Jonathan O'Brien (Cork North Central, Sinn Fein)
Link to this: Individually | In context | Oireachtas source

220. To ask the Minister for Education and Skills if he will provide an update on his Department's goal to improve the oral language competence of young children in early childhood care and education settings and its readiness to develop early mathematical language and ideas; and the mechanism used to measure same. [25314/14]

Ruairi Quinn (Dublin South East, Labour)
Link to this: Individually | In context | Oireachtas source

The majority of support for preschool provision is funded by the Department of Children and Youth Affairs. My Department has funded the development of two practice frameworks - Síolta which is a quality framework for early childhood education and Aistear, the curriculum framework for early childhood education. The learning goals in Aistear for early literacy and numeracy focus on:

- Developing non-verbal communication skills, i.e., body movement, facial expression, rules;

- Using language in a symbolic form, i.e., pictures, signs, shapes, numbers, letters;

- Developing higher-order-skills, i.e., predicting, analysing, justifying, negotiating, reasoning; and

- Nurturing positive dispositions, i.e., showing an interest, acting on curiosity, persevering.

There are a number of other initiatives to foster the development of early literacy and numeracy skills. Some of these initiatives use the Hanen Learning Language and Loving it programme; others work closely with the Speech and Language Therapy service of the HSE. A recent initiative includes the Chatter Matters campaign which was launched earlier this year by Dublin's Lord Mayor and which aims to highlight the importance of parents/caregivers talking to and playing with their babies if they are to acquire language. The next phase in the provision of supports to early years practitioners includes the establishment of a National Early Years Support Service which will work with early years services on quality improvement including the development of a rich environment fostering early literacy and numeracy.