The government’s vow that a record proportion of children in reception will meet child development benchmarks by 2028 has been broadly welcomed by the early years sector.
However, experts warn that the ambitious milestone will be missed unless investment is increased, and workforce recruitment and retention issues are addressed.
Prime Minister Keir Starmer promised last month that 75% of five-year-olds in England will be “school ready” by the next election. To achieve this goal, he pledged to improve family services, expand school-based nurseries and boost workforce training.
Challenges
The term school-ready refers to children who have the skills to meet the challenges of the school environment and thrive. It’s assessed using the Early Years Foundation Stage Profile (EYFSP), which covers areas such as cognitive, communication and physical skills.
Currently, 67.7% of five-year-olds meet the school-ready target. Before the pandemic, the figure was 72%.
Children who aren’t considered school ready at five are more likely to fail key subjects at GCSE level and have issues with persistent absence, with potentially damaging consequences for their life chances.
Lydia Hodges, head of Coram Family and Childcare, said the 75% milestone “is a great ambition and music to all of our ears”.
“I know there has been a conversation around the target; some have asked if it’s too simplistic to say a child is school ready, but it’s measured using the EYFSP, which includes personal, social and emotional development,” she says. “It’s such a big, tangible measure; it helps us look at what we’re achieving.”
Hodges explains that the key to improving children’s preparation for school is to boost training opportunities, continuing professional development and career progression for the early years workforce.
“We need to change the perception that early years workers are babysitters and improve retention rates,” she says. “There are hundreds of routes into the sector but how do those looking to join the early years workforce know which ones are good?
“We’ve also lost a lot of good people from the sector – we need to bring them back.”
Flexibility is another key issue as many childcare professionals are parents themselves.
“Childcare settings are open quite long hours; staff mustn’t feel like they’re missing out on their own family time,” Hodges adds. “We need to look at job-sharing, improved flexibility and offering a variety of roles.
“We also need more childminders – they are often the preferred choice for parents with younger children.”
Government data shows the number of childminders halved in the decade between 2013 and 2023 from 56,200 to 27,900.
Hodges also suggests uncoupling childcare entitlements to whether or not parents are working.
Since 2017, the attainment gap between children eligible for free school meals and their peers has been growing.
The situation could be further exacerbated later this year when eligible working parents will be entitled to 30 hours of government-funded childcare a week once their child reaches nine months. In contrast, disadvantaged parents will only get 15 hours after a child turns two.
“Just level the playing field,” Hodges says. “Children of working parents already spend a lot more time with early years professionals.”
Sarah Cattan, who leads Nesta’s “A Fairer Start” initiative, agrees that workforce training should be reformed, describing the current early years qualifications and training market as “an unregulated wild west”.
Lessons could be learned, Cattan argues, from the “carefully constructed” schoolteacher development system, which is “in stark contrast to the early years”. Establishing an expert advisory group to develop new frameworks for qualifications would be helpful, she adds.
Proven track record
Cattan also recommends scaling up projects that have a proven track record, such as the Nuffield Early Language Intervention.
“After decades of research, there’s a strong arsenal of effective, evidence-based interventions that we know can support children, parents and teachers and improve children’s outcomes,” she says.
Jane Harris, chief executive of Speech and Language UK, says extending funding for the Early Years Professional Development Programme (EYPDP) should be a top priority.
The programme has helped more than 10,000 early years professionals improve their skills in identifying and supporting children with speech and language problems.
Harris says: “We have such good evidence and feedback from the programme – 93% of practitioners who completed it said they felt more motivated to continue working in the sector, which is huge given the issues we face with retention.”
However, government funding for phase three of the EYPDP will end in March.
“It feels like there’s a real gap between the government’s aspiration and what it is actually doing,” Harris says.
“The programme is already up and running, so you have a head start; you don’t have to create all the structures again. As it stands, phase three is ending, but there’s no reason why there can’t be a phase four.”
Harris also says £5mn of funding allocated for early language interventions should be open to children in childcare settings, not just those of reception age as it currently stands.
