Disadvantaged children more likely to be absent from early education, research finds

After investigating early years attendance from 52 settings across three local authorities – Leeds, Stockport and York – researchers found that attendance rates were lower on average for disadvantaged children eligible for the government’s free childcare scheme, known as the two-year-old offer.

• Interview: Helen Hayes MP, shadow children and early years minister

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The two-year-old offer provides 15 hours of free childcare per week to two-year-olds from low income families, but research finds the uptake has been low, with only 72 per cent of eligible families accessing the scheme.

In addition to the scheme’s low uptake, the average attendance rate among children who were eligible was just 79 per cent, compared with an average of 85 per cent among their peers.

The study, carried out by UK innovation agency Nesta’s Fairer Start scheme, also found that children who were eligible for the government’s free childcare were twice as likely to have attendance rates below 70 per cent.

Researchers estimate that when combined with the numbers of eligible children who do not take up the offer, there could be as many as 45 million hours of early education missed by disadvantaged children.

Nesta has recommended a series of moves to improve attendance for disadvantaged children, including:

• Support from the Department for Education (DfE) to improve digital data collection and sharing at local authority level.

• Funding from the DfE to conduct a series of rigorous experimental trials testing different interventions’ impact on attendance rates.

• Further research to explore what works in increasing attendance, such as the text message interventions used in some other countries.

Tom Symons, deputy director of Nesta’s Fairer Start team said: “We know the early years are vital in helping children achieve their potential and set them up for school. We need to do more to help eligible families use the two-year-old offer.

“This is an important challenge for one of the government’s major early years initiatives. Lower income families are under particular strain in terms of time, money and help. If we can do more to understand the pressures they face, we can help take the burden off families and design the programme in a more effective way.”

Councillor Andrew Waller, City of York Council’s executive member for children, young people and education, added: “We know how important the first few years of a child’s life are in shaping their outcomes into adulthood and we’re pleased that through our ongoing partnership with Nesta we’ve been able to contribute to this research.

“Ensuring that all children have a good start is a priority in York and we will continue to work with local partners to explore how we can support families to make the most of their childcare provision over the coming months.”