Disadvantaged children worst hit as early years forced to 'move towards childcare’

The Sutton Trust says disadvantaged children are being hit hardest by this trend “with learning gaps between the most and least well-off young children set to widen in the coming years”.

Its policy briefing has raised the concerns as the government expands provision of funded hours to working families from April. This will mean early years “will not be provided to many children from poorer families”, says the charity.

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It points out that only one in five families earning less than £20,000 a year will be able to access the expansion of funded places, compared with four in five families earning more than £45,000 a year.

This expansion is also set to exacerbate existing recruitment and retention issues in the sector as providers struggle to employ experienced, skilled workers. These qualified workers are needed to deliver high quality provision, especially for disadvantaged children, says the charity.

It warns that the proportion of unqualified staff working in early years has risen from one in seven in 2018 to one in five in 2023.

The Sutton Trust also cites evidence that more than nine in 10 councils are struggling to recruit qualified early years staff.

The Labour Party has raised concerns that the government is neglecting the role of education in early years, particularly for low income families, but “as yet, it has not made any commitments to address this inequality in provision”, says the charity.

"Politicians are failing disadvantaged children,” said Sutton Trust founder Peter Lampl.

“The early years are a crucial stage that can create opportunity or lock in disadvantage. As things stand, government policy treats early years provision as childcare rather than education, and there is no indication as yet that this would change under a Labour government.

“It’s disgraceful that the very children who would benefit most from early years education are being increasingly excluded from it. We need to rebalance government funding or we will continue to see poorer children falling further behind.”

National Day Nurseries Association chief executive Purnima Tanuku urged the government to ensure its expansion of funded places “does not end up widening the inequality and attainment gap”.

“We share Sutton Trust’s concern about fewer qualified staff,” she added.

“With the expansion only two months away, we’re finding more practitioners are continuing to leave the sector. We need to act fast in looking at solutions for the workforce, to attract new talent and retain existing staff.”

Early Years Alliance chief executive Neil Leitch said the Sutton Trust is “absolutely right to argue that current early years policy is embedding inequalities”.

"For years, we have warned that the political focus on 'childcare' as a means to get parents back to work over and above 'early education' would lead to the development of poor policy that does not have the needs of the child at its centre – and the new funded offers, which completely exclude many families on the lowest-incomes, is a perfect example of just that,” he said.

"In no other part of the education system would we accept that a child's access to learning opportunities could be defined by their parents' income and yet, for some reason, we have decided that this is absolutely fine when it comes to the early years.”

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