Early Skills for Life – pilot

This project is no longer accepting expressions of interest.

What is Early Skills for Life?

Early Skills for Life is a 20-weeks universal programme (with additional targeted elements) to promote self-regulationHow children monitor their emotions and thoughts, and adapt their behaviour in different circumstances. and personal, social and emotional development (PSED) in children using storybooks and play-based activities.

During the pilot, practitioners will deliver fortnightly circle time sessions (15-minutes) and extension activities (20-minutes) to all children and small-group play-based activities to a maximum of six children.

Who is leading this project?

Partnership for Children, a children’s mental health charity with over 20 years of experience of designing and delivering social and emotional learning programmes, are the developers for Early Skills for Life and will lead this project.

What will this project look like in your setting?

At least two staff members, including a project lead, will attend online training activities including training sessions and network meetings. Training and programme resources will help staff to deliver the programme and select up to six children currently not meeting or at risk of not meeting expected levels of PSED to receive additional support. All settings will receive book tokens (£100) and a contribution towards staff costs (£7.50 per hour per practitioner) for time spent taking part in professional development activities.

Each fortnight, practitioners will lead a circle time activity and guided discussion along with extension activities. Children selected for additional support will participate in weekly small group activities (e.g., role-playing). Project leaders will be responsible for observing practice and leading reflection meetings. Settings will also engage families through resource sharing and stay-and-play sessions.

Settings will be asked to complete some evaluation requirements during the project (e.g., surveys). A small number of settings will be invited to participate in additional evaluation activities (e.g., observations and piloting of outcome measures) for which they will receive £250.

Who can take part?

• School-based, maintained and private, voluntary and independent nurseries across England with a minimum of 10 three-to-four-year-olds attending 15 hours weekly. Settings with joined Reception rooms are not eligible.
• Settings where at least two staff members can participate in the programme.
• Settings that are not currently delivering similar interventions that may conflict with the pilot. This includes settings taking part in another EEF early years pilots/​trials, except for Maths Champions, or a Research School evidence into action partnership over the school year 2026/2027 in which participating practitioners are involved.

Self-regulationHow children monitor their emotions and thoughts, and adapt their behaviour in different circumstances. is an area of promise to improve outcomes for children, particularly those from disadvantaged backgrounds. Evidence from EEF’s Early Years Toolkit suggests that children from disadvantaged backgrounds are likely to begin early years education with weaker self-regulationHow children monitor their emotions and thoughts, and adapt their behaviour in different circumstances. skills than their more affluent peers so they might be more likely to benefit from early years programmes that teach self-regulationHow children monitor their emotions and thoughts, and adapt their behaviour in different circumstances. strategies. Programmes, like Early Skills for Life, that focus on the self-regulationHow children monitor their emotions and thoughts, and adapt their behaviour in different circumstances. strategies of self-monitoring and self-awareness can also have a positive impact on various outcomes for children, including working memory and cognitive flexibility (Muir et al. 2023).

Early Skills for Life was previously funded through EEF’s Early-Stage Programme Development work, which supports the development of programmes in areas where there are gaps in the evidence. After showing evidence of promise in this earlier stage, this pilot will address the readiness of the programme for a larger scale trial.

This pilot project will be independently evaluated by Oxford MeasurEd, a boutique education consultancy, who will assess the feasibility, perceived impact on children’s self-regulationHow children monitor their emotions and thoughts, and adapt their behaviour in different circumstances. and personal, social and emotional development and perceived changes in staff and families as well as potential scalability of Early Skills for Life. The evaluation will also explore how settings implemented the programme and their motivation to engage with the programme. These findings will be published in an evaluation report.