The partner organisation from England Pen Green cooperates with Rockingham Primary School and Our Lady of Walsingham Catholic Primary: Presentation United Kingdom

The partner organisation VBJK cooperates with Mezennestje day-care centre and Kolva kindergarten: Presentation Belgium

The partner organisation UNIBO cooperates with Direzione Didattica di Vignola: Presentation Italy

The partner organisation ERI cooperates with Primary School in Tišina: Presentation Slovenia

Troughout this first project period we faced folowing challenges:

• In our learning network the associated partner advocacy poverty group plays an important role in critical reflection and bringing in the multiple perspectives of children and families living in poverty. We had to search how to make this work and avoid that they are not just spectators but participants in what the childcare centre and preschool would do in terms of actions. Leading the research of the experiences of parents, was a good decision in order to give them a clear and supporting role for the other centres. Especially when ECEC centres dominantly take in an institutional perspective instead of what children, families and local communities also need, bringing in organisations that are advocates for families living in poverty or families from ethnic cultural minorities, is an interesting future pathway to ameliorate the quality of the transitions for children.
• In order to create sustainable chance, ECEC centres should be competent systems in which individual professionals are supported and foremost enabled to create innovations. In both centres we also work on ensuring that there is a continuous professional learning structure. For instance in the childcare center, the director is a driven actor of change. Yet her pedagogical coaches did not seem to be less engaged in the problem of transitions in order to support the childcare workers to work on the actions. In the preschool, directors have changed 3 times throughout the first period of this project. Yet, from a systemic view it is important in our case study that we work with the level of the class practice of the teachers and childcare workers, but also work with the directors who can ensure good working conditions in order to organize a warmer and more inclusive transition. Each time we tried to involve the director in order to ensure some continuity. The pedagogical guidance person of the school in this project has been an important coach for the preschool teachers and also in order to create the conditions within the school for successful actions. Nevertheless, the importance of her role should also be acknowledged and protected in the school system.

Based on these common principles, we developed first actions that would be undertaken to ensure a more smooth and warm transition for all children and families:

1. The childcare centre childcare centre Mezennestje (P9) started to organise monthly family moments for families in the neigboorhoud to support them in the education of their children and more specificaly the transition to preschool. Staff of the preschool are also present to talk about this big step with parents.
2. The pre- and primary school Kolva (P10 -Sint-Maartensinstituut, Moorselbaan) started with welcoming parents in the class of the youngest children. Before that parents had to wait outside the school and rarely had opportunities to talk to the teachers of their children. Staff of the childcare centre childcare centre Mezennestje (P9) supported the teachers how to organise a ‘settling down time’ for children and their parents in the school.
3. We organised staff meetings with all the involved partners to inform and make other colleagues aware of the problems that occur for children and families in transitional periods. This is an important step in order to make sure the innovations that take place in this project will be sustainable in all the organisations. Out of these staff discussions it for example became clear that also in the childcare centre, it is important to again work on vision on how to welcome children and parents through settling down time. So the action of welcoming parents applies to both the pre- and primary school Kolva (P10 -Sint-Maartensinstituut, Moorselbaan) and the childcare centre Mezennestje (P9).

In order to research how parents themselves experience the transtion from home or childcare to preschool education, we organised 4 focus groups and 10 individual interviews in the period January –March. The associated partner, advocay poverty organisation Mensen voor Mensen NGO, together with VBJK, a Centre for Innovation in the Early Years (P4) took this in hands. They organised, invited parents (with the help of the childcare centre and the preschool) and analysed the data in different meetings. The analysis of the data has been presented to the learning network in two sessions. Based on the discussion of the analysis, the participants enriched their current actions and developed new actions like how to create a caring, emotionally safe and exciting outdoor play ground for children and parents. The majority of parents problematised the lack of care and supervision of children during the moments children are not in the preschool class (outdoor playtime, lunch, …). As it is challenging or sometimes even not possible for parents to go in dialogue with the preschool staff, they are worried about this and some expressed that they would rather keep their children home. However, they find preschool an important educational environment for their children in terms of learning the dominant language, learning to be in a social group and learning to become autonomous in life.