Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, how many children are in the lowest-attaining (a) 18.6 and (b) 21.5 per cent within the early years foundation stage profile; and how many such children are in each (i) region and (ii) local authority area.

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 (GLD), which is an increase of 3 percentage points on 2015. The same trend was seen in the percentage achieving at least the expected level across all early learning goals, which has increased by 3.2 percentage points from 2015. The EYFSP results are available at: www.gov.uk/government/statistics/early-years-foundation-stage-profile-results-2015-to-2016.

Information about the number of children in (a) the lowest attaining 18.6 per cent and (b) the lowest attaining 21.5 per cent of children within the early years foundation stage profile broken down by region and local authority is provided in an attachment to this response.