CEY0958
Written evidence submitted by The Foundation Stage Forum
The Foundation Stage Forum is an online community run for and by education professionals. We provide space for professional conversations about provision and practice, we publish articles by sector specialists to support and develop professional skills, we host podcasts giving opportunity to hear about research, best practice and new innovations in the field of education. We work with both Ofsted and DfE to ensure that voices are heard and misapprehensions allayed. We are a sponsor of the APPG Early Years and Childcare, we believe that every child deserves the best start, parents deserve the best support and Providers deserve the chance to be their best professional selves.
Early years provision
Workforce issues – from a Provider’s point of view
Recruiting staff – the amount we are able to pay staff does not reflect the skills we require them to have or the emotional load we expect them to bear.
Sector recognition – Working in childcare and education is not seen as a ‘career’ by school leavers, it is viewed as babysitting and the role as ‘educator’ is not considered. Therefore is little appetite for an apprenticeship scheme that pays so little when roles in supermarkets pay better and have less emotional and physical stress attached.
Retention - Current senior staff have benefited from previous policies where investment in skills and qualifications coupled with payments to settings funded both cover staff and training expenses. Settings cannot afford to release staff for further training during the day and staff are too tired to work in the evenings or at weekends. Senior staff and their skills and experience are leaving the sector for less stressful jobs with better pay – there are not an equal number of junior staff moving through qualifications, gaining sector experience, to replace those that are leaving.
The job is getting harder – systematic dismantling of local authorities early years departments has meant that there is little support for settings until they reach crisis point. This puts a huge strain on setting leaders and managers as they are left to ‘find their own way’. Local authority training is expensive, often poor quality and hard to access - single places offered, online only etc. Cannot cascade new knowledge to large staff teams when only one person has been able to attend the course.
Since Covid – Last year it was the children who were struggling as they had spent so much time at home with parents and carers so their social skills and their language skills were not where we would have expected them to be. Staff were required to implement support programmes that would previously have been delivered by Local Authority staff – many children needed small group work and individual attention which took staff away from other children. There was no extra money for this which meant that human resources were stretched extremely thin. This year we are seeing how much parents are struggling – many have had work patterns changed, some have moved house due to the pandemic and all have struggled either being pregnant during Covid, or having restricted access to both their personal and professional support networks. Parents are more anxious for themselves, for their children and the cost of living crisis has made this much worse. Nursery staff are now having to support parents and families as well as children. Nursery staff are untrained for this role and there is little free support or training for them available. Nursery managers are bearing the brunt of this as they support their own families, as well as the families of the children in their care, their employees and the children registered at their setting. The mental health of managers is at risk.
Ofsted – The requirements of Ofsted do not reflect the role that current providers are fulfilling. The continual insistence on curriculum sequencing and development is inappropriate. Early Years is a non-statutory phase and there should be a focus on Care and education, not Education with care. The stress that Ofsted causes is immeasurable and puts people off working in the sector. Inspectors, despite the words of HMCI, are not looking holistically at settings, they have a tick list of ‘preferred’ methods and outcomes this is evident form recent reports. Ofsted should be allowed to support and develop best practice rather than judging and condemning settings.
Worked examples
Cost of baby space = £6.65 per hour
In order to offset these losses and to enable the provider to continue to offer the baby spaces profit income from older children is used to ‘cross subsidise’ the losses with younger children.
Cost of pre-school place = £5.89 per hour
Government pay = £4.33 per hour
This is why nurseries are closing – there is simply not enough money to pay for all the things we need to
One nursery
Rates have gone up 300% in 5 years
Utilities have gone up 300% in 1 year
Salary increases (based on NMW) will be another 10% in April
Funding has gone up 4%
Solutions
2. Consider whether the Early Childhood Education and Care (ECEC) system is meeting the needs of pupils with Special Educational Needs (SEN), and the improvements that could be made to better support young children with SEN within early years provisions
The SEND Code of Practice (January 2015) states that: Providers must have arrangements in place to support children with SEN or disabilities. These arrangements should include a clear approach to identifying and responding to SEN. The benefits of early identification are widely recognised – identifying need at the earliest point, and then making effective provision, improves long-term outcomes for children.
