The findings are based on children’s socio-emotional index scores, which are generated from scores for their assertiveness, co-operation, curiosity, emotional control, empathy, persistence and stress resistance.
Highlighting evidence that suggests that attending ECEC (early childhood education and care settings) with a high-quality workforce has a positive impact on children’s development, it calls for the Government create ‘a clear Early Years Workforce Strategy’ for attracting and retaining sufficient early years staff, ensuring early years educators are appropriately qualified, and ensuring adequate access to professional development.
It also links this recommendation with the need for 40,000 extra early years educators for the expansion of early years entitlements for working parents.
It also recommends the Government should consider the focus of early years funding, and how to increase the incentives for high quality ECEC settings to prioritise access to funded places for disadvantaged children.
The research from the National Foundation for Educational Research (NFER) found that 15- and 16-year-olds in England typically have worse social and emotional skills than the OECD average and inequalities in these skills are also greater than any other country out of 31 countries that the data covers.
The research is part of the latest instalment of the five-year Skills Imperative 2035: Essential skills for tomorrow's workforce research programme, funded by the Nuffield Foundation.
The research warns that if left unaddressed, these weaknesses could have consequences for young people’s ability to find jobs.
Jude Hillary, the programme’s principal investigator and NFER’s co-head of UK Policy and practice, said, ‘Socio-emotional skills are very important for young people‘s employment prospects as well as their life satisfaction and general wellbeing. This research suggests we need to do more, earlier in children’s lives to support their social and emotional development and give them the best possible start.
‘If we fail to prioritise these skills, we are potentially not just limiting individual wellbeing and potential – we are weakening the future workforce and economy of the UK.’
The report also said the Government should also explore what more it could do to incentivise and support schools to promote the development of children’s socio-emotional skills, such as communication and collaborating with others, as well as related self-management skills, such as planning and organisation and cognitive skills (problem solving), ‘as critical parts of a good education.
It says this could include exploring whether and how the development of essential employment skills can be strengthened as part of teaching and delivering the curriculum.
What are Essential Employment Skills?
The research highlights a set of six skills identified in 'The Skills Imperative 2035' as especially vital to the future workforce. These skills are a mix of cognitive skills (problem solving and decision making; information literacy; creative thinking), socio-emotional skills (collaboration; communication) and self-management skills (organising, planning and prioritising).
Commenting on the findings, Daniel Kebede, general secretary of the National Education Union, said the current Curriculum and Assessment Review was an opportunity to fix the system.
'We agree high quality early education is essential for children’s development. It should be accessible to all families, yet for too many this is not the case,' he said. 'We also need to see greater support for Maintained Nursery Schools (MNS) to provide the highest quality early education, especially for disadvantaged families and children with SEND. The government must guarantee their future.’
He added, 'The exam factory culture in England’s schools is to blame for students lagging so far behind other nations in socio-emotional skills. Another driver is an obsession with memorisation of knowledge over the development of important skills, and exam-only assessment at the end of courses. The creation of rigid, overloaded curricula is also alienating for young people.
‘SATs, the EBacc and Progress 8 must be ended. Their presence forces the arts out of the curriculum and drives the toxic school league table culture that now overrides everything else.’
