The Government is going to have to make up its mind what to prioritise if the neediest children are to gain from early years services, says Vidhya Alakeson
Should the Government increase paid maternity leave by a further six months, or extend free early years provision to two-year- olds? Both proposals are on the table for a third Labour term. Both have merit but both cost money. If the Government can't do both, which proposal should it go for?
Hard choices are the stuff of politics. The number of interest groups wanting a piece of the action inevitably exceeds the available funding. In last year's Green Paper Every Child Matters the Government made it clear that the interests of children must take centre stage in early years policy. But the needs of children, particularly disadvantaged children, are being pushed aside as departments battle it out for their share of the public spending pot.
The Department for Trade and Industry is pursuing work/life balance and the employment of women; for the Treasury the priority is child poverty; the Department for Education and Skills is focused on educational attainment, and the Department for Health on child health and wellbeing. The Government's failure to stick to its stated priority and put the needs of children first increases the risk that early years policy won't deliver real transformation in the life chances of children in the UK.
Life chances in modern Britain are still significantly influenced by family background: income, parental education, and the home environment in which children grow up. These factors begin to shape child development as early as 22 months and have a significant influence over how well children go on to do at school. Research conducted by Leon Feinstein at the Institute of Education found that a child's attainment scores at 22 months were a good predictor of attainment at 18 years. But fortunes are not set in stone. Evidence of the impact of pre-school programmes suggests that high-quality early years provision can weaken the influence of family background and give children a more equal start in life.
Risk and benefit
Compared to children who remain at home until primary school, children who attend pre-school show better cognitive and social development at school entry, with some benefits lasting into adolescence and adulthood. Disadvantaged children appear to benefit disproportionately from attending pre-school. One of the biggest studies of the impact of early years settings, the Effective Provision of Pre-school Education Project (EPPE), has found that pre-school reduced the risk of children developing special educational needs. In the sample of children studied by the EPPE project, one in three were at risk of having special educational needs on entry into pre-school, but this had fallen to one in five by the time the children went on to primary school. The risk of a child developing special educational needs increases with the amount of deprivation that child is exposed to in the first years of life, making children living in poverty especially vulnerable.
Up to now, the Government has made the poorest children living in the 20 per cent most deprived wards in the country a major priority, offering them and their families an integrated programme of education, care, health and social services through Sure Start. There is no doubt that these children are extremely vulnerable and face multiple forms of deprivation that severely limit their life chances. For example, they have a 50 per cent risk of developing special educational needs compared with 15 per cent over the nation as a whole.
And early evaluations indicate that a quarter of Sure Start Local Programmes are transforming the lives of these children and their parents. In one of the Sheffield Sure Start areas, there has been a 27 per cent increase in breastfeeding rates since 1998; in the Whitehaven Sure Start in Cumbria, 25 per cent of known smokers stopped smoking during pregnancy; and in S****horpe, in one year alone, 56 people were supported back into work through the Sure Start programme. Yet nearly 50 per cent of children living in poverty live outside
Sure Start areas.
For these families, the Government is trying to create universal access to early years education and care through a combination of subsidies: - subsidies for parents through the childcare tax credit to make it cheaper to purchase childcare, and subsidies for providers to make it more viable financially to set up places. But the two subsidies together don't always create one affordable solution for parents or a sustainable solution for providers.
For parents, the childcare tax credit often leaves them short. Even with full entitlement, they still have to contribute 30 per cent of childcare costs. This creates a significant disincentive for poor parents to work. The disincentive is particularly great in parts of the country where childcare is expensive, such as London. According to the Daycare Trust, a full-time childcare place in London costs 168. Parents with two children who qualify for maximum entitlement receive 140 from the childcare tax credit, leaving them with close to 200 to pay. For large families, there's a further disincentive. The maximum amount a family can claim is the same for two children as for four or five, even though the cost of childcare increases with each child.
For providers, a lack of sustained demand makes it difficult to provide places on a long-term basis. Since the introduction of the childcare tax credit, long-term council funding for places has been gradually replaced by short-term start-up funding, on the assumption that demand will sustain supply. This may be the case in affluent areas where parents are able to pay a premium for high-quality provision, but the strategy doesn't work in disadvantaged areas.
The supply side
In fact, it is highly questionable whether this double subsidy will ever provide adequate, affordable childcare for all disadvantaged families. If we want to be sure to reach the vulnerable children living in poverty who are currently outside Sure Start areas, a far more effective approach would be to subsidise supply. This would create more affordable places for parents and would give providers a secure revenue stream with which to plan and develop their services. But securing adequate investment to subsidise childcare places would require the Government to make a choice between competing objectives in favour of the needs of disadvantaged children and their families, rather than half-heartedly trying to satisfy a range of different objectives.
In the day-to-day tussle between Government departments for influence and investment, we must not lose sight of the overall goal of early years services: to give all children a fair start in life and a fairer chance of a bright future. Without a stronger commitment to put the needs of disadvantaged children at the heart of early years policy for the next Labour term, backed up by significant investment, the opportunity to make real positive change in the lives of many vulnerable children is likely to be wasted.
Vidhya Alakeson is a research fellow at the Social Market Foundation
Life chances
The Social Market Foundation is carrying out a major research project into life chances and early years, focusing on the contribution of early years provision in improving the life chances of disadvantaged children and families. The project was launched by Margaret Hodge, Minister for Children, in May 2004. A final report will be published in March 2005, outlining a set of priorities and proposals for next steps in early years. For further information, contact Vidhya on valakeson@smf.co.uk .
