Skerne Park Academy

How we use Launchpad at Skerne Park Academy

We have been using Launchpad at Skerne Park Academy systematically for the past year and love it! We initially bought into the approach due to having low starting points across EYFS and very poor speech and language.

We use it by baselining all children against the framework when they come into Nursery/Reception so that we know where their starting points are. This is alongside their EYFS baseline so they complement each other. This helps us to identify any gaps in the pre-literacy skills and we then plan from this assessment in a variety of different ways. The way we plan depends on the percentage of children not able to do a specific skill. So, we might plan carpet times, small group activities, provocations in the environment or targeted interactions with individual children.

We use the Launchpad for Literacy Class Tracker tool from the website to input the data and update this every half term along with our school data. The tracking tool shows you the percentages and the improvement each half term so no need for calculators…it does it for you! We have found doing it this way has helped us identify gaps in skills quickly and, by doing so, ensured rapid progress for the children in our Early Years.

When we first used the Skills Framework we were quite overwhelmed and it seemed enormous. However, don’t let that put you off. Once you use it a few times and do some training it all fits into place and is a fantastic CPD for anyone who works with young children. I would say Launchpad is a game changer for anyone working with young children and would recommend it to anyone!

Jo Mallinson, EYFS Lead, Skerne Park Academy