Enhancing support for primary one: Enhancing support

There is a wide range of support available to practitioners, school leaders and LAs, which has a particular focus on early years. This section highlights what is currently available, and will soon become available, to support attainment and improvement across early years, and particularly in primary one.

What is currently available to enhance support in primary one?

Learning to read in the early years professional learning resource

This suite of professional learning resources has been developed with educators across Scotland to provide professional support, specifically on reading in the early years. Drawing upon a range of international research and guidance, it supports staff to interpret Scotland's curriculum guidance and make research-informed decisions for learning and teaching. The resource aims to develop and consolidate knowledge and practice of how children learn to read in the early years. It also provides a tool for self-evaluation and gives access to further research and resources.

Supporting Early Mathematical Development

A programme of eleven ‘Supporting Early Mathematical Development’ professional learning webinars has been created for ELC and early primary practitioners. The sessions provide support and guidance on teaching approaches for numeracy and mathematics which are aimed at ensuring learners progress and effectively develop their early mathematical skills. Furthermore, they provide practical guidance and suggestions on ways of permeating early level numeracy and mathematics in the spaces, interactions, and experiences across settings, supporting a play-pedagogy approach.

ES currently offer several professional learning resources to support practitioners on the key principles of early numeracy and mathematics via the National Numeracy and Mathematics Professional Learning Community on Glow. This includes modules focused on early counting, early mathematical development and block play.

Play Pedagogy

ES currently offer practitioners support on developing a play pedagogy approach in primary one via the ‘Early Level Play Pedagogy Toolkit’ (Education Scotland, 2019). This is built firmly on the principles and guidance within Realising the Ambition. Since 2020, ES has also worked with LAs and other stakeholders to provide bespoke support to ELC practitioners, teachers and ELC setting and school leaders on Realising the Ambition and child-centred play pedagogy.

‘Equity: Mitigating the Impact of Poverty’

The ‘Equity: Mitigating the Impact of Poverty’ professional learning resource, developed by ES with LAs, builds leaders’ and practitioners’ capacity to reduce the effects of poverty through inclusive practice, early intervention, and effective use of data. It supports the SAC by improving literacy, numeracy, and wellbeing for learners most affected by disadvantage. A current 2025/26 pilot with four LAs is helping leaders integrate equity approaches into improvement planning and strengthen collaborative, prevention-focused work across ELC and schools. Initial evaluations point to improved understanding of poverty and the emergence of more targeted actions to reduce the poverty-related attainment gap.

Attainment advisor (AA) support as part of the Scottish Attainment Challenge (SAC)

AAs continue to provide a crucial layer of support to LAs as part of the SAC. By working with LAs to interrogate their data more deeply, AAs can support schools to identify patterns earlier, refine their approaches and monitor the impact of interventions with greater accuracy. Promoting and signposting the use of proven, research-informed strategies, encouraging leaders to adopt approaches that are responsive to local need and sustainable over time. The emphasis on early intervention is especially valuable in the early years, where timely, well-targeted support can prevent small gaps from widening. Through ongoing challenge, support, guidance and collaboration, AAs strengthen local capacity and help authorities deliver more coherent and effective equity approaches.

Public Health Approach to Learning (PHAL)

The ‘Public Health Approach to Learning’ (PHAL) represents a collaboration between ES, Public Health Scotland, Police Scotland, and the Scottish Prevention Hub. Designed to enhance health, wellbeing, justice, and educational outcomes for children and young people, PHAL adopts a collaborative, holistic, data-driven, and place-based methodology. By integrating insights from multiple sources, it aims to empower schools and those in the local community to make informed decisions, strengthen curriculum planning, and embed rights-based practices aligned with United Nations Convention on Rights of the Child (UNCRC) principles.

Currently, phase one is being piloted in south Edinburgh, with three schools supporting the refinement of approaches to ensure that they meet school community and local needs with a key focus on prevention and intervention. Some ELC data and indicators for school age children, including primary one, are included in the data and analytics dashboard, in conjunction with lived experience from school-aged children and young people to support this.

Additional Support Needs (ASN) Teachers’ Professional Learning Programme

Funded by SG and led by ES with the support of an advisory panel with LA representation, this pilot programme strengthens inclusive practice and aims to improve outcomes for all learners. With a first cohort of teachers and pupil support staff, the programme is being developed to better support ASN teachers in Scotland, building consistent, nationally recognised specialist expertise in ASN. Working with LAs, this national programme supports early, effective identification, planning and support for additional support needs – a crucial step for improving learning outcomes at all levels, including primary one.

