Hungry Little Minds - national three-year campaign launched

The Department for Education has launched a new three-year campaign to support parents and carers to play a bigger part in boosting early literacy and communication. 

Hungry Little Minds, launched on 2 July, aims to support the government’s ambition, over the next ten years, to halve the proportion of children who finish reception year without the communication, language and literacy skills they need to thrive.

In his announcement, Education Secretary Damian Hinds, outlined how families will be given access to videos with tips and advice, as well as ideas for building literacy into everyday opportunities, like going shopping and playing imaginary games, as they aim to tackle some of the barriers parents face when trying to support their child's learning at home.

A coalition of businesses and organisations will support the campaign, including the Lego Group, Penguin Random House and Pearson to provide opportunities for parents to access activities and support so they can play a bigger role in their child's early language development and education.  

As part of the ambition to target intervention to disadvantaged families all across the country, £22 million will be invested in up to 1,800 new school-based nursery places in disadvantaged areas. Despite the increase in the number of children reaching a good level of development by the end of Reception over the past five years, data shows that children from the lowest-income families are more likely to leave without achieving this standard. 

You can read the full press release here.

The Hungry Little Minds website has lots of ideas and activities for different age groups.

There is also a campaign toolkit available to help promote Hungry Little Minds to partners and parents.