Pilot Evaluation of Early Skills for Life
Client: Education Endowment Foundation
Duration: 2025-2027
Geography: England
Solutions: Evaluation, Research, Measurement
Personal, Social and Emotional Development (PSED) in early childhood is foundational to children's long-term educational success, mental health, and life outcomes. The Early Years Foundation Stage (EYFS) framework recognises PSED as a prime area of learning, emphasising its importance for children's ability to manage feelings, develop relationships, and engage effectively with learning. Central to PSED is self-regulation, which refers to children's capacity to manage their emotions, attention, and behaviour. Existing research shows that self-regulation is strongly predictive of later academic achievement and wellbeing (Robson et al., 2020). However, substantial variation exists in children's PSED and self-regulation skills at school entry, with socioeconomic disadvantage associated with lower levels of social-emotional competence.
Early intervention programmes that successfully support PSED development can help narrow these gaps and improve outcomes for all children.
Early Skills for Life (ESfL) is a universal programme designed to support PSED and cognitive and emotional self-regulation in children aged three to five years attending early years settings. The programme includes four core components: whole-class circle time with stories and guided discussion; story extension activities integrated into continuous provision; adult-led small-group activities for targeted children; and embedded continuous professional development (CPD) for practitioners. The programme also engages families through Stay and Play sessions, home learning resources, and online materials.
Oxford MeasurEd is conducting a pilot evaluation of the ESfL programme. The evaluation focuses on three- to four-year-old children across 20 early years (EY) settings (Private, Voluntary, and Independent (PVI) nurseries and maintained nurseries) during the 2026/27 academic year. The evaluation is led by Dr Jonah Bury (Principal Investigator) and Dr Anushay Mazhar (Project Manager).
The evaluation will determine if the programme has the potential for future success, can be effectively implemented, and is suitable for a rigorous impact evaluation. Insights gained will deepen the understanding of how the programme works, its potential outcomes, and the measures needed to evaluate its impact accurately.
Key Activities:
The evaluation will employ a mixed-methods design incorporating multiple data collection activities:
Desk-based review to understand the theory underpinning the programme and identify potential outcomes measures that could be used to evaluate impact.
Qualitative interviews with the delivery team, nursery staff and parents/carers to explore feasibility and evidence of promise.
Surveys of nursery staff to evaluate feasibility and evidence of promise.
Observations of classroom practice, stay and play sessions, and CPD training observations to capture programme delivery, implementation fidelity, and contextual factors influencing delivery.
Expert consultations with early years specialists to understand business as usual PSED provision and contextualise evaluation findings.
Child outcome measure piloting with 90-120 children to assess the feasibility, acceptability, and psychometric properties of proposed outcome measure.
Synthesis of evidence against success criteria to assess whether the intervention is ready to progress to an efficacy trial.