Building Racial Literacy Professional Learning Programme

A wide range of ELC and primary school educators take part in ES’s anti-racist professional learning programme, ‘Building Racial Literacy’. The programme includes improving confidence in using anti-racist, culturally responsive approaches which can help improve parental and family engagement in children’s learning. For ELC and primary school educators, action plans often include diversifying books as well as the spaces, interactions and experiences in their settings.

Planned and potential developments

Leading play pedagogy in primary one

ES is currently developing a professional learning resource for primary headteachers and senior leaders, to be published in June 2026. This will support the strategic implementation of play pedagogy within primary one. The resource is based on the evidence and guidance within Realising the Ambition and will focus on high-quality environments, observations, interactions, and planning. Session content has been previously trialled in several LAs with positive evaluations reported. Practitioner and school-level evaluations will be collated in May 2027 to measure the impact of this professional learning.

Pedagogy in Practice

From August 2026, ES will publish the new ‘Pedagogy in Practice’ professional learning programme. This programme will be accessed by educators across all sectors, with the first two of three phases being facilitated by ES using a national cohort model. The programme offers a full-day gateway session considering system identity, self-identity and learner identity, followed by five online building block sessions:

differentiation and adaptive teaching
questioning
metacognition
pace, challenge and application, and
dialogue and feedback

Phase three of the programme, covering subject and context specific pedagogy will build on existing high quality ES materials and will be developed more fully during 2026/27 in line with the Curriculum Improvement Cycle (CIC) timeline.

Curriculum Improvement Cycle (CIC)

ES is currently collaborating with practitioners and stakeholder organisations on the Curriculum Improvement Cycle (CIC). Practitioners and teachers working across the early level of Curriculum for Excellence (CfE) are contributing to a wide range of co-production activity to support various aspects of curriculum improvement. An ‘Early Level Reference Group’ and other stakeholder engagement on the early level of CfE will commence in March 2026. The national practice guidance ‘Realising the Ambition: Being Me,’ (Education Scotland, 2020) which supports practice to the end of the early level and beyond, has also been adopted into the CIC. The CIC therefore provides an opportunity to develop further and strengthen the Scottish approach to early years education in-line with international evidence on effective early learning.

Joint submission by Education Scotland and Director for Children and Families (DCaF) on the inclusion of ELC in the SAC

In August 2025, as part of the SAC call for evidence, ES and DCaF submitted a proposal for the extension of SAC to include all funded ELC from birth onwards. The submission made the case for the SAC programme to have a greater emphasis on the early years, including early language and communication. This reflected evidence that the poverty-related gap in children’s outcomes is evident from the earliest stages; that avoiding or reducing equity gaps in the early years is more effective and less costly than attempting to do so at school; that early investment can have the greatest impact, and that early learning better predicts later educational success than any other factor.

National practice guidance on additional support needs in the early years

DCaF is currently exploring funding options to facilitate ES to lead on the co-production of a new section on meeting additional support needs to extend the current national practice guidance Realising the Ambition. If resources are secured it is intended that introduction of the new guidance be supported by a national programme of professional learning.

Leadership in private and third sector ELC provision

Research shows that leadership is a key factor in driving quality improvement and improved outcomes in ELC. DCaF is currently exploring funding options to facilitate ES to develop, with private and third sector ELC, a bespoke leadership programme, to support improvement in this part of the ELC sector.

Early Learning and Childcare Equity and Excellence Leads (EELs)

SG committed to provide an additional graduate (now known as Equity and Excellence Leads) in ELC settings in Scotland's most deprived areas by August 2018. EELs play a critical role in supporting children to close the poverty-related outcomes gap by:

being an additional resource over and above the usual staffing complement for a setting therefore, having greater flexibility and reflection time for this purpose
working directly with children and families and not focusing on managerial responsibilities
leading and supporting pedagogy in a setting, and upskilling fellow practitioners

The funding allocation for EELs across Scotland was expected to support 435 full time equivalent posts. Figures for 2025 showed that 273 EELs were in post. DCaF has commissioned an evaluation of the programme which will be published in 2026. Findings from the evaluation will form an important evidence base on which to plan next steps.