Early Years Evidence in Action - crisis in the early years, what children can teach us about fairness and more. Issue #1

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1?? Crisis in the early years

The problems are daunting.

But we must stop and think carefully about what we want from early years.

Wherever you look, there's trouble.

Staffing

• The Early Years Alliance report that more than eight in 10 of settings are finding it difficult to recruit staff
• Over a third of respondents are actively considering leaving the sector

Decline in the number of early years settings

• Ofsted report that the total number of providers fell by 5 per cent between 2022 and 2023
• The decline in the overall number of childcare providers is explained by a 10 per cent fall in the number of childminders

Concerns about new free early education entitlements from September

• Existing policy will see working parents of children aged over 9 months receiving government funding for 15 hours per week
• Research from Coram finds that nearly 75% of local authorities aren’t confident that this is achievable
• Local authorities also think that provision for children with special educational needs and/or disabilities (SEND) is a major problem
• The London Assembly is warning that ‘the sector will be unable to cope with the increase in demand when free childcare is expanded to children under three’

But stepping back, a bigger question strikes me.

What’s the purpose of funding early education and care in the first place?

From all the political parties, the main offer during the campaign was around childcare and employment, not child development and health.

Professor Kathy Sylva and former Sure Start lead Naomi Eisenstadt see it differently. They think that spending more money should be about making society more equal. It should be about improving children’s lives, not just expanding childcare:

‘Weighing up all the evidence, the single most important action to bridge the gap is to provide high-quality, teacher-led early education, ideally starting from two years of age for children from low-income families. Parallel efforts to reduce child poverty itself should be part of the longer-term road map.’

?? Transforming early childhood: narrowing the gap between children from lower- and higher-income families | Nesta

2?? The power of wondering

Young children can teach us a lot about fairness

The latest early years blog from Lauren Grocott at the Education Endowment Foundation (EEF ) focuses on the importance of young children talking about their learning. Lauren links to a delightful new video from the Early Years Evidence store where a small group of children discuss sharing and fairness. Should you get to share the cake if you didn’t help to bake it?

Who can’t be touched by the child at the end who asks whether he’ll have to miss out on his slice because he voted against everyone getting a share?

To watch the video scroll down to the bottom of the page to the thumbnail of ‘But that wouldn’t be fair?’

?? The power of wondering

3?? ‘Childcare deserts’

Families with less money are less likely to find local early education and care for their children

A new interactive tool from Ofsted and the Office of National Statistics (ONS) allows you to compare neighbourhoods across England for ‘childcare accessibility'.

It tells us that:

• Richer areas such as St Albans and Cambridge have the highest levels of access
• Poorer areas such as Hartlepool, Sunderland and Walsall are at the bottom of the table
• Areas with lower levels of access are generally more likely to have lower disposable household incomes, on average, and a higher proportion of children living in poverty

Lack of access to early education and childcare can have a huge, negative impact on family life. In 2023, the Trades Union Congress (TUC) reported that:

• more than 1.46 million women are unable to work alongside their family commitments, compared to around 230,000 men
• one in 10 women in their 30s – more than 450,000 women – is out of the labour market because of caring responsibilities compared to just one in 100 men in their 30s

?? Childcare accessibility by neighbourhood

4?? One size doesn’t fit all

Some children benefit greatly, some benefit less, and some not at all from evidence-based programmes in the early years

Professor James Heckman is a Nobel Prize winning University of Chicago Economics Professor. He famously argued that adverse environments in children’s early years create life-long deficits in skills and abilities.

The result: a less productive workforce and increased social costs—requiring more government borrowing or more expenditure, adding to everyone’s tax bills.

Instead, he argues, we should follow another path,

We should reduce those deficits by investing in high-quality early childhood education and care for disadvantaged children.

Simple?

Maybe not. An important new paper from the Harvard Center on the Developing Child cautions us against considering disadvantaged children as a homogeneous group.? Instead, the paper focuses on the importance of ‘human variation’.

