Families as First Teachers

Families as First Teachers (FaFT) acknowledges the important role families play as their child’s first teacher.

FaFT delivers quality early learning and parent support programs to young children and their families. It develops place-based programs to engage families and communities and build parents’ capacity to give their children the best start in life.

The aim of FaFT is to improve lifelong education, health and wellbeing outcomes for young Northern Territory children and their families.

For more information, go to the policy and advisory library to get FaFT policy, guidelines and procedures and eLearn for the FaFT book. You will need an NTSchools account to login.

Support and resources for teachers

FaFT programs deliver activities which have an emphasis on both child and adult learning.

Resources are available to support educator’s understanding of:

• The core elements of FaFT: quality child-centred early learning, family support and parent capacity building and community engagement.
• The teaching and learning strategies of the Abecedarian Approach Australia (3a), including conversational reading, LearningGames®, enriched caregiving and language priority.
• The developmental screening tool Ages and Stages Questionnaire - Talking about Raising Aboriginal Kids (ASQ-TRAK).
• FaFT signature strategies.
• Recording participation and engagement of children and their families on the Early Childhood Program Attendance System (ECPAS).

For further information and resources, go to the FaFT eLearn page. You will need an NTSchools account to login.

Read more about making an NTSchools account.

Contact

For more information contact early childhood by emailing faft.doe@education.nt.gov.au.

Community contacts

For a list of your closest community program contacts, go to the NT Government website.

Families as First Teachers evaluation

NOUS Group conducted an evaluation of the Families as First Teachers program. The evaluation is being used to support the delivery of key activities relating to FaFT under the Northern Territory Remote Aboriginal Investment: Early Learning and Access to Education schedule.

To learn more, get the Evaluation of Families as First Teachers: Final Report PDF (4.9 MB).