You are here: Making sure that childcare investment reaches the children that need it most
Claire Harding
18 June
New research from the London School of Economics shows that poorer children are more likely to miss out on early education. This adds to the evidence that childcare entitlements which are designed to be universal - like the fifteen hour offer in England and the free pre-school offer in Germany - end up benefitting wealthier children more. It's particularly worrying because previous research has shown that early education can help to narrow the gap between disadvantaged children and their peers that opens up before children even start school.
The study does not consider children who don't use their free entitlement at all, but there aren't very many of these: last year, 96 per cent of four year olds were using a free place, and this has been roughly the same since 2011. Instead it looks at children not using the whole entitlement, which is much more common: in this research 18 per cent of children did not use their free entitlement when they first became eligible. Evidence from England and internationally shows that, while any early education is a good thing, the more terms of early education children get the better they do. Children who use part but not all of their free entitlement are still losing out.
This research found that children who lived in persistent poverty – those who got free school meals for all three years of infant school – were about twice as likely not to attend for the full length of their entitlement as children who never got free school meals. Children who got free school meals for one of two years of infant school were somewhere in the middle. Children from ethnic minorities, and children whose first language was not English, were also less likely to use the maximum amount of free entitlement. The researchers found that in almost all cases the effects were additive – being poor, not speaking English at home, and being from an ethnic minority each result in children being less likely to use their full entitlement, and taken together they make it even less likely.
Research like this which is based on large datasets is great at telling us what is happening to different groups, but it's not designed to tell us why. It’s possible that part of the difference in use of the free entitlement in this study is down to maintained nursery schools or nursery classes in schools, which tend to only have one starting point a year, so children start in September even if they are entitled from January. Because these usually offer three hour sessions in term-time rather than full day care, they are more often used by non-working parents, who on average are poorer. They are also likely to deliver higher quality early education, which might make up for some or all of the loss in terms attended. However, this is not enough to explain the whole gap: it also occurs in areas where a lot of children use privately run provision. It does seem that parents not knowing what is available, or thinking that early education is not the right choice for their family, is a large part of the issue.
The children in this research were born too early to make use of the current offer of free early education for deprived two year olds: today, many of the children on free school meals would have been eligible for this as the criteria are quite similar. If they had taken it up, they would probably have stayed in early education when they turned three, and in theory this would increase the proportion using their maximum entitlement – although as the researchers point out, this doesn’t seem to be making a difference to national-level take up of free early education at age three, which has plateaued for the last few years. Three in ten of the two year olds who are entitled to this offer don’t use it, which clearly restricts its value as a way to improve social mobility.
Universal free early education entitlements are well intentioned: they offer all children the same opportunity to benefit, and this benefit may be worth the most to the most vulnerable. However, they are not a guarantee of social mobility, and when the children who have the most to gain use them least, they can actively act against it. It is vital that the government invests in programmes which deliver high quality places in deprived areas, and which make sure parents find out about the gains of free early education for their family – for example through their support of our Parent Champions scheme which helps to make sure that disadvantaged families know about early education and other services. Over recent years we have seen increased investment in early education – it is essential that this is accompanied by continued work to make sure the investment reaches those children that need it most.

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