Helping poorer children – that’s the measure of early years success

I am really pleased to report that early education in this country has never been better. Overall, 86 per cent of early years settings are good or outstanding.
 
A great many of these settings rose to the challenge in November 2013, when we replaced the ‘satisfactory’ judgement with ‘requires improvement’. And when I talk to early years inspectors and staff, the evidence from the first 10 months of the common inspection framework is that it has worked remarkably smoothly.
 
Early years staff are in a privileged position. Think of the young child at a nursery from 8am to 6pm five days a week. In terms of waking hours, that child will likely spend more time, over the course of a week, with a key worker than they will with their parents.
 
That can have a quite profound effect on a young child’s life. And it’s why early years staff play such an important role in helping young children from poorer families get ready to read and write, and to grasp concepts of numeracy, when they begin to attend Reception.
 
What are the possible consequences of disadvantage? They may be educational failure, poor health, damaged relationships, limited employment prospects and unmanageable debt.
 
There is overwhelming evidence that early intervention is the best way to tackle these issues. Once behind, as a child gets older, it becomes too late to close the attainment gap. So I was perturbed to hear inspectors being told by school leaders that 'children will catch up later'.
 
So, while overall quality is as high as it’s ever been, I believe the true test of early years education must be how well it helps prepare the poorest children in society to keep up with their more affluent peers.
 
In the course of working on this report, inspectors found that one council in the north had devised its own ‘disadvantage dashboard’. This was an online resource which allowed council staff to see all the data about disadvantaged families in one place. This was used to identify factors they believed were important in fulfilling their obligations to help poorer families. The dashboard allowed the local authority to keep a firm grasp of the hot spots: places where support could be targeted. It allowed staff from education, social care and health services to work together and focus on providing help where it was most needed.
 
What really made the difference was, quite simply, professionals from different kinds of work shared data in an open way.
 
One school we visited made highly effective use of its early years pupil premium. School leaders used the money to employ their own speech and language therapist one day a week. Mornings at the school are spent assessing children’s language difficulties, while afternoons are devoted to specific language teaching. A beneficial side-effect is that the therapist is able to share expertise with teachers. This school also employs its own parent support worker, who leads drop-in sessions for parents.
 
We saw effective work in early years settings too. One pre-school leader told us she believed strongly that disadvantaged children are not receiving the kind of experiences enjoyed by children from wealthier backgrounds.

So this pre-school devised a simple list of activities that parents could do with their children at home, without blowing a hole in household budget. They devised colourful charts with headings like '20 things to do when you are two' and '30 to thrive'. The list includes such things as buiding sandcastles, climbing trees and feeding small animals. Once they’ve done each activity, the child receives a special sticker for the chart.
 
Parents of young children at this pre-school are encouraged to take photos of their activities, which are then displayed on an ‘Eye Spy’ board. This board can act as a considerable motivator when parents see the adventures other families are enjoying at the weekend. It is these kind of innovations that are making a real difference to thousands of young children across the country.
 
For Ofsted’s part, from April 2017, we will directly manage early years inspections. This will give us greater control over inspector’s professional development and I hope this will, over time, improve. But my ultimate goal is that early years leaders and staff do not notice the change, because the transition is seamless.
 
As I am sure you will have noticed, Unknown Children is not an annual report. We will have more to say about the early years later this year, when we come to publish the Ofsted Annual Report about education – from the early years all the way up to 19.

• Helping disadvantaged young children: how good are local authorities and early years providers?