Achieving Two Year Olds (A2YO)

In June 2012 our early years team (a Mott MacDonald and Hempsall’s partnership) started work to deliver the DfE national support contract – Achieving Two Year Olds (A2YO). Government legislation requires that for the least advantaged two-year-olds in England, 570 hours of free early education is provided annually.

The project offers support across all 152 local authorities in England, developing capacity to meet the new entitlement; supporting the improvement of quality provision that best meets the needs of two-year-olds; and stimulating parental demand for free early education places.

We set to work quickly designing a Self-Evaluation Tool, and issuing this to all local authorities ahead of very well attended launch events in July 2012. We have also run a raft of regional and sub-regional events, sharing tools, ideas and resources across the country. There is a strong emphasis on collaboration and cross border networking within the project.

Key to our success is the placement of regional leads who have created strong relationships with each individual local authority within their region. They have supported local authorities in completing their self-evaluation form and support plan, which has then been used to commission bespoke support from a new supply chain of providers, including voluntary and charitable sectors.

We have created a vibrant online knowledge sharing community, utilising the Local Government Association Knowledge Hub, established a regular series of regional networks for Local Authorities, and also supported a significant number of provider networks.

We now successfully provide specific and tailored support to meet the identified needs of each individual authority, with on-going rapid responses to emerging need.

Client: Department for Education (DfE).