Written evidence submitted by The Early Education and Childcare Coalition

(SFC0043)

About the Early Education and Childcare Coalition 

The EECC, co-founded by over 30 organisations, represents the views of all those with a stake in the system – children, parents, providers, the early years workforce and the wider business community. Our vision is of an early education and childcare system that provides high-quality, affordable provision for all families in all communities, and with it, good pay, conditions, and funding for those providing that education and care.

While the Inquiry is focusing on children with SEN, the EECC uses the term SEND (special educational needs and disabilities). Our submission therefore refers to ‘children with SEND’ throughout, meaning children of pre-school age with special educational needs and/or disabilities.

1. Performance of the system

The EECC welcomes the opportunity to engage with this Inquiry and the Government’s commitment to prioritising the early years and childcare. The EECC believes that the current system does not adequately support children with SEND in the early years, preventing them from having the best start in life.

Research shows that:

-          Investment in the early years yields high return on investment, by way of better social, economic and educational outcomes, particularly for children from low-income families

-          On average, every £1 spent on the early years saves the taxpayer £7 in later interventions across the education system and other public services.[1]

-          Providing disadvantaged children with access to high-quality early education translates to better outcomes in education and life: they go on to earn more, are more likely to go to university and are less likely to be arrested.[2]

-          Children with SEND are 1.6 times more likely to be living in a family in income poverty and over twice as likely to have no adult in paid work in the household than other children.[3]

-          Only 16% of mothers of disabled children work compared to 61% of their peers.[4] 

-          Access to high quality early education helps narrow the educational attainment gap early on, ensuring more children can thrive in mainstream education settings.

-          The process of identifying needs, assessment and access to support for children with SEND is often slow and disjointed.

-          Earlier identification and intervention for children with SEND means more children and families feel confident about children remaining and thriving in mainstream education and schools, reducing the need for special school places.

We therefore believe that targeted, ringfenced funding for children with SEND in the early years is necessary to ensure every child has the best start in life, to narrow the educational attainment gap and provide the best value for public money. Alongside this, the barriers which lock certain children and families out of high-quality early education and childcare should be addressed to ensure the money spent can support children with SEND to thrive.

However:

-          The current High Needs Block funding for local authorities to support children with SEND does not have a ringfenced portion for the early years;

-          The £1bn of the additional schools funding announced in the 2024 Budget which the Government has committed to spend on provision and support for children with SEND does not have a ringfenced portion for the early years;

-          Early education and childcare providers’ ability to apply for Disability Access Funding is reliant on a child receiving Disability Living Allowance, which is not straight forward for families to access, or their child does not yet meet its age criteria.

Children with SEND - along with children considered disadvantaged in other ways - lose out when the early education and childcare system is not adequately funded overall. Current government funding is insufficient for providers to deliver and further expand the funded childcare entitlements. This puts pressure on early years businesses and employers, who have historically cross-subsidised to make up for this shortfall, but the Government’s plans to purchase 80% of all childcare hours in England by the end of 2025 significantly limits their ability to do this. Without sustainable funding to cover the true cost of delivering the expanded entitlements, providers report that they will have to limit the number of places they can offer as a result, or risk being driven out of the market completely, further reducing the availability of childcare. As a result, despite their commitment and dedication to supporting every child, providers cannot always provide children with SEND with the high-quality, tailored education and care they deserve due to the additional costs of doing so (e.g. specialist staff). This further excludes children with SEND from mainstream settings and the social, emotional and communication development they can bring.

A 2022 members’ survey from the Early Years Alliance (EYA)[5], representing 14,000 early years providers which support over 800,000 families, found, that of all the respondents providing services for children with SEND:

• 40% said they don’t receive funding specifically to support SEND provision.
• 92% have had to fund additional support for children with SEND out of their own pockets, with 53% saying they do so ‘regularly’.
• Of those that have had to fund additional support themselves, 84% said it has had a negative financial impact on their setting.
• 74% said the number of children at their setting with SEND that has been formally identified has increased over the last two years.
• 14% expect the number of places for children with SEND they can provide to decrease going forward.
• Within this, not being able to afford the number of staff members needed (84%), insufficient SEND funding (77%) and inadequate overall early years funding (76%) were the most commonly cited contributing factors.
• 72% have never declined a place to a child with SEND. Of those that have declined, not having enough staff (74%), not being able to afford to deliver appropriate care (51%) and not feeling able to keep the children safe (43%) were the most commonly cited factors.

The EYA survey also found, of the respondents receiving additional funding for SEND provision:

• 87% said that the SEND funding they receive, along with their early years rate, isn’t enough to provide the quality of care for children with SEND that they want.
• Within this, 79% said this was due to both the SEND funding level and the general early years funding rate (8% said it was solely due to the EY funding rate and 13% said it was solely due to insufficient SEND funding).
• 23% regularly experience delays in receiving SEND funding.

