Barriers to accessing funded early education

High-quality early years education can play a vital role in improving children’s development, boosting educational outcomes and reducing the attainment gap between disadvantaged children and their peers. Childcare also gives parents the flexibility and time they need to work, supporting their entry into paid employment, helping to level existing inequalities and boost household productivity and income.

The funded childcare offers for two- to four-year-olds were introduced with this aim in mind. Unfortunately, too many eligible children, especially disadvantaged children, still do not take-up their funded place.

Missed opportunities

According to Department for Education figures, only three-quarters of eligible two-year-olds were accessing the 15 hours of free childcare to which they were entitled each week last year. This is a missed opportunity for the many children losing out on the enormous benefits of early education and risks exacerbating existing educational inequalities.

A new briefing paper, produced by the research team at the Centre for Evidence and Implementation, the UCL Centre for Education Policy and Equalising Opportunity, Coram Family and Childcare and Ivana La Valle, and funded by the Nuffield Foundation, explores the barriers that impact the take-up of early education and reflects on what might be done locally to address this.

Previous research in this area has found that barriers to access are particularly acute for some groups of children, including those from poorer white British households, children from ethnic minority backgrounds, families with English as an additional language and children with special educational needs and disabilities. Families living in urban areas such as London where there is greater population mobility also face particular barriers.

The new briefing establishes three categories of barriers to the take-up of early education: at system level, service level and family level.

System-level barriers

System-level barriers relate to the design of the system and are more evident with respect to the two-year-old offer for which not all families are eligible. The application process is reported to be particularly challenging for parents with low digital literacy and English as an additional language, as well as confusion about the eligibility criteria. Moreover, it is felt that the specific targeting of disadvantaged families for this offer creates a stigma that impacts a parent’s willingness to take up the funded place.

More translation of information and messages about early education into community languages could be an effective way of reaching more families.

Service-level barriers

Service-level barriers refer to the challenges families face in taking up their entitlement, including the availability of suitable places. The proportion of funded places in the maintained and voluntary sectors is decreasing, while the proportion in private settings is increasing. This may have consequences for the quality of provision and a child’s experience, as private settings are less likely to be led by a graduate.

With many practitioners leaving due to low pay and a lack of career progression, providers are finding it increasingly challenging to find suitable staff who can provide high-quality early education. This in turn could have a detrimental impact on parental perception of the benefits of early education.

Family-level barriers

Family-level barriers refer to the challenges that some families may have with navigating the system. Disadvantaged families are more likely to believe that there are not enough childcare places in their local area and that the quality of provision is poor. For example, take-up is lower where parents perceive there to be a lack of support for children’s cultural and home language development. This reflects a real need to ensure that the messaging around the entitlements is inclusive and supportive, and responds to the individual needs of all families.

Our research has identified several promising strategies to boost take-up in local areas, including childcare brokerage and greater support for parents with English as an additional language. Local authorities and family information services play an invaluable role, contacting eligible parents through outreach, letters and “golden tickets”, where there is evidence of a parent/carer’s eligibility for two-year-old funding and so no further eligibility checks are needed.

Some areas also use the Parent Champions programme developed by Coram Family and Childcare to boost take-up in the local community. This peer-to-peer model helps local authorities to reach nearly 25,000 families every year who may otherwise miss out on key information, drawing on the lived experience of other parents who have successfully used early education.

Last year’s Budget announcement to expand childcare was a promising step in recognising the need for more early years investment, but it will largely benefit more advantaged families (see box). To make the system more equitable, inclusive and accessible, there needs to be a greater focus on the experience of disadvantaged children.

The briefing paper calls for rigorous evaluations to assess the effectiveness of potentially promising approaches to generate greater evidence-informed action to supporting take-up of the early education entitlements in under-represented groups. Enhanced monitoring efforts are also needed to understand how the availability and take-up of existing early education entitlements are affected by the extension of entitlements to younger children in working families from April 2024. This will be important before, during and after the roll-out has occurred, particularly for children from disadvantaged families.

Briefing paper from www.familyandchildcaretrust.org

Funded childcare expansion: Key milestones

Families with children aged between nine months and two years old aren’t currently eligible for any funded hours. However, the government has announced that:

• From April 2024, all eligible working parents of two-year-olds will be able to access funding for 15 hours per week of education and care for 38 weeks of the year.

• From September 2024, all eligible working parents of children aged nine months up to three years old will be able to access funding for 15 hours per week of education and care for 38 weeks of the year.

• From September 2025, all eligible working parents of children aged nine months up to three years old will be able to access funding for 30 hours per week of education and care for 38 weeks of the year.

Ellen Broome is managing director, CoramBAAF