However the 2022 SEND Green Paper states: This cycle begins in early years and mainstream schools where, despite the best endeavours of the workforce, settings are frequently ill-equipped to identify and effectively support children and young people’s needs.
The key to effective early identification and intervention lies in high quality training for the ECEC workforce. The Early Years SEND Partnership is a national programme supporting professionals and parents with training, resources, and an approach to sharing learning, with the aim to increase access and inclusion in early years for children with SEN and Disabilities, but according to the Council for Disabled Children, this programme only runs until March 2023, and it is unclear how effective it has been or how many settings have been reached.
A consistent challenge for families is accessing appropriate support for their children via an Education Health and Care (EHC) plan. Ofsted revealed in December 2022 that in 2021, only 59.9% of new EHC plans were issued within the legally required 20 weeks. ECEC settings can find themselves in a position where they feel unable to meet the needs of a child with learning differences or a disability without the level of additional funding that can only come with an EHC plan. This can often be due to health and safety concerns. A further complication in receiving an EHC plan is that invariably, to receive reports from relevant health professionals, a child needs to be attending a setting. If a setting is unable to provide a space for a child with complex support needs, then the family are much less likely to be able to have a successful EHC application. Unfortunately the impact of exclusion from an ECEC setting whilst waiting for appropriate funding or support can compound the challenges that young children with learning differences and disabilities face as they miss out on valuable learning time. Even partial/phased hours for a child with complex support needs can have make a significant difference to the amount of input a child receives in the EYFS. If for example a 3 year old awaiting appropriate funding is able to attend nursery for 10 hours per week, vs a peer who accesses 30 hours, the difference over the course of a standard school year would be 780 hours (32.5 days). It is also important that educators in settings receive appropriate training to recognise reasonable adjustments that can be made to their provision which may negate the need for funding. Doncaster Local authority created the Reflection Toolkit in 2022 alongside the Foundation Stage Forum in order to support settings to consider the quality of their provision in this regard.
A further challenge facing ECEC settings linked to SEND are the EYFS reforms that took place in 2021. Whilst there has been widespread support for a move away from data focused tracking and substantial evidence gathering, the reforms have left confusion for many providers and local authorities when it comes to SEND. Referrals for additional support pre-2021 generally involved gathering evidence alongside the statements from the previous incarnation of Development Matters and deciding on an appropriate ‘age band’ for the child in question. With a move away from this style of assessment being recommended for all children, and a new Development Matters that looks very different, many have been left unsure as to how to proceed. It is important that clarity is provided ASAP so that child centred assessment occurs for all, and we aren’t left in a situation where a child with learning differences needs to jump through hoops in their day to day learning to ‘prove’ that their challenges are significant enough.
3. To what extent does the early years system adequately prepare young children for their transition into primary education, particularly children from disadvantaged backgrounds
Access to high-quality early childhood education has been proven to have a positive impact on children’s readiness for the start of their schooling life. The National Literacy Trust found that those who attended high quality pre-school settings were more likely to have a better development in their language and literacy skills which are important foundations for providing a good starting point for a child starting school. (Children’s early literacy practices at home and in early years settings p41) The DfE has also conducted its own research in which it found that children who attended pre-school were likely to have improved social and emotional development, which supports them as they settle in to the structure of school life.
All of this requires that access to the high-quality early years settings though, and this is not something that is equal for all children in the UK, particularly those from disadvantaged backgrounds. The National Centre for Social Research found that children from low-income families are less likely to have access to high-quality provisions. (The free early education and disadvantaged families section 2.6 p28). This is also backed up by a study by the Education Policy Institute which found that children from disadvantaged backgrounds who did not attend pre-school were more likely to display lower educational attainment when starting school, which could become a barrier as they made the transition to school. (Key drivers of the disadvantage gap p9).
