You are here: Tackling barriers to access in early education
December 2023
High quality childcare can play a vital role in improving children’s development, boosting educational outcomes and reducing the attainment gap between disadvantaged children and their peers. Early education helps to set children up to learn at school, as well giving them an important opportunity to connect and interact with other children.
Childcare also gives parents the flexibility and time they need to work, supporting their entry into paid employment. These important benefits speak to the remarkable potential of high quality early education, levelling existing inequalities and boosting household productivity.
The funded childcare offers for two to four year olds were all introduced with this in mind; to improve overall access to high-quality early education and make sure no families miss out.
Unfortunately, research shows us that too many eligible children, especially disadvantaged children, do not take-up their funded place. In 2023, only 74% of eligible 2-year-olds were accessing the 15 hours of free childcare to which they were entitled each week. This means that many families are losing out on the enormous benefits of early education. This is a missed opportunity, one that exacerbates and widens existing educational inequalities. Why do some children miss out on their free place, and what can be done to increase take-up?
This is the question at the heart of the new research published by Laura Outhwaite, Ivana La Valle and Claire Crawford. Funded by the Nuffield Foundation, this study explores the barriers to take-up of early education and reflects on what might be done locally to address this. This work has been conducted at UCL’s Centre for Education Policy and Equalising Opportunities, a research centre dedicated to improving life chances across the entire life course.
We know that the early years is a particularly crucial time in our lives, laying important foundation for children’s future. This is why we need greater understanding of why there are discrepancies and gaps within access to, and participation in, early education.
The research reveals that barriers to access are particularly acute for some groups of children, including those from poorer White British households, children from ethnic minority backgrounds, families with English as an additional language and children with special educational needs and disabilities. These groups are all less likely to take up their funded place, and this is especially true for those families living in urban areas such as London where there is greater population mobility.
The new briefing illustrates that there are three categories of barriers to the take-up of early education; system-level barriers, service-level barriers and family-level barriers.
System-level barriers relate to the design of the system, and are more evident for the 2-year old offer for which not all families are eligible. For example, the application process is reported to be particularly challenging for parents with low digital literacy and English as an additional language, as well as confusion about the eligibility criteria. Moreover, it is felt that the specific targeting of disadvantaged families for this offer creates a stigma that negatively impacts a parent’s willingness to take-up the funded place.
These problems illustrate the vital importance of information and creating awareness, as well as pointing towards how we might begin to address some of these misperceptions. We must also take notice of language as a key barrier, which suggests that more translation of information and messages about early education into community languages might be an effective way of reaching more families.
Service-level barriers refer to the ease with which families are able to take up their entitlement, including the availability of suitable places. The proportion of funded places in the maintained and voluntary sectors is decreasing, while the proportion in private settings is increasing. This may have consequences for the quality of provision and a child’s experience, as private settings are less likely to be led by a graduate.
This is all happening in the broader context of a severe recruitment and retention crisis in the early years sector, with many practitioners leaving due to low pay and a lack of progression. Providers are finding it increasingly challenging to find suitable staff who can provide high quality early education, and this could have a detrimental impact on parental perception of the benefits of early education.
This leads us to family-level barriers, and the challenges that some families may have with navigating the system. Disadvantaged families are more likely to believe that there are not enough childcare places in their local area and that the quality of provision is poor. For example, take-up is lower where parents perceive there to be a lack of support for children’s cultural and home language development.
This reflects a real need to ensure that the messaging around the entitlements is inclusive and supportive, responsive to the individual needs of all families.
Our research has identified a number of promising strategies to boost take-up in local areas, including childcare brokerage and greater support for parents with English as an additional language. Local authorities and Family Information Services play an invaluable role here, contacting eligible parents through outreach, letters and ‘Golden Tickets’. Some areas also use the ‘Parent Champions’ programme to boost take-up in the local community. This peer-to-peer model helps local authorities to reach more families who may otherwise miss out on key information, drawing on the lived experience of other parents who have successfully used early education.
We have arrived at a crucial time for the early years, on the brink of a landmark expansion of childcare. The Spring Budget was a promising step in recognising the need for more early years investment, but it will largely benefit more advantaged families. To make the system more equitable, inclusive and accessible for all, we must pay more attention to the experience of disadvantaged children who are missing out on vital opportunities to learn.
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