About Getting Ready to Learn

The Getting Ready to Learn (GRtL) programme seeks to support preschool education settings with DE-funded places to encourage and develop parental involvement in children's early learning to ensure maximum parental contribution at a crucial time in children's early brain development.

The project has been based on research and evidence of best practice in parental engagement. Account has also been taken of the results of an online survey with health and education practitioners and workshops with parents. All of the findings concluded that parents would benefit from knowing more about:

  • how children develop, including attachment and brain development;
  • the importance of parent-child relationships for the child's development and behaviour;
  • the importance of childhood education and learning; and
  • the importance of healthy lifestyles and diet.

The majority of pre-school settings already have programmes in place to support both induction and transition. Getting Ready to Learn focusses on raising parent's awareness of how they can support children's learning at home through-out the pre-school year A key focus is on sharing practice across the Early Years Sector, so that practitioners can learn from, and support each other, in establishing effective programmes of support for parents.

Settings are invited to participate by developing a programme of support for parents around four key themes:

  • Education Works in Pre-school
  • Happy Healthy Kids
  • Ages & Stages, 3-4
  • Big Bedtime Read

Settings may be:

  • introducing new practice
  • developing existing practice to increase parental awareness of how to support children more effectively in the home

In all cases, the focus is on transforming 'how things are done'; making a real difference to the lives of young children.

Settings will be required to set out in detail, what they propose to do and how they propose to do it. It should be clear from the application/implementation plan how the proposals will transform practice e.g. enhancing staff capacity, engaging parents more effectively etc. It should also be evident how the programme will be embedded and sustained longer term.