Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, if her Department will publish the data that it is using to measure the effect of the free childcare entitlement on disadvantaged children.

The Department annually publishes data on the Early Years Foundation Stage Profile (EYFSP) assessment which measures a child’s development at age 5.

The recently published 2015/16 results show that the proportion of all children achieving a ‘good level of development’ is improving year on year – in 2016 69.3% achieved a good level of development compared to 66.3% in 2015 and 60.4% in 2014.

The Department will publish further data tables on the EYFSP results by children’s characteristics, including for those children with free school meal eligibility, on 24 November 2016.

Last year’s results showed that the gap between disadvantaged children and their peers had narrowed – 51% of children eligible for free school meals achieved a ‘good level of development’ in 2015 compared to 45% in 2014.