Investment in education is always welcome, and as such the investment of an extra £4bn next year and £4.7bn in 2024/25 and announced in the Levelling Up White Paper is not to be snubbed. But we are left wondering why the Early Years sector has been ignored once again and what impact this will have on the provision of high-quality early education and childcare. This question is particularly important when considering the focus of the Levelling Up agenda is to remove regional disparities, but it is families in areas of disadvantage who are most in need of accessible and affordable early education and childcare (ECEC).
There is no shortage of research demonstrating the hugely important impact of experiences before the age of five on children’s long-term development. Importantly, we know that attendance at early years settings has a positive impact on children’s educational and socio-emotional outcomes, not just in the early years of life but right through to adulthood. Much of this research comes from the influential Effective Pre-school, Primary and Secondary Education (EPPSE) and the Study of Early Education and Development (SEED) studies. In addition, (ECEC) provides parents, and particularly women, greater opportunities to work, while feeling confident that their children are developing the foundational skills that will help the transition to mainstream education.
Reports emerging from lockdown experiences only serve to emphasise the importance of ECEC. One study from researchers at Oxford Brookes University found that language development was supported by attendance at ECEC during lockdown for children from less privileged backgrounds. Children who attended ECEC showed greater growth in vocabulary knowledge than those who did not. Moreover, all children who attended ECEC, regardless of background, showed greater growth in executive function than those who did not attend. A report from Kindred2 found that the teachers they surveyed reported an increase in the number of children who were not ready to start school in 2020 from 35 per cent in 2019 to 44 per cent in 2020. 62 per cent of teachers reported that this was due to not being able to attend nursery during the first national lockdown.
In our own research investigating the impact of Covid-19 on children starting school in 2020, 44 out of 58 schools surveyed reported that children starting school in Autumn 2020 needed more support than children in previous years, particularly in the areas of language and communication, personal, social and emotional development, as well as literacy.
From a workforce and productivity perspective, lockdown disproportionately affected women, and this was largely due to full or partial closures of Early Years settings and schools. Data from the ONS show that women took on the majority of home-schooling and childcare, and this was particularly true for pre-school aged children. A third of women surveyed said that home-schooling was the main reason the pandemic had affected their work. In a report from the Women’s Budget Group, 46 per cent of mothers felt they had been made redundant during lockdown because they did not have adequate childcare.
Given the importance of ECEC, it is alarming that it has not been recognised in the Levelling Up White Paper. The sector was struggling before the pandemic, and is now even more unstable. The lack of investment in early years, particularly in areas of disadvantage, could lead to a widening of the disadvantage gap and a reduction in social mobility – especially in some of the most deprived parts of the country. It is time for ECEC to receive the recognition it deserves as an integral part of the education system and receive the support necessary to ensure it not only survives, but thrives.
Claudine Bowyer-Crane, National Institute of Economic and Social Research
Sara Bonetti, Education Policy Institute
Dea Nielsen, University of York