The Sutton Trust report highlights the inequalities in access to existing entitlements, how many hours children are likely to benefit from it, and potential changes that would help to widen access

This year will be a turning point for childcare in England with more political attention on the sector than there has been for years. However there are significant concerns that the expansion package the Government announced last year will not deliver enough overall support.

Concerns have been raised about fair access to this expanded provision, and the sector’s ability to deliver it under planned timescales and budgetary constraints. Indeed, there are already concerns that nurseries and preschools are being forced to close due to funding issues and difficulty in recruiting staff.

The Sutton Trust report: key findings

The Sutton Trust report highlighted that, ahead of the government’s planned expansion, there are currently no government funded hours available for children aged 9 months to 23 months, leaving a gap in support for parents between the end of parental leave and the start of government entitlements.

Key findings included:

• 20% of families in the bottom third of the earnings distribution are eligible for the existing offer of 30 hours of early education and childcare for three- and four-year-olds, and all parents in full-time education or training are ineligible. 70% of those who are eligible for the support are from homes in the top half of earners
• Just 1 in 5 (or 20%) of families earning less than £20,000 a year will have access to the planned expansion of funded places for one- and two-year-olds in some working families, compared to 80% of those with household incomes over £45,000
• In 2023, 1 in 5 early years staff members were unqualified (did not have a relevant GCSE/level 2 qualification), up from 1 in 7 in 2018
• Funding given to early years settings to support disadvantaged children in their cohort (the early years pupil premium) is just a quarter of the amount given in pupil premium funding to primary schools for disadvantaged pupils
• Despite an increase in the proportion of children in the early years qualifying as disadvantaged (using the same eligibility criteria as free school meals), the proportion of the Early Years National Funding Formula ringfenced for disadvantaged children has remained the same since 2017-18.

Experts from the Centre for Research in Early Childhood concluded that:
“There is some evidence that the 30 hour extended entitlement for working families may be contributing to the widening in the attainment gap by doubly advantaging the better off with additional hours. Accessing fewer hours, combined with attendance at settings with lower qualified staff, can mean lower attainment for the less advantaged.”

Recommendations for the government

The earliest years of a child’s life are the most crucial for development and learning. During those early years, young children’s brains develop considerably and can be influenced by the environment and behaviours around them.

Given the hours-based approach to early years provision taken in England, an important question for policymakers here is the optimum number of hours for young children in early years settings.

Recommendations laid out by Sutton Trust report state:

Equalising access to early education

• There is a substantial gap in development between the poorest children and their better off peers before they start at school. The early years are crucial to narrowing this gap. However, the existing system in England provides less time in early education and care to the children from low-income families who stand to benefit the most. If an hours-based system is retained long-term, the next government should guarantee a core entitlement of at least 20 hours per week for all children, irrespective of their family’s working status or income level. Priority should be given to providing this for all three- and four-year-olds, followed by two-year-olds
• Where provision beyond this core educational entitlement is necessary for childcare purposes, additional hours should be affordable for all families, for example through a sliding scale of fees by income level
• The next government could also consider a more substantial re-design of the system, for instance by bringing in a means-tested model for all funded hours. This type of approach could also work well for disadvantaged children and their families, as long as subsidy levels are set appropriately.

A focus on quality

• Any expansion of places should be staggered, so that providers have time to successfully deliver high-quality additional places
• To ensure quality, the next government should put in place an early years workforce strategy, with minimum qualification levels specified (for example, making level 3 a benchmark qualification), alongside adequate funding for settings to offer the higher wages needed to attract qualified staff, and to support training.

Additional funding for disadvantaged children

• The next government should review the early years pupil premium (EYPP). Improvements to its administration could enhance its impact at very little cost, for example by ensuring prompt payment to providers, as well as making the process easier for parents and less volatile for providers
• Government should also look to increase the overall level of the EYPP, to match the level in primary schools. This would allow settings to offer better targeted and individualised support to children from disadvantaged backgrounds, and incentivise settings to apply for the funding and recruit eligible children.

Purnima Tanuku OBE, chief executive of National Day Nurseries Association (NDNA) said: “It’s vital that the childcare expansion which begins in April does not end up widening the inequality and attainment gap as a consequence.

“NDNA is clear that all children should have access to high quality early education and care which supports them to fulfil their potential. This is particularly true of children from disadvantaged backgrounds.

“The eligibility criteria for funded places can lock some children out and these tend to be the children who need this support the most. In order to support these children, practitioners need more help to further their training and local authorities need more investment in resources to support children with special educational needs.

“Childcare deserts will be more likely to open up in areas of deprivation too – this is because our research into nursery closures has shown that closures are more likely where there are higher numbers of funded children and the lowest funding rates. These settings have fewer paid-for children and are therefore unable to make up the shortfall between government funding and their delivery costs.

“We share Sutton Trust’s concern about fewer qualified staff. 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.

“We have also called for the Early Years Pupil Premium to equal that of schools. It makes no sense that this is much lower when every pound spent in a child’s earliest years is worth many pounds in their later education. Without a meaningful increase, children will not be supported and could be at risk of exclusion from early years because providers cannot meet their needs.”

Neil Leitch, chief executive of the Early Years Alliance, said:

“The Sutton Trust is absolutely right to argue that current early years policy is embedding inequalities and widening the gap between the most disadvantaged children and their peers.

“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.

“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.

“The government constantly talks about the need to close the attainment gap, and yet their approach to the early years is likely to achieve the exact opposite. It’s clear that the whole approach to childcare and early education needs a complete rethink – otherwise it is those children who need the most support who will lose out.”