Improving take-up of the early education entitlement among disadvantaged children is key to meeting the government target of 75 per cent of five-year-olds being ‘ready to learn’ by 2028.
Research funded by the Nuffield Foundation has highlighted how policy developments in the past decade could be undermining efforts to reduce inequalities in participation in early education, by prioritising working families and failing to tackle barriers for disadvantaged children.
The Government has signalled its intention to establish a better balance between the dual policy aims of supporting a better start for children and facilitating parental employment.
The early years pupil premium for disadvantaged children has been increased substantially, although it remains less generous than the primary school premium, particularly for looked after children. Furthermore, the funding rates for three to four-year-olds are still considered inadequate.
The research has also highlighted the key role local authorities can play in supporting take-up of the early education entitlement among disadvantaged children.
Take-up rates vary considerably across councils, from below 50 per cent to more than 90 per cent. Our research focused on councils with take-up rates well above what could be expected, given their local context, to explore how they supported disadvantaged children’s participation in early education.
In these councils, early education was a key element of the local early years strategy developed by senior managers and supported by elected members, who understood the long-lasting benefits of good-quality early education, particularly for disadvantaged children.
Commitment from service leaders and lead members was reflected in approaches to support take-up, which included a relentless focus on supporting disadvantaged children’s participation in early education – even when national policy was pulling them away to deliver the working families’ entitlements.
Other approaches included:
An expectation that all family-facing professionals, from health visitors to library staff, helped parents make informed choices about their child’s early education.
The involvement of parents in promoting the benefits of early education within their communities and in identifying barriers to take-up of the entitlement.
Sufficient resources to reach disadvantaged children and give tailored support to families facing barriers to take-up, such as the entitlement application or finding a suitable nursery.
Working with settings that offer genuinely free places to disadvantaged families that cannot pay ‘top ups’, which are becoming very common, as the entitlement is under-funded and local authorities do not have the powers and resources to regulate how nurseries offer funded places.
In addition to learning from these councils, the research shows there is more that senior managers and councillors could do to reduce inequalities in early learning experiences. These include: supporting early years teams to robustly challenge settings’ admission practices that exclude and stigmatise disadvantaged children, as these are becoming increasingly common; developing strategies for supporting settings that cater for disadvantaged children and communities, as these are declining and are being replaced by nurseries that cater mainly for working families and more affluent areas; monitoring early education attendance, which is considerably lower among disadvantaged children; and removing barriers that may prevent children from enjoying and benefiting from their early education experience.