Pre-school Education: North West

(asked on 18th November 2016) - View Source

Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what steps she is taking to reduce the difference in attainment for children under five between the North West and the national average.


Answered by
Caroline Dinenage Portrait
Caroline Dinenage
This question was answered on 28th November 2016

Every child deserves the best possible start in life and support to fulfil their potential. A child’s experience in the early years has a major impact on their future outcomes and social mobility. On 20 October, the department published the early years foundation stage profile (EYFSP) results for the 2015 to 2016 academic year, at national and local authority level. At a national level, 69.3% of children achieved a good level of development, which is an increase of 3 percentage points on 2015 (compared to 66.7% in the North West, which also represents an increase of 3 percentage points on the North West’s 2015 data). The latest EYFSP results are available at: www.gov.uk/government/statistics/early-years-foundation-stage-profile-results-2015-to-2016

High quality early education is key to future outcomes, particularly for disadvantaged children. That is why we are working hard to ensure parents and children - wherever they live in England - have access to high quality early years education places through the funded 15 hour entitlement for disadvantaged two-year-olds and the universal 15 hours entitlement for all three- and four-year-olds. At present, 84% of all two-year-olds (compared with 84% in the North West) and 86% of all three- and four-years-olds (compared to 88% in the North West) take up their entitlement in a good or outstanding setting.

From September 2017, working parents who meet the eligibility criteria will also have access to an additional 15 hours of funded early education. Our proposed early years funding formula includes an additional needs factor - to better target funding towards local authorities with a higher relative proportion of children with additional needs - and an area cost adjustment to reflect local operating costs. This will help to ensure that all children can access quality early education in their area.

The government is taking further steps to understand the regional attainment gap. In May 2016, the department commissioned a feasibility study to investigate the regional gap in early years at age 5, including recommendations to undertake a further study through longitudinal analysis of the Millennium Cohort Study (MSC) to assess variation in attainment and evaluate the potential drivers of a regional gap.

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