Is a disadvantage gap really a thing in early years?

A report to Parliament - Tackling Disadvantage in Early Years (February 2019) - has argued that recent action by the government may appear to suggest that the answer is no. It opens with the following:

“There seems to be little strategic direction to government policy on early years - the life chances strategy was never published, the government’s social mobility action plan did not fully address the role played by the early years, and the government’s flagship 30-hours childcare policy appears to be entrenching disadvantage.”

The report goes on to set out that the two key areas affecting children’s life chances are quality early education and the home learning environment. 

In short, a disadvantage gap definitely does exist in EYFS and we do need to provide strategic support in EYFS to try and close it. 

Quick read: How to close the EYFS writing gender gap

Quick listen: Learning through play: what are the benefits?

Want more articles like this? Join our Tes Teaching and Learning Facebook group 

How might we do this?

The government’s lack of policy or funding focus here is all the more confusing because there is plenty of research out there to suggest what might work in early years for the most disadvantaged (and no, I do not include Ofsted’s Bold Beginnings among that research, but I do highlight here some of their better, earlier research). 

But we first need to define what we actually mean by disadvantage.

Disadvantage: a definition

At my trust’s recent annual conference, I ran a workshop discussing how we can look at what disadvantage might look like in early years and how we might tackle it.

The first thing I asked the tables to discuss was what they thought disadvantage meant. Interestingly, not a single one of the 70 delegates participating mentioned pupil premium.

Some ideas that came through were things such as poor language skills, poor social skills, lack of routines and boundaries, low levels of experiences, lack of sleep, low self-esteem, SEND, EAL and low levels of self-care when judging children against age-related expectations.

Broad classification

This links well with Ofsted’s 2016 publication Unknown children - destined for disadvantage. 

Here, Sir Michael Wilshaw argues that it is “schools that are best placed to lead on the necessary help needed by very young children from disadvantaged homes who are at risk of falling behind”. 

The report goes on to discuss what we had discussed as groups - that using pupil premium alone to define disadvantage can be too narrow a lens and may mean that many children get overlooked when the “disadvantaged” group are the focus for a setting’s various strategies to close any gap. 

Bear in mind also that a lot of families eligible for pupil premium may be reluctant to fill out the necessary paperwork for whatever reason.

What should we be doing?

So we need to think more broadly about those children in our settings or class who may indeed be disadvantaged, regardless of pupil premium. And then we need to look at what the research says is the best way to tackle it. 

A great resource is the EPPE (Effective Provision of Pre-school Education, 2004) study. It was a longitudinal study, which found that:

• where settings view educational and social development as complementary and equal in importance, children make better all round progress. 
• effective pedagogy includes structured interactions between staff and children, the provision of instructive learning environments and ‘sustained shared thinking’ to extend children’s learning. 
• home learning and support for parents are very important. The quality of the learning environment at home (where parents are actively engaged in activities with children) promoted intellectual and social development in all children. Although parents’ social class and levels of education were related to child outcomes, the quality of the home learning environment was more important and only moderately associated with social class or a mother’s qualification levels. What parents do is more important than who they are.  For this reason preschool and school settings that do not include parent support and education are missing an important element in raising achievement and enhancing social and behavioural development.

Steps to success

Another useful resource is Study of Early Education and Development: Good Practice in Early Education. It offers the following findings, which are excellent starting points for any teacher or leader thinking about auditing their provision - they will benefit all children but especially those from disadvantaged backgrounds.

• Create a “language-rich” environment and use appropriate visual aids.
• Enable high-quality adult/child interactions.
• Encourage home learning and strong relationships with parents
• Build warm and positive relationships between staff and children.
• Create small group activities that support children to work together, share and take turns
• Provide a consistent approach to behaviour management.
• Encourage children to do things for themselves. Involving them in decision-making and supporting them to find their own solutions to conflicts were elements of good practice felt to encourage self-regulation and independence
• Employ staff with the professional knowledge and skill to support learning.

And finally, BERA’s Early Childhood Research Review (2003-2017) also stated that: “Children’s agency is central to how they organise and develop their play with peers and with different materials”. 

Common elements

You will notice a common thread here. Encouraging independence and involving children in decision-making, activities that promote sustained shared thinking, language development and self-regulation seems to be fundamental to how children might begin to break through barriers and enable access to all of the other good practice outlined. 

Alongside this sits quality-first teaching by highly skilled adults and excellent parental relationships that support the home learning environment.

If we do all this, then the road to reducing disadvantage is that much more manageable, even when the government seem more willing to talk a good game about EYFS than actually do anything to help those already showing them the way. 

Nicky Clements is head of EYFS at Victoria Academies Trust. She tweets @nickyclements71