Talking Early Years with June O'Sullivan

Gill and June became friends under the most usual circumstances. June was very fed up with Ofsted and the attitude they had towards the Early Years sector. Gill was appointed the Director of Early Years and she listened. She heard what the sector was saying and has been listening ever since. Have a listen to Gill talk about her fourteen years at Ofsted, her passion for music and how she thinks the...

Children's mental health: In conversation with Kate Silverton Mum to two young children, journalist and children's mental health advocate, Kate Silverton shares her ground-breaking new approach to parenting under-fives that helps to make family life so much easier with her best-selling book : There’s No Such Thing as ‘Naughty ’. Listen to the podcast and enjoy a conversation which also a...

The Importance of Storytelling : In Conversation with Trisha Lee from Make Believe Arts Trisha is passionate about Gussin-Paley but she is even more passionate about the rationale for storytelling and why its so important. She rails against the schoolification which squeezes out storytelling in favour of learning the structure of writing so now children can tell you what an adverb is but are writi...

Listen to June O’Sullivan talk candidly with Dr Linda Greenwall – founder of the charity, Dental Wellness Trust about the urgent need for free supervised tooth brushing programmes to be implemented across Early Years settings and schools. According to the latest figures by the Local Government Association which show nearly 45,000 hospital operations were performed to remove children’s rotten teeth...

Talking Early Years with June O'Sullivan: In conversation with Julian Grenier I was very pleased to talk to Julian Grenier , Headteacher of Sheringham Nursery School in Newham. He and I have always had a mutual respect for our work, but we have not always seen eye to eye and I hope that continues. Great practice comes from robust debate and critical, serious thinking where we have the mutual...

June O’Sullivan meets Chefs in Schools CEO, Naomi Duncan who is leading a new revolution in school food, recruiting and training chefs with pedigrees from some of London’s top restaurants such as Nopi & Noma to take on food and food education in schools.  Backed by leading chefs and restaurateurs including Henry Dimbleby, Prue Leith and Yottam Ottolenghi, they have changed the face of school f...

June O’Sullivan meets CJ Bowry, CEO of Surrey based charity, Sal’s Shoes which has distributed an impressive two million pairs of shoes in the UK and across the world in a bid to tackle the rise in shoe poverty. In a world whereby 300 million children are often walking without shoes – risking foot injures and disease, the charity avoids waste by sending a pair of clean, good quality shoes to anoth...

Join June O’Sullivan in discussion with the Book Trust’s CEO, Diana Gerald who helps transform lives by getting children and families reading. With a deep understanding of the role that education plays in creating opportunity, which is at the heart of BookTrust's work, Diana talks about how she got the best job in the world and how challenging it can be to get children to read, despite the go...

To be honest, cultural capital is not the usual conversation piece. But it is both a conscious and unconscious part of our everyday lives. Now that Ofsted has introduced the concept into the new inspection framework, cultural capital will become more conscious for many people based on the essential knowledge that children need to be educated citizens.   Here, Helen discusses why cultural capital s...

June O’Sullivan meets Dr Lala Manners who has enjoyed a long and varied career in the field of Early Years movement studies and physical development: as a teacher, trainer, educator, consultant, researcher, author and broadcaster.  Here, they debate the importance of practitioners engaging in physical development and overcoming the fear by getting ‘stuck in’ whilst allowing children to just be. To...

June O’Sullivan meets leading, award-winning expert in Early Years education, Laura Henry. Join them for a cuppa where they discuss the power of literacy for children’s long term learning and development, multi-generational relationships and the inspiration behind Laura's book; JoJo and Gran Gran which has become the first British-made animated TV show for CBeebies centred around the lives of...

Who Says Giraffes Can’t Dance?  Well, Giles Andreae did! He also reminded us that there is a Rumble in the Jungle and a Commotion in the Ocean and if you look hard enough you will find Captain Flinn with the Pirate Dinosaurs in Smuggler’s Bay. Giraffe Can’t Dance reached the top five most best-selling books in lockdown, not surprising because poor Gerald the Giraffe thinks he can’t dance and so ca...

In this episode, June O'Sullivan, the CEO of London Early Years Foundation talks about how she reformed from being a charity many years ago into a social business to deliver specific impact. We discuss the seven elements of the LEYF pedagogy that really addresses the rights of children and how June measures it with the LEYF Pedagogical Development Scales (LPDS) she uses to evaluate success.