Welcome to the Winter 2024 edition of the Isos Partnership newsletter. We’re delighted to bring you up to speed with the work we’ve been doing in recent months, and to share some of the things we have in the pipeline.

If you want to chat to us about anything featured in this edition, or to engage with the discussions we’re having as a team, we’d love to hear from you.

Reports, blogs and announcements

This week saw the publication of Jodie's report for IPPR on the childcare challenge, supported by Save The Children:

The report was picked up in the The Guardian, Nursery World and Today on Radio 4. Jodie discussed the report on LBC, Woman’s Hour (from 13:30) and 5 Live:

The report assesses the inheritance of the new UK government on childcare and early education in England, and considers the key delivery challenges and choices it faces in realising its ambitions in this area. The report seeks to re-imagine childcare as a public service, capable of supporting all children and families effectively – including the most disadvantaged. Recommendations include creating a fair and sustainable funding system, ensuring places match the needs of all children and families, and developing the childcare offer so it provides effective, joined-up early support for all. Along the way, the report considers the future for school-based nurseries, private and voluntary providers, childminders and local authorities.

In other news, as well as becoming a carbon neutral organisation this year, we’re now accredited with the Good Business Charter, Working Families, and Race at Work, to formally recognise our commitment to people and planet.

You can see all of our recent publications here.

Talking about our work

Nat joined a panel discussion at the Labour Party Conference in September on how we can create an effective and sustainable SEND system. She also led a Youth Endowment Fund virtual learning café focused on SEND and youth violence:

In October Ben spoke at the LGA annual conference, a parliamentary briefing in Westminster hosted by the f40 group, and the CCN annual conference alongside Dame Christine Lenehan – the government’s newly-appointed strategic adviser on SEND – to discuss the proposals set out in our report on the future of the SEND system.

Simon spoke at Thrive at Five’s October event The Changing Face of Early Years Support, drawing on the work we’ve been doing as Thrive’s learning partner as they roll out their work to build capacity in local areas to support children in their early years:

Ben presented our emerging thinking on enablers and improvement cycles in local SEND systems, as part of a learning seminar for the What Works in SEND programme. We were delighted to present alongside Islington and Rotherham councils, whose work we’ve featured in recent case studies:

In November Jodie spoke at a roundtable to mark the launch of a new Timewise report on flexible working in childcare. Jodie helped develop the report which draws on Childcare Pioneers – a two-year action research project with Early Years Alliance and London Early Years Foundation (LEYF) nurseries. The report makes recommendations for providers, local and national government on how to develop flexible working and build the early years workforce of the future:

What we’re working on

We’ve been working with a number of local areas piloting new approaches to supporting their schools and pupils, as part of the AEC-sponsored LocalEd2025 project. During the programme, we’ve been supporting Milton Keynes and Sheffield to develop new models of accountability. The work these two authorities are doing to develop school reports was recently showcased in Schools Week and referenced by the BBC in relation to parallel work in Camden:

We’re close to concluding the first phase of our work with Portsmouth Education Partnership to evaluate Ordinarily Available Provision in the city, and assess the options for future self-evaluation models.

We started work on a project for the DfE exploring the operation and impact of Safety Valve agreements on children, young people and their families. The research will gather user views in ten local authority case study areas to help build an in-depth understanding of the experience, operation and impact of Safety Valve agreements in local areas. The research will also seek to capture learning and examples of effective practice, including barriers, to inform future policy relating to high needs funding and SEND.

Following our report on how we can create a more effective and sustainable SEND system, we’ve been conducting a series of regional, national and online workshops to test our recommendations and discuss how best to take them forward – commissioned by the Local Government Association. The workshops have brought together representatives from local authorities, health, education settings, Parent Carer Forums and groups of young people with additional needs.

In October we published our latest case study of effective practice in local SEND systems, as part of the What Works in SEND programme. The case study reviews how Barking and Dagenham worked with its schools, parents and carers to grow local capacity and expertise to enable more children and young people with SEND to be educated successfully in local schools.

On the horizon

Collective Futures, Ethos Foundation and The Henry Smith Charity have recently commissioned us to be part of an exciting new project to look at how to most effectively target resources to maximise impact in early childhood and beyond.

The project aims to increase understanding of how different local factors influence educational attainment gaps across different age phases, and to create new tools to support funders to use this evidence to inform their decisions about where and how their support has potential to have greatest impact. We're really pleased to be working alongside the Education Policy Institute and Mime Consulting to deliver this work.

The first phase of the work, until the end of 2024, is focusing on identifying patterns in local achievement gaps and developing a list of priority drivers which influence different local outcomes. In 2025, Isos Partnership will be starting in-depth fieldwork with local authorities to develop a detailed account of how local practices, strategies and decision-making can support positive outcomes across the age range.

Get in touch

If you want to follow up on anything we’ve covered in this edition of the newsletter, or discuss some ideas we might be able to help with, we’d love to hear from you. Or feel free to reach out to an individual member of the team. In the meantime, we hope you have a good end to 2024 and enjoy your break over the festive season.

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