New resources from The National Literacy Trust

The National Literacy Trust has produced several free resources that focus on parents’ support for young children’s literacy at home in 2025.

The home learning environment plays a vital role in supporting children’s early learning and later life outcomes.  The research report looks at how parents support early learning and literacy at home in 2025 and how this has changed since 2019.

Supporting the home learning environment looks at how it is the quality of the home learning environment that has the most significant impact on children’s speech, language, and communication skills and their social-emotional development, and how we all have a part to play.

Share stories with me is a an A5 booklet designed for parents and carers of early years children.

The booklet contains:

• Simple ways for families to look at books and share stories with babies and children
• Examples of things to chat about when looking at books and guidance on how to make up stories together
• Explanations to support parents to understand the importance of looking at books and sharing stories with their babies and children.

For reception teachers

The DfE have produced materials to support reception teachers when completing the EYFS Profile at the end of the reception year.

Help for early years providers : EYFS profile assessment support. This assessment support brings together guidance, videos, practical examples and key messages for anyone who completes the EYFS profile assessment, as well as senior leaders.

Reception networks are part of the government’s Best Start in Life strategy and the regional improvement for standards and excellence (RISE) universal offer to help schools improve the quality of reception-year provision.

They are school-led, locally delivered networks focused on sharing strong, evidence-informed reception practice.

Each network is led by a reception-network lead school. Lead schools have sustained strengths in early years provision and leadership, and support other schools in their local area.

Early years foundation stage profile assessment support – GOV.UK

The support aims to:

• develop practitioners’ and leaders’ knowledge and expertise
• address common misconceptions about the assessment requirements
• improve the reliability of EYFS profile assessment data
• Strengthening assessment practice will support children’s successful transition to Year 1. This will help to ensure that professional dialogue between EYFS and Year 1 colleagues is informed by accurate and consistent judgements.