Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what steps she is taking to reduce the difference in attainment between children under five years old from different socio-economic groups.

On 20 October, the department published the Early Years Foundation Stage Profile (EYFSP) results for the 2015 to 2016 academic year at a national and local authority level, which are available at: www.gov.uk/government/statistics/early-years-foundation-stage-profile-results-2015-to-2016. 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 (compared to 67.4% in Yorkshire and Humber, which is an increase of 2.8 percentage points on Yorkshire and Humber’s 2015 data).

Every child deserves the best possible start in life and high-quality early education is key to future outcomes, particularly for disadvantaged children. That is why we are working hard to ensure parents and children - wherever they live in England - have access to high quality early years education places through the funded 15 hour entitlement for disadvantaged two-year-olds and for all three- and four-year-olds. At present, 84% of two-year-olds are taking up their entitlement in a good or outstanding setting (compared with 86% in Yorkshire and Humber) and 86% of all three- and four-years-olds take up their entitlement in a good or outstanding setting (compared to 83% in Yorkshire and Humber). The Early Years Pupil Premium provides over £300 per eligible child to improve outcomes for disadvantaged children and, from September 2017, working parents who meet the eligibility criteria will also have access to an additional 15 hours of funded early education.

Our early years funding formula includes an additional needs factor – to better target funding towards local authorities with a higher relative proportion of children with additional needs – and an area cost adjustment to reflect the different costs of providing childcare in different areas of the country. This will help to ensure that all children can access quality early education in their area.

The government is taking further steps to understand the regional attainment gap. In May 2016, the department commissioned a feasibility study to investigate the regional gap in early years at age 5, which made recommendations to undertake a further study through longitudinal analysis of the Millennium Cohort Study (MSC) to assess variation in attainment and evaluate the potential drivers of a regional gap. Acting on the feasibility report, the department has commissioned a study to build on the recommendations of the feasibility report, which will be able to help unpick the potential drivers on the regional attainment gap.