‘NEETs’ aren’t often on the agenda at early years conferences – but that’s when intervention can have most impact.
On Tuesday night, at Thrive at Five’s annual symposium, keynote speaker Ravi Gurumurthy, Chief Executive Officer at Nesta, and our other panellists talked about the potential for early intervention to help children avoid ending up ‘not in education, employment or training’. As Ravi says: “The early years are most formative, and you have to start there.”
We know that children in England who finish their reception year without reaching a good level of development are three times more likely to find themselves not in education, employment or training as young adults.
While there is great work going on in many parts of the early years sector, too many families are missing the support they need. Ravi shared that around one in five children do not get their two-year health visitor check; a crucial moment for spotting early support needs.
He described the scale of children not able to meet developmental milestones as a ‘moral outrage’. This was echoed by Danielle Swainston, children and families director at Redcar and Cleveland Council, who called it a ‘public health emergency’.
Chief executive Aida Cable highlighted the work that Thrive at Five is doing to join up, support and build on existing services through its programmes in Stoke-on-Trent, Redcar & Cleveland, Middlesbrough and West Dunbartonshire.
Watch highlights from the night:
"We very much see the early years as a foundation for children as they go through their school life. So the work with Thrive at Five, particularly around speech language and communication, has been really, really powerful."
– Danielle
Guests also heard from Jon Rouse CBE, chief executive of Stoke on Trent City Council, who talked about the increase in children achieving a good level of development – noticeably higher in Thrive at Five areas than the national average and other parts of the city.
Gillian Hamilton, chief education officer at West Dunbartonshire Council, shared her hopes for the newly-launched programme in her area “to do something different and to get different results.”
As Ravi said in his keynote, “If we get it right, if we get the organisations pointing in the right way, we can actually get to this very moonshot goal.”
Watch Jon Rouse’s interview in full: