Within his Plan for Change, the Prime Minister, Sir Keir Starmer, confirmed that early years will be one of the Government’s ‘key milestones’ to break the link between life chances and family background. By 2028, the Government wants 75 per cent of children ‘school ready’, up from 68 per cent this year.
But analysis written by Nesta’s director of fairer start, Sarah Cattan, an economist who formerly worked at the IFS, argues that ‘With limited scope for additional public investment following a decade of disinvestment from preventative early childhood services, an early education and childcare sector in crisis, and over one in three children under the age of four living in poverty, the Government will face real challenges in achieving this target.’
It says that increasing the percentage of children school ready by 7 percentage points, roughly an extra 50,000 children, might seem modest, but it’s not.
Also, the target is particularly challenging currently because of the economic and social circumstances faced by this country.
The Government uses the Early Years Foundation Stage Profile results (EYFSP) to determine how many children are school ready by looking at the number that have reached a ‘good’ level of development.
According to this year’s EYFSP results, among the roughly 600,000 children that finished Reception in a state-funded school in England this year, approximately two thirds were deemed “school ready”. Among the 200,000 who were not, economically disadvantaged children and children with special education needs (SEN) were disproportionately represented, states the analysis.
The report's author, Cattan, does say that achieving the target is possible, however, but only if there is a ‘sharp focus’ on scaling what we know already works -‘adopting a multi-pronged approach to support children at home and in early education ,and committing to invest money where it delivers the most impact for children’s outcomes’.
Other proposed solutions to achieving the target include:
- A review of the funding system to account for the ‘true economic cost’ [cost of time, planning and leadership it takes to support a practitioner] of the workforce’s continuous professional development.
- An expert advisory group – akin to that which advised on teacher reforms – could be tasked to develop new frameworks for qualifications. These frameworks would serve as a basis for the Government to launch a procurement initiative for lead training providers. A network of delivery partners could be established for national coverage, potentially using existing structures such as teaching school hubs or early years stronger practice hubs.
- A further expansion of funding to support Family Hubs located in disadvantaged areas and eventual progression of the Family Hubs into more affluent areas to support local disadvantaged children.
- Slowing down the pace of the new entitlement’s roll-out to create ‘breathing space’ to address the early years workforce crisis, ensure that high-quality early education is accessible, starting in disadvantaged areas, and increase investment in universal and targeted, for example, midwifery and health visiting.
