Publications coming soon
Our Commitment: Building a Co-operative Cymru from the Earliest Years
We believe that the spirit of co-operation, working together in fairness, equality, and mutual respect, is the foundation of a strong and compassionate Cymru.
We will ensure that these values are embedded from the very start of life, shaping confident, caring, capable citizens who grow up knowing that their voice matters and their actions make a difference. We will:
- Embed Co-operation in the Early Years Curriculum
- Ensure that co-operative values and learning are explicitly woven throughout the Cymru Early Years Curriculum, enabling children to experience democracy, empathy, and teamwork through play, creativity, and exploration.
- Champion Children’s Rights and Participation
- Uphold the principles of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child in every early years setting, ensuring that children are listened to, respected, and involved in decisions that affect them.
- Support Practitioners as Co-operative Educators
- Provide professional development and resources that equip early years practitioners to model co-operation, inclusion, and shared leadership in their classrooms and communities.
- Promote Family and Community Co-production
- Recognise families and carers as partners in learning by developing co-operative home–setting approaches that extend the values of fairness, care, and collaboration into family and community life.
- Root Co-operation in Cynefin
- Strengthen the connection between co-operative learning and cynefin, ensuring that every child’s education reflects their local community, culture, language, and identity, and that communities see themselves as active participants in children’s learning.
- Foster Co-operative Communities Around Early Years Settings
- Encourage nurseries, family support programmes, and childcare settings to work as community co-operators, co-producing playful learning, care, and well-being with parents, neighbours, and local organisations.
- Tackle Inequality and Build Inclusion Through Co-operation
- Use co-operative approaches to address disadvantage , discrimination, exclusions and social isolation, ensuring that every child, including those with Additional Learning Needs (ALN) or disabilities, experiences success and belonging.
- Measure What Matters
- Develop indicators that assess how early years education promotes empathy, participation, and community connection, alongside academic and developmental outcomes.
- Honour Wales’s Co-operative Heritage
- Celebrate and build upon Wales’s proud traditions of mutual aid, miners’ institutes, and community solidarity, reimagining these values for a new generation through early years education.
- Deliver for Future Generations
- Ensure that our actions uphold the goals of the Well-being of Future Generations (Wales) Act 2015, creating a Cymru that is healthier, more equal, cohesive, and globally responsible, where every child grows up as a confident, caring co-operator for life.
Our Vision
A Cymru where every child learns not only how to succeed, but how to care. Where families, educators, and communities work together in partnership. And where co-operation – the essence of our shared cynefin – shapes a fairer, kinder, and more united nation for all.
Background brief
Embedding Co-operation in the Early Years and Cynefin
Cymru has long been a nation shaped by the strength of its communities, the solidarity of its people, and the belief that we achieve more together than alone. From the collective spirit of our mining towns and co-operative societies to our present-day commitment to equality, inclusion, and well-being, co-operation is part of our national identity — our cynefin.
Embedding co-operation within the Early Years Curriculum is not simply an educational goal; it is an investment in the moral and social fabric of Cymru. The earliest years of a child’s life lay the foundations for how they see themselves, others, and the world around them. By learning through co-operation, through play, sharing, listening, problem-solving, supporting children to be critical thinkers and through com passionate care, children discover empathy, fairness, and the power of working together. These are not just classroom skills; they are life skills, the building blocks of citizenship and democracy.
Placing co-operation at the heart of the Early Years Curriculum also honours children’s rights to participation, inclusion, and respect under the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child. It allows children to experience democracy in action from their earliest days — learning that every voice matters, that decisions can be made together, and that community is created through kindness, contribution, and care.
Through cynefin, children learn that they belong, to families, to places, to languages, and to one another. Embedding co-operative values within this sense of belonging strengthens our communities, creating settings where children, practitioners, and families are co-producers of playful earning and care, not passive participants. It turns nurseries, schools, and homes into living examples of what a co-operative Cymru can look like: places of equality, participation, and shared purpose.
This is vital not only for our children today but for the future of Cymru. The Well-being of Future Generations (Wales) Act 2015 commits us to building a Cymru that is healthier, more equal, cohesive, and globally responsible. Teaching co-operation from the start is the surest path to achieving this, nurturing bi-lingual, confident, caring, capable individuals who understand their power to act with others for the common good.
Embedding co-operation in the Early Years and within cynefin is, therefore, an act of national renewal, a way of passing on the best of our Cymru values: compassion, community, fairness, and collective strength. It ensures that every child grows not only as a learner, but as a citizen of a co-operative Cymru equipped to shape a kinder, fairer, and more sustainable, inclusive nation for generations to come.
