The free entitlement for the least advantaged two-year-olds is an ambitious, early intervention initiative, intended to catch those children who are falling through the net when it comes to take-up of the universal free offer at three and four. It also aims to target the least advantaged families and support the closing of the attainment gap.
Research highlights that only 30 per cent of children from the least advantaged 40 per cent of the country's families are accessing any form of formal early years provision, and this is proving a stubborn statistic to shift. With a fast developing infrastructure for accommodating more twos, the Government is determined to ramp up the programme to reach 40 per cent of all two-year-olds by 2014.
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