Growing numbers of children are arriving in school without the necessary social and self-regulatory skills to engage effectively with the school environment and a lack of these skills can predict low academic achievement and poor relationships with peers and teachers (Chapter 1). Parents play a major role in developing children’s readiness for school. Strong, positive parent-child relationships ensure that children form good relationships with peers and teachers. These relationships help children to settle into school, reduce conduct problems, and lead to good academic attainment. Early intervention in the preschool years is an effective way to prepare children for school and prevent later academic failure. The Incredible Years (IY) programmes are evidence-based, effective programmes for improving child outcomes. Although there are longer IY programmes that address the needs of children with conduct and behavioural difficulties, there is a need for a shorter programme that can be delivered universally to parents as their children start school. The IY School Readiness parenting programme was developed for this purpose, but its effectiveness has never been researched. This thesis reports on the first evaluation of the IY School Readiness programme. The first study provides a review of literature on the concept of schools readiness (Chapter 2), followed by the study protocol (Chapter 3), providing details of the methods of the evaluation. Chapter four presents the development and validation of a new observation tool for evaluating parent-child interactions during child-directed play and interactive reading, the Play And Reading Observation Tool (PAROT). The main programme evaluation is presented as a third study, a comparison of intervention and control families’ outcomes (Chapter 5). The programme was effective in increasing key verbal parenting behaviours in the context of reading and play that are important for children’s readiness for school. The final two chapters include longer-term findings of the programme (Chapter 6) and feedback from parents and schools (Chapter 7). Parent attendance was good and positive feedback was received from the parents and schools involved in the study. The final chapter of the thesis provides a summary of research findings, including implications and future research directions (Chapter 8).