We were delighted to host the Early Years Initiative Learning Seminar at Mercers’ Hall on 9 June, welcoming grantees and our learning partner, SQW.
The seminar brought together grantees from Phase 2 (Cohorts 1 & 2) of the Early Years Special Initiative for a day of reflection, discussion and shared learning. It served as both a knowledge-sharing event and a celebration of the achievements to date.
Grantees shared valuable insights into their ongoing work supporting numeracy, literacy and language development and school readiness for children aged 2–5. They also spoke candidly about the challenges they have encountered, the progress they have made, and what they are looking forward to as their projects continue to develop.
Key themes discussed included:
- Sustainability
- Story building
- Meeting families and practitioners needs
- Learning by experiment and failure
- Measuring impact and real time evidence
- Parental engagement
- Relational practice
We are proud to support this collective effort to improve early years outcomes in London and look forward to seeing the continued impact of the work being done.
Grantees from Cohort 1 & 2 include:
Cohort 1: British Association for Early Childhood Education, Coram Family and Childcare, The Fatherhood Institute, NCFE and Campaign for Learning, National Day Nurseries Association and Youth Sport Trust
Cohort 2: Auditory Verbal UK , Chickenshed , The Children's Literacy Charity, Discover Children's Story Centre, Home-Start London, National Literacy Trust and Peeple.
Our Early Years Special Initiative is funded by The Charity of Sir Richard Whittington which the Mercers’ Company is trustee. The initiative forms part of our wider Young People & Education funding programme. For more information visit Young People & Education.