The Harvard Center argues that:

• A closer look at outcome data shows that some programmes in the early years benefit young children greatly, some less, and some not at all
• Within this variation lies opportunity
• Increasing effects for all children—especially those who currently benefit the least—may be the key that unlocks greater impacts at scale

The paper examines two types of variation.

1. Differences between demographic groups (e.g., income, parent education, race/ethnicity), which are heavily influenced by structural inequities.
2. Individual variation within and across groups. Each child is unique. They have a unique genetic makeup. Experiences affect children differently, because of this unique genetic makeup.

The Harvard Center is calling for a change in how we design, implement, and evaluate policies and programmes for young children.

Their paper explains that, when putting programmes into action, we should:

• Expect individual variation in effectiveness
• Plan for flexible implementation
• Avoid false stereotypes based on income or race

By following these recommendations, the Center argues that we can achieve larger impacts for all children. In turn, this will generate greater returns on our investment as a society.

?? A World of Differences: The Science of Human Variation Can Drive Early Childhood Policies and Programs to Bigger Impacts

5?? Young children and screen time

Risks to children as YouTube becomes ubiquitous in the early years

You’ll have noticed how many young children spend loads of time on screens. Even so, some of the stats are staggering. And, it’s clear that many children aren’t supervised or protected at all whilst they’re online.

• Ofcom reported that 27% of children aged 3 and 4-years-old own their own mobile phone
• The Internet Watch Foundation reported that it found 2400 ‘self-generated’ images of children aged 3-6 (BBC report ). “Self-generated” images are where a child is persuaded, coerced or tricked by a predator into carrying out acts via a webcam or handheld device like a mobile phone or tablet
• The Department for Education’s Help for early years providers states that ‘apps like YouTube Kids [are] becoming a destination of choice for 72% of children aged 3 to 4’

The DFE advice makes several common-sense recommendations about parental controls and limits on screentime. Meanwhile, YouTube is increasingly common in nursery settings. Instead of grouping children together for singing and learning nursery rhymes led by an adult, the children sit and watch short videos on a big screen. We don't know what the outcomes of this will be.

?? Three-year-olds groomed online, charity warns

6?? Child poverty and school achievement

Children growing up in poverty don’t get a good deal from the school system, even when they start off well

FFT education datalab estimates that ‘during primary school – “bright” 5-year-olds from poor backgrounds largely manage to keep pace academically with their equally bright but rich peers’.

However, they go on: ‘the same does not hold true with respect to achievement at the end of secondary school’.

What goes wrong?

FFT admit ‘it’s hard to say for sure what is driving these differences’ but suggest:

1. Key Stage 3 – between the ages of 11 and 14 – seems to be a critical period.? This is when we see sizeable differences in the cognitive skills of early high achievers from rich and poor backgrounds emerge.
2. At age 14, children from low-income backgrounds with strong early test scores are 11 percentage points less likely to say it is important to work hard as their high-income peers

?? School outcomes of “bright” 5-year-olds from poor backgrounds

7?? More isn’t necessarily better

Starting earlier works in some countries. It doesn’t in others.

A new analysis of PIRLS (Progress in International Reading Literacy Study) data suggests that enrolment in early childhood education and care between from birth to 3 years of age ‘has a positive influence on students’ reading scores in 18 countries, whereas it presents a null influence in 16 countries’.

Why the difference?

The most likely reason is that it depends on quality. High-quality provision benefits children’s development and learning.

Lower-quality provision doesn’t have a positive impact.

This was demonstrated in England with the evaluation of the Early Education Pilot for Two Year Old Children [PDF]. This concluded that ‘on average the pilot did not significantly improve the cognitive and social development of the children receiving the free childcare relative to a matched comparison group’. However, further analysis of the data suggested that ‘for those children who were found places in relatively high quality settings ?… there was an impact on children, at least in terms of child vocabulary.’

?? Enrolment in the first stage of early childhood education and students’ academic performance: a cross-country analysis (￡)