Daily roundup: Early education, youth employment, and care proceedings

Shadow education secretary Tristram Hunt is considering plans to increase the number of nurseries in schools as part of his manifesto pledge. He told the Sunday Times he has been persuaded that children from poorer backgrounds achieve better outcomes in school environments rather than at home or with childminders.

Young people not in full-time education are less likely to have a job than those aged 50 to 64, a report on youth unemployment by the Trades Union Congress (TUC) has found. It says the situation is a "remarkable" turnaround from 1998, when young people were 25 per cent more likely to be in work than workers in the older age bracket, the Independent reports. The TUC is calling for more investment in employment schemes for young people with few qualifications.

Thousands of mothers over the past seven years have had successive children removed by family courts in England, the BBC reports. Court records for that period show 7,143 mothers were involved in repeat care cases - affecting 22,790 children. The research was carried out by the Universities of Brunel and Manchester and funded by the Nuffield Foundation.

The Department for Education has launched a consultation on draft regulations to protect the wellbeing of children and young people who take part in public performances, such as local theatre productions or television shows. The draft regulations, plans for which were outlined in the Children and Families Act 2014, will relax restrictions on when children can perform, scrap weekly performance limits, and strengthen rules on the number of breaks.  The consultation runs for 10 weeks.

Children’s professionals across 14 London boroughs are taking part in a trial to use multisystemic therapy to work children who display sexually harmful behaviour. Under the trial, called Steps-B run by University College London, social workers, youth offending teams and child mental health practitioners work together to address problem sexual behaviour by a child.

Children from deprived parts of London have tended to do better in education than peers from other parts of the country due to strong performance at Key Stage 2 in primary school, a study has found. The research by the Institute for Fiscal Studies for the Social Mobility and Child Poverty Commission examined the reasons behind the higher performance of disadvantaged pupils in London, and its significant improvement in recent years.