Frequently Asked Questions

• You must expect to host at least 10 children who will be starting school in September 2024. 

• You must be able to accommodate 4 weeks of 30-minute staff professional development sessions in your setting in January/February 2024. We can arrange these with you flexibly to suit your needs. 

• Your staff must be able and willing to carry out 3 fun maths activities per week for 12 weeks between January and April 2024. 

• You must be able to accommodate 2-3 days of child assessments in October/November 2023 and again in May/June/July 2024. These assessments will be carried out by a trained, DBS-checked evaluator with individual children in the setting and will last approximately 30 minutes per child 

• Half of the settings who sign up will receive the programme between January and April 2024. The remaining settings will receive the programme during the academic year 2024-25. You will not be able to choose which group you are in, and must be happy to receive the programme in either of these periods. 

• You must be located in one of the regions listed below. 

At the moment we are only able to work with settings in the listed local authority list (see question above for local authorities). This is a requirement of our funder. If you are interested in the programme but your setting is elsewhere, we would still love to hear from you: we will keep your details in our database and contact you if research collaboration opportunities arise in the future in your area. 

Our eligibility criteria has changed! If you expect to have at least 10 children who will be starting reception in 2024, you will now be eligible to take part in the programme.

At the moment we are not able to include settings with fewer than 10 children in our programme. This is because the programme is being evaluated and in order for our study to show meaningful results, the evaluators need each setting to have more than 15 children in the year before Reception. However, if you are interested in the programme but your setting hosts fewer children, we would still love to hear from you: we will keep your details in our database and contact you if appropriate research collaboration opportunities arise in the future. 

The only children who cannot take part in the assessments are those who staff feel that cannot access the pre- and post-assessment tasks by Qa research, as these require attending for ~30 minutes and some minimal receptive language or those who will not be starting reception in 2024.

However, these children can take part in the activities with other children.

Each setting is asked to engage in a minimum of three activities per week for the 12-week duration of the programme. During the first four weeks of the programme, staff will also be asked to attend weekly 30-minute face-to-face professional development sessions. The sessions introduce the activity cards and they support educators’ understanding of how early maths and executive functions co-develop. 

We will provide a set of resources to each setting at the start of the programme, which you will be allowed to keep. Some of the activities also require other resources, but we have aimed to keep these resources general (e.g. blocks or a ball) and each activity card contains a list of suggested alternatives if you do not have access to the resources list

There are no direct costs for settings, as costs are covered by the funder. The 4 training sessions for the teachers are free of charge – the trainers will come to your setting at a convenient time.  

In recognition that there are costs associated with undertaking and implementing professional development, additional funding has been made available by the EEF to reimburse nurseries for 50% of their staff’s time/cover cost to attend training.   

In addition, to support engagement with research activities (e.g. organising days researchers can visit to complete child assessments, educators completing surveys or interviews) every setting involved will receive a payment of £300 to thank you for completing the activities. The payment will be provided in August/September 2024 after the final set of child assessments and surveys. 

Yes, we will provide certificates for practitioners if requested. 

No, at the moment there is no accreditation available since this is an ongoing research project.   

An independent evaluation team will come in Autumn 2023 and again in summer 2024 to assess the children. This will allow us to assess the evidence for the effectiveness of the ONE programme and it is being done separately from us as the delivery team to ensure the testing is robust. The evaluators will play around 3 games with the children lasting in total about 30 minutes per child, and they will ideally test 15 of your 3–4-year-olds. All evaluators will hold up-to-date DBS certificates and will be selected for their experience working with young children.  

When the evaluation report is published, we will notify all settings. We will also send around a newsletter with a summary of our main results to all the settings involved in the programme.  

If you have any questions or queries, please send us an email at theone@psy.ox.ac.uk and we will aim to get back to you as soon as possible. 

Please sign up using this form.