Praise for new initiative

An initiative to improve oral language skills of preschoolers has been praised by an international education conference.

Counties Manukau Health’s innovation hub, Ko Awatea, has partnered with the Ministry of Education to deliver the Now We’re Talking initiative.

The concept is aimed at students in 20 South Auckland early learning centres, providing them with a wider and more complex vocabulary.

Staff from Ko Awatea, Ministry of Education and Auckland Kindergarten Association pres- ented their findings at an educational summit in the United States earlier this year.

Ko Awatea project manager Rebecca Lawn attended the summit and says their presentation was very well received.

‘‘The delegates were interested in how facilitators encouraged staff to embrace the programme,’’ Lawn says.

She says facilitators were interested in improvement in communities where languages other than English are spoken at home.

Now We’re Talking follows on from an Early Learning participation campaign which was aimed at increasing enrolment in early learning organisations.

Children gained greater vocabulary and teachers experienced an increase in confidence as a result. The programme will soon be rolled out to another 20 early learning centres across South Auckland.