“We know that you can intervene in speech and language from age two,” she explains.
“If you intervene on language, you can then influence almost every other area of development whether it’s toilet training, early maths or personal, social and emotional development. Language is the core of so many of those other areas.
“They should allow that funding to be used in settings other than reception, especially in the new nurseries that will open up in schools. It’s ridiculous that schools will know the children who need speech and language intervention but can’t start that work until several months later [when the child is in reception].”
National campaign
Harris adds that families should also be encouraged to play a greater role in supporting their child’s early speech and language development through an informative national campaign.
“Some local authorities commission their own campaigns, but it’s never been done at a national level,” she says. “Each council does it in its own way; it’s a very fragmented, cost-inefficient approach.
“We have ways to get information to families about vaccinations and healthy eating, but we don’t do it for speech and language development.”
The sector supports the government’s emphasis on child development but says it will struggle to deliver its school-readiness target without being given the tools to do so.
Investing in parenting programmes can help deliver ‘school ready’ goals
Matt Buttery, chief executive, Triple P UK:
The Prime Minister’s “Plan for Change” includes a goal for 75% of five-year-olds in England to be “ready to learn” when they start school and to “strengthen and join up family services to improve support through pregnancy and early childhood”. The government’s renewed focus on the early years is welcome, but to achieve these ambitious aims, it will need to provide clarity on their targets, significantly rebuild the workforce, and commit to funding a comprehensive family support programme.
Scale of the challenge
First, the government has no hope of achieving this goal without providing greater clarity over what it means. Most parents will think it means being “ready for school” on the first day, yet the government’s definition equates to the end of reception. Similarly, what does “ready” actually mean? Parents need straightforward information. Confusion over the scale of the challenge, will only serve to undermine progress. The government along with parents and the sector must work in harmony.
Second, while the UK was once a world leader in family support policy, successive funding cuts have seen significant decline. Austerity has damaged the outcomes this support can deliver for families and needs to be urgently addressed for the government to meet its goals.
The sector is crying out for investment to rebuild the workforce and an increased budget to train them in the “evidence-based interventions” the Prime Minister mentioned.
Third, we need to dramatically increase access. Investment in family hubs has been limited to only half of England, meaning access to evidence-based parenting support such as Triple P, is a postcode lottery for parents.
Internal analysis by the Department for Education has revealed that educational and social development outcomes may have worsened in areas with fewer non-statutory funding and interventions, such as family hubs and the Start for Life programme, widening the school readiness gap for the most disadvantaged.
Access to parenting support
We know that a variety of intensities and delivery formats of parenting support must be offered to significantly increase reach and deliver a truly joined up end-to-end system of parenting and family support, all without compromising the evidence-base. In order to break the unfair link between background and opportunity the government must ensure parents in every area have access to effective evidence-based parenting support.
The quickest and most effective route to increase the reach and access would be a digital rollout of evidence-based parenting support. Doing so would follow the successful blueprint provided by the Labor government in Australia.
In 2022, Australia launched a nationwide roll out of our online parenting programmes which has been an emphatic success with the more than 400,000 families who have accessed the free support. The scaling up of access to these evidence-based programmes in Australia is delivering significant outcomes and helping move from a solely individual-level focus to a population-level one and represents a shift to prevention and early intervention over treatment - alongside moving from analogue to digital - matching Wes Streeting’s ambitions for the NHS.
Empowering parents
We know from the practitioners and parents we work with how important parenting support is to families nationwide. With our annual practitioner survey finding reports of an 81% increase in parental mental health concerns, and an 85% increase in parents identifying concerns around the cost of living, it’s key that programmes such as Triple P for Baby – now accessible in most family hub areas – which are proven to empower parents and provide them with tools that benefit their family over time, are made widely available so children have the best start.
If this government is clear about developing a shared goal, commits to funding a comprehensive family support programme, and scaling evidence-based programmes, it will not only be a vote winner in four years’ time but have the potential to transform the life chances of hundreds of thousands of children.
- Further Reading: Early Child Development Special Report