The extent to which attending a high-quality early years setting impacts a child’s readiness for learning at school is well backed up by the research. However, the availability of these high-quality settings, especially for those from disadvantaged areas, does nothing to support those that possibly need it most. Investment in early years education is needed to ensure that all children have the opportunity to make a successful transition into school life, no matter what their social background may be.
4. The extent to which the reduction of Sure Start Children’s Centres has affected children and families, particularly children from disadvantaged backgrounds, and the role of Family Hubs
Sure Start Children’s Centres were designed to provide a range of key services in one place to children and families. In the beginning, the centres were focused on the most disadvantaged areas in England, but over time they were introduced to all areas. The 2018 Sutton Trust report, Stop Start: Survival, Decline or Closure? Children’s centres in England, 2018, recorded that at the peak of the Sure Start Centre policy in August 2009, there were 3,632 centres, and 54% of these were in the 30% most disadvantaged areas.
Since then, we have seen a vast reduction in the number of children’s centres. Stop Start reported that the number of closed ‘registered centres’ between 2009 and 2017/18 was likely to have been 1,000 – a drop of 30%.
The fact that the Stop Start report showed that the proportion of centres in the 30% most disadvantaged areas stayed constant between 2009 and 2017 (at about 50%) indicates that those local authorities recognised the vital role Sure Start Centres played in supporting children and families in these areas. However, in 2019 Action for Children sited concerning evidence that local authorities in disadvantaged areas had seen a drop of 22% in the number of children accessing children’s centres, compared to a 12% fall in the least disadvantaged areas (Closed Doors, Children’s Centre usage between 2014/5 and 2017/18).
The closure of Sure Start Children’s Centres has led to a loss of services and support for families and children, particularly those who are most disadvantaged.
Sure Start Children’s Centres were central to offering early intervention services. An example of the positive impact of this is on children’s overall health. The Institute of Fiscal Studies paper on The Health Impacts of Sure Start, August 2021, showed that early interventions through Sure Start prevented approximately 13,150 hospitalisations in children aged 11-15, with those children having experienced improved disease management, strengthened immune systems, and safer home environments.
But as the number of Sure Start Children’s Centres has declined, we have seen a shift in local authority spending, from early to late intervention services. Stopping the Spiral – Children and young people’s services spending 2010-11 to 2020-21, a report commissioned by a coalition of charities, shows that in 2010-11 58% of local authority spending on children and young people went on late intervention services, and that this had risen to 80.5% by 2020-21. Only 18.5% of spending in 2020-21 was allocated to early intervention services such as children’s centres.
Early intervention is crucial to improving outcomes for children from disadvantaged backgrounds. We know that children learn and develop most between birth to five years, more than at any other stage (Development Matters, p. 6). We also know that a child’s home learning environment (HLE) is a key predictor of children’s outcomes (Improving the home learning environment: A behaviour change approach, 2018, p. 6).
All of this must be seen through the lens of the COVID-19 pandemic, and the impact of this, particularly on disadvantaged children and families.
The loss of Sure Start Children’s Centres left a hole where local community-based early support had been. An inclusive place that families could get to easily, to connect with each other and with knowledgeable professionals working collaboratively.
In response to the decline of Sure Start Children’s Centres, the Family Hub model is being introduced. This includes a funding focus on improving young children’s home learning environments, and on the support needed to help families to recover from the pandemic. Family Hubs aim to provide a joined-up approach to the services available to families – termed ‘Start for Life’.
It is early on in the Family Hub policy and funding programme, so the impact these may have, and whether they will improve outcomes for all children, remains to be seen. However, policy makers need to be mindful to build on what has been learned, while recognising new evidence and research, adapting support to current and pressing needs, and keeping diversity and inclusion at the forefront of any programme. This is a critical time for the children’s social care sector, and for the early years education sector. And most of all, a critical time for our children and families.
January 2023