Children's Plan

The Children’s Plan, announced on 11 December 2007, is a ten-year strategy to make England the best place in the world for children and young people to grow up. Developed through consultation with the public and experts, it places families at the heart of everything we do.

The plan is built on the fact that young people spend only one fifth of their childhood at school, and that they learn best when their families support and encourage them and when they are experiencing positive activities outside the school day. It sets out a series of ambitions for all areas of children’s lives:

• At age five, 90% of children will be developing well across all areas of the early years foundation stages
• At age 11, 95% of children will have reached expected levels in literacy and numeracy
• At age 19, 90% will have achieved the equivalent of five good GCSEs
• At age 19, the majority of children will be ready for higher education with at least 6 out of 10 children achieving the equivalent of A-levels
• Child poverty will be halved by 2010 and eradicated by 2020
• There will be clear improvements in child health, with the proportion of overweight children reduced to 2000 levels
• The number of first time young offenders will be reduced so that by 2020 the number receiving a conviction, reprimand or final warning for a recordable offence has fallen by a quarter

These ambitions will be achieved with the help of a wide range of specific policies, drawing upon £850 million of investment (some new and some already announced). Further information can be found on the DCSF website.

Policies which are of particular relevance to the Sure Start programme include:

• The Government will expand the offer of free childcare places to the most disadvantaged two year olds (building on the current childcare offer to all three and four year olds).
• More will be done to provide advice, information and guidance to parents and families about their child’s development. This will include extending the principle behind the “red book” so that parents can track their child’s development through early years and into primary school. And the development of parent-held progress records so that parents can track their child’s progress in maths, English, languages, sport, music and other school activities.
• All newly-qualified teachers should be qualified to Masters-level and that by 2015, every full day care setting should be led by a graduate, with two graduates in deprived areas or where quality needs significant improvement. The DCSF will also explore the case for having nationally recognised Chartered Teacher Status.
• Because up to a fifth of children are identified as having a special educational need, there will be a greater priority placed on raising expectations that these children will succeed. The Children’s Plan contains a package of measures: improved teacher training, an enhanced role for school SEN co-ordinators and better data to identify whether SEN pupils are progressing. A key principle of the Children’s Plan is that intervening early should be the objective for schools and other agencies to support children.
• To ensure whether the measures to support special educational needs are working effectively, Ofsted will be asked to lead a full review into the quality of special education needs provision starting in 2009.
• There is evidence that children and young people with summer birthdays have poorer educational outcomes than those born in the autumn, so the Government will explore whether there is scope for creating more flexibility in the school admissions system. The aim will be to give parents a greater degree of choice over when their child’s formal education should start.
• Because the majority of accidents involving children take place in the home, £18m over the next three years will be invested in new home safety equipment including stair gates and fire alarms and targeted at the most vulnerable families.
• The DCSF will work with the Department of Health, the NHS and other health experts to develop the first ever Child Health Strategy. This will be published in spring 2008.