I'm worried about what I'm seeing in the early years: we should all be worried about growing educational inequality

You're here because you care about educational quality and equality.

So I think you’ll be worried about the most recent information about children’s learning by the end of the Early Years Foundation Stage (EYFS) in England, when most are 5-years old. 

There is a huge and growing gap between disadvantaged children and all others at the end of the EYFS. This is a longstanding problem: England is a country where how well you do in education is strongly associated with how well-off your parents are. That's very different from countries like Canada, where half my family are from. 

Here's the background: at the end of their reception year, teachers are required to check children’s learning against 17 Early Learning Goals. 

The Department for Education explains that ‘Children are defined as having reached a Good Level of Development (GLD) at the end of the EYFS if they have achieved the expected level for the ELGs in the prime areas of learning and the specific areas of mathematics and literacy. This helps teachers and parents to understand broadly what a child can do in relation to national expectations.’

 

It is important to note that we can’t compare the statistics for the Good Level of Development (GLD) in the summer of 2022, because the DFE revised the EYFS Statutory Framework in 2020. 

 

So, after the health warning and the background, let's consider how worrying the headline figures are. 

Overall, 65.2% of children achieved the GLD in the summer of 2022.  

 

However, when we look at the outcomes for disadvantaged children, we see a very stark difference. 

Only 49.1% of children eligible for free school meals achieved the GLD, compared to 68.8% of those not known to be eligible for free school meals. That’s a whopping 19.6 percentage point gap.

(Note: Disadvantage is defined rather crudely by eligibility for free school meals. This isn’t an ideal measure, but it’s the best one we have.)

 

(Source: Office for National Statistics)

 

It might strike you that this emphasis on children’s learning at the end of the Reception year, when nearly all are 5-years-old, is misplaced. Surely there is plenty of time for those children from disadvantaged backgrounds to catch up?

 

Unfortunately, based on previous analysis, it’s very unlikely that the affected children will catch up. In previous years, that gap by the end of the Reception year has doubled by the end of primary school. In turn, that gap doubles again by the time young people take their GCSES. As a result, young people who have been eligible for free school meals are only half as likely as the rest of their classmates to achieve the top grades. (Source: the Education Endowment Foundation).

 

That’s why Professor Becky Francis, the Chief Executive Officer of the Education Endowment Foundation, comments that ‘once children fall behind, it is hard for them to catch up and they are likely to fall further behind throughout school’.

 

Sadly, it seems this high level of educational inequality, where children’s learning is so strongly associated with family income, might be affecting younger children even more. 

That’s what many of the 600 delegates reported at Newham’s 2023 Early Years Conference. Many told me that children aged 2, 3 and 4 now are struggling even more than the children they were working with last year and the year before – especially those who are living in poverty.

 

Why might it be that the younger children are even worse affected?

 

First of all, some important cautions. This section of my blog is a mix of anecdote and speculation. It’s what people are saying, but there is no data to back that up. Secondly, young children are resilient. Children aged 2 and 3 having difficulties now, may well bounce back in the years to come. 

 

All the same, the experiences of practitioners on-the-ground are important to note. 

 

At Sheringham Nursery School and Children’s Centre, where I am the headteacher, our initial assessments of the children who started nursery in the autumn of 2022 suggest that they are struggling more with aspects of early learning, like communication. Staff perception is that there are more children struggling with their emotions. Children who find it hard to be around others, who get quickly upset and angry, or withdrawn. Of course, these strong emotions are typical in early childhood. There are also many children who are loving their time in nursery, making friends and playing, and overall having a jolly good time. But it is noticeable that more children are finding nursery life hard and needing a great deal of caring, loving support from staff to get through the day. 

 

There are also many more children presenting with significant health needs, or special educational needs, than usual. It’s worth noting that many of those children are presenting with needs because they missed key earlier experiences in their childhood, like playing with friends or coming to our Children’s Centre. We need to keep a watchful eye over them and support them to enjoy these experiences a little later than usual – and I am sure many will be fine in the longer term. 

 

This worrying picture is true of our children aged 3 and 4, and more so for our children aged 2. When I have talked with early years practitioners around the country, I’ve heard similar accounts – but also been struck by the variation. In some wealthier areas, the impact of lockdowns on children’s development and happiness seems to have been smaller. 

 

When we look at the timelines of the Covid-19 lockdowns, we can see in a simple way how different age-groups of children were affected. 

 

Why do the younger children seem to have been hit so hard?

 

At this stage, I can only share hypotheses and anecdotes. I hope that careful research and analysis will offer us a clearer picture. 

 

Perhaps the picture we are seeing reminds us, powerfully, of how important those first 1,000 days are to children’s development, health and happiness. Children who were born into lockdowns, or experienced several lockdowns in their first 24 months, didn’t have anything close to an ordinary first 1,000 days. Their parents also did not get anything like the usual support from the NHS or other services. Bringing a baby into the world can be a hard enough experience at the best of times. Without social or professional support, perhaps it’s been even tougher – and perhaps this has affected the children as well as their parents. 

 

It might also be that it was an impossible task for many parents to juggle working from home online with remote learning for their older children, and meeting the needs of a young baby. Perhaps the baby was the least resilient to adversity of anyone in household. 

We already know that child poverty is toxic to children’s healthy and happy development. As researcher Hope Oloye explains, children who are growing up in households that are noisy, over-crowded and damp are affected physically and psychologically in negative ways. 

 

For poorer families with children in the first two years of life, there was perhaps little to mediate this during lockdowns – in the way of professional support, services outside the home, or playgroups to join in with. Once lockdowns were over, it wasn’t long before the cost-of-living crisis hit. Practitioners at the Newham conference spoke of seeing cold, hungry children crying as they come into nursery.  Think of children waking up in freezing and damp houses, getting dressed, and making their way to nursery in clothes and coats that are too thin to keep them warm during a cold snap. We can hardly expect them to bounce happily into play and learning once they arrive. 

 

I’m worried about the youngest and poorest children in the early years. I am worried about the apparent rise in the numbers of children with special needs in the last couple of years. I don’t think we are doing enough to protect these groups of children from the after-shocks of the lockdowns or from the current cost-of-living crisis. The research tells us that high-quality childcare and early education is good for all children, and disproportionately positive for children from lower-income backgrounds. Early education, and education more widely, are important. 

But we need to go well beyond that and ask ourselves the difficult questions. Why have we done so little to lift families out of poverty in recent decades? Why have we done so little to help children at the sharp end of lockdowns and the cost of living crisis? Why have we let so many services for children with SEND and their families get so close to collapse?

No-one's future is determined at the age of 5. 

But we owe at least this much to every child: the best possible chance to thrive, learn well, and be healthy and happy throughout their childhood and beyond.