Bolton Start Well

As early education providers and schools share their on entry assessments, we will get an overview of children’s needs in Bolton that will support better delivery of services.

The Better Start Portal is a secure way for children’s EYFS assessment information to be collected and submitted.

The key points are:

• on entry each term to funded 2 year old education
• on entry each term to funded 3 and 4 year old education

Each term providers will be asked to submit assessment information for new funded children. The submission date for each term will be aligned with the Headcount schedule in the Autumn, Spring and Summer. Because the Better Start Portal is part of the Capita One Provider Portal, children’s information will be mostly pre-populated through completion of the Headcount.

We aim to collect the first data sets for funded 2, 3 and 4 year olds between 28th October to November 15th. A task will be issued via the Better Start Portal by Bolton Start Well on 28th October 2019.

There is an opportunity to attend a demo session on 14th October 3-4 pm at BSTC to support completion of the on entry data collection.

User Guides will be available on the Start Well website, week ending 18th October.

Please direct any questions relating to login, passwords or accessing the portal to Information Management: one.support@bolton.gov.uk

If you need support completing early years outcomes assessments for EYFS, please contact Start Well on 01204 338149 and ask to speak to a member of the Quality and Outcomes Team.

Developing the Better Start Portal to replace the Bolton excel Tracker

The Better Start Portal enables early education providers to input data for all children in their setting, as long as parents have been informed of the process via your privacy notices. A small set of reports have been developed with Bolton providers that can show patterns and trends and support inhouse analysis.

The longer term vision is that this will replace the excel tracker spreadsheet. Training to support you with this will be available later in the term and in Spring 2020.  Some providers may not need to access training and just use the guidance to use the reports.  

Thank you for all your help in implementing the new Better Start Portal.