-to-peer support
The project was co-funded by the EEF and the Department for Education as part of our Early Years Professional Development funding round. The EEF aspired to robustly evaluate the coaching programme, which had already been delivered in over 250 early years setting in England.
The evaluation was designed as a Randomised Control Trial with the NFER team. It aimed to measure the impact of Achieving Early on the language skills of target children in each setting, in addition to assessing the impact of the programme on a variety of Early Learning Goals for all children in the setting. The evaluation was also designed to include an implementation and process evaluation, to analyse how the programme would be implemented across different settings and the barriers and facilitators to implementation.
The EEF cancelled this trial before delivery began in settings due to findings from the September 2021 evaluation report of Achievement for All.