Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what assessment his Department has made of the effect of spending on early interventions for nursery and reception children on the attainment gap; and what steps his Department is taking to measure that effect.

The government is investing in developing the evidence base for ‘what works’ in the early years. The government committed £8.5 million in the 2017 social mobility action plan to conduct robust trials of early interventions to improve children’s ‘home learning environment’, and to evaluate interventions to improve outcomes through improved practice in settings. This work is being undertaken in collaboration with the Educational Endowment Foundation (EEF).

The EEF, and the Early Intervention Foundation - which is also funded by the department – produce comprehensive and rigorous information on the effectiveness of early interventions in the early years, as part of the What Works Network: https://educationendowmentfoundation.org.uk/evidence-summaries/early-years-toolkit/, and https://guidebook.eif.org.uk/.

The department monitors attainment and the gap between disadvantaged children (those in receipt of free school meals) and their peers using the Early Years Foundation Stage Profile. 71.5% of children achieved a good level of development in 2018, up from 51.7% in 2013 (the longest period for which we have comparable data). The gap has narrowed by 1.7 percentage points since 2013 (again, the longest period for which we have comparable data).