Thematic Report: Impact of poverty on educational attainment, support, provision and transition for early education
Executive Summary
This report considers how effective the support and provision provided by early years education providers is at addressing the adverse effects of poverty and disadvantage on early years children.
It focuses on how well local authorities and school improvement services support these providers in early years pedagogical approaches and how best to support children adversely impacted by poverty and disadvantage. It also considers how well funded non-maintained settings and schools use their Early Years Pupil Development Grant (EYPDG)1 funding on sustainable interventions to improve the attainment of children adversely affected by poverty and disadvantage. Finally, the report considers how well the provision for play and learning in settings and schools supports children in their development and the transition between settings and schools. It is based on engagement with a sample of 31 non-maintained settings, nursery, primary and all-age schools. We also considered evidence from 15 local authorities.
We found that there is a variation in how early education is accessed across Wales, depending on how local authorities provide nursery education. This variation results in an inequitable provision across Wales. In practice, this means that parents often have little to no choice of where they can access nursery provision for their child.
There was a variation in the accessibility of early years professional learning for the sector, with non-maintained leaders more likely to have accessed high quality early years professional learning from their local authorities and umbrella organisations than practitioners in schools. However, many school leaders reported that there was limited professional learning to support effective early years pedagogy offered by local authorities and school improvement services.
During our visits, leaders from non-maintained settings and schools reported on how many families were experiencing the negative impact of poverty and disadvantage at a level far worse than previously seen. As a result, a large proportion of their time and resources was spent trying to address these needs. In nearly all cases, settings and schools took time to get to know the children and their families well. They spent time forging supportive and trusting relationships. Although leaders had not received specific training or information from local authorities on how to best meet the social,
emotional and developmental needs of early years children adversely impacted by poverty and disadvantage, they knew and understood the importance of supporting families and the difference this was making to their lives. This often took the form of practical support such as collaborating with the third sector to provide food items, toys, uniform and practical support with issues such as housing.
The EYPDG provides funding to schools and settings to support children aged three to four years with their communication, well-being and physical development needs. Our review found that, due to the complexities of funding formulas and difficulty of gathering data on this age group, there was an inequity of funding across the non-maintained sectors in Wales. This resulted in local authorities who do not fund early education in the non-maintained sector receiving funding and local authorities with high levels of deprivation receiving limited funding.
Most non-maintained settings receiving delegated EYPDG funding made good use of this money to purchase resources that helped to develop children’s communication and well-being needs, such as outdoor equipment and speech and language resources. They attended beneficial training that supported them in their roles, particularly in supporting children’s communication skills. In addition, they enriched children’s experiences through a range of visits as well as inviting visitors to the setting. However, in those local authorities where the grant money was held centrally, they did not always target training well enough on tackling disadvantage or target the most disadvantaged settings well enough.
In most schools, leaders often used this funding to sustain existing provision. For example, they employed additional adults to provide a suitable adult/pupil ratio in early years classes. In a few examples, these practitioners delivered speech and language and emotional health and well-being interventions. In a minority of schools, leaders were unable to disaggregate their EYPDG funding from their wider PDG funding and therefore could not allocate their funding in a targeted way well enough.
Many leaders provide children and their families with beneficial opportunities to get to know practitioners and the setting or school prior to starting. This includes when children transition from home to a setting or school or between a setting and school.