Change the approach to targeting early years for disadvantaged children

A recent Coram Family and Childcare research report from reinforced what we have sadly come to know about targeted and universal funded early education and childcare entitlements.That being that disadvantaged children can miss out due to confusion amongst parents.Nursery World - Disadvantaged children missing out on their funded entitlement due to confusion among parents

We know the experience is not easy for parents to navigate with complex systems and messaging.And this difficulty is further heightened by English as an additional language, low literacy levels, and digital poverty.It isn’t easy for those family professionals who are in regular contact with parents either.They find it tricky to understand, explain, and keep