20 SepUK Early Years Leader Joins Goodstart
Goodstart Early Learning has recently announced the appointment of renowned United Kingdom early childhood leader, Sue Robb OBE, as their general manager of pedagogy and practice.
Ms Robb is an international thought leader in early childhood pedagogy and OBE. Her work includes the rollout of the 30-hour childcare entitlement announced during 2017 in the United Kingdom and establishing the role of the early years quality improvement consultant in all local governments. She influenced the successful implementation of policy and program to improve the quality of provision and children’s outcomes, designed and delivered national programs such as the statutory Early Years Foundation Stage Framework and its associated Quality Improvement Program, built partnerships to secure buy-in, and restructured monitoring and evaluation systems to support children’s ongoing progress.
Until July, Ms Robb was the Head of Early Learning at Action for Children in the UK where she led the delivery of the Department of Education’s partnership with the early years and childcare.
Sue is an advocate for the case for two years of quality education for all children before their transition to school.
“In the UK, there has been a journey of quality improvement, which really took off in 2008 with the introduction of the Early Years Foundation Stage Framework along with universal access of 15 hours early learning for children aged three to five years. This focus on early learning in the UK was further enhanced with the introduction of 15 hours access to early learning and development for the most vulnerable two-year-olds,” Sue said.
Ms Robb said the early years were the foundation upon which a country’s future is built with high quality early years’ experiences impacting upon a child’s future school and life success.
“In Australia, there are increasingly numbers of children starting school behind and on the world stage, Australia is lagging behind … Australia has a low rate of enrolment of three-year-olds in early learning and is in the bottom third of countries ranked by the OECD … children all over the world – across Europe, China, New Zealand and parts of South Asia are already benefiting from two years of high quality early learning.”