EECC’s own research in 2023[6] looking at the experiences of early education and childcare professionals in delivering the expansion of the childcare entitlements found that:

• nearly 9 in 10 (87 percent) of practitioners working in nursery settings and 63 percent of childminders said that they were working and/or assessing more children with SEND
• The increase in SEND presentations and identification at early years coupled with higher staff to children ratios and low staff retention was linked to increased staff burnout, feeling undertrained and unsupported by wider specialist agencies (e.g. speech and language services)

Every child deserves appropriate, high-quality education and care right from the start. Specific funding for children with SEND in the early years is critical if providers are not to be financially out of pocket for working inclusively. 

2. The overall picture on the support available and outcomes achieved for those with SEN

Childcare availability in England is distributed unevenly across the country, with recent research showing that 45% of England’s population (1.4 million children) live in a ‘childcare desert’, defined as more than 3 children competing for every childcare place[7].

As highlighted previously, children with SEND are disproportionately impacted by a lack of high-quality childcare places, despite the number of children with SEND increasing, as they are more likely to be further excluded from an underfunded system.

Local authorities are concerned about their capacity to deliver early education and childcare provision, especially for children with SEND:

-          In 2024, the Coram Family and Childcare Trust surveyed local authorities and found just 6% of respondents had enough provision for children with SEND[8]

-          Local Government Association (LGA) research this year found 93% concerned about providing sufficient SEND places[9]

-          Last year LGA members’ survey found 9 in 10 local authorities are worried about their capacity to deliver the expanded entitlements

Dingley’s Promise, a charity focusing on supporting under 5-year-olds with SEND, undertook research[10] with families, early years providers and local authorities in 2023 to explore the support available:

-          79% of settings have seen a significant rise in the number of children with SEND (95% overall have seen a rise in the number of children with SEND)

-          The number of providers reporting they would have no more spaces for children with SEND following the expanded childcare entitlements (September 2024) was 57% and increase from 27% in 2023

-          86% have funded SEND support themselves – 62% on a regular basis

-          77% say SEND inclusion training is a priority for them. Only 53% of them reported their early years practitioners had accessed SEND and inclusion training

-          80% of settings felt that the ratio changes will make it harder to support children with SEND

-          One in five parents of children with SEND reported being turned away from services

-          85% of local authorities said they currently do not have sufficient provision

-          78% think the new entitlements will make sufficiency worse for children with SEND

-          98% reported that EHCP requests in the early years are rising

Timely, high-quality interventions for children with SEND supports their school readiness and reduces spending on later interventions. Dingley’s Promise is a Coalition member and Early Years provider for children with SEND. Their work highlights the short and longer-term savings of investing in high quality early years provision.[11] They found that when children began attending their setting in West Berkshire they were unable to attend mainstream provision. The reasons for this included lack of parental confidence, lack of skills and/ or confidence in mainstream settings. However, 90% of the children who attended Dingley’s were able to enter mainstream primary schools. The additional cost per annum for a child to access a special school place instead of a mainstream place is £52,540. This number increases each year that the child that has been helped early stays in a mainstream setting.

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3. Government action to create a sustainable SEN system and restore confidence

There are many ways government can ensure a high-quality, sustainable early education and childcare system for children with SEND. This includes ringfenced funding to support this cohort and adequately resourcing the sector overall to support the delivery of the childcare entitlements and high-quality provision for all children to prevent children with SEND being further excluded from the system. This will benefit both children with SEND now and in the future, and yield better value for money:
 

-          Adequately resource the early years sector to deliver the expanded 30-hour offer to all children, regardless of age, parent income, location, available provider type and special or additional needs of the child.

-          Ringfence a portion of the High Needs Block funding for the early years, to ensure that young children with SEND receive adequate support early in life

-          Unlink Disability Access Funding from Disability Living Allowance to remove the barriers for parents in accessing this crucial funding
 

-          Adopt the previous Education Select Committee’s recommendations to review the process for Special Educational Needs Inclusion Funding to ensure it is “truly reflective of the cost of delivering specialized care for children with SEN”
 

-          Bring the early years pupil premium in line with the primary pupil premium and improve its administration to support more disadvantaged children to reach their Early Learning Goals through interventions that can help close the attainment gap

-          Widen access to government-funded childcare for children excluded by the current eligibility criteria, such as parents currently in education or training, or without recourse to public funds, ensuring that the sector has adequate funding and resources to meet the increased demand

-          Bring forward the terms of reference to consult on a new national early years’ strategy, including a workforce strategy to address the ongoing recruitment and retention crisis, such as the need for 40,000 additional staff, through adequate funding for professional development, training and measures to improve pay, terms and conditions.

-          Ensure access to funded, universal, high quality SEND training for all early years educators, making this a mandatory training requirement for every practitioner
 

-          Collect and publish complete and full annual data on the sufficiency of places for children experiencing disadvantage, SEND and other additional needs.

November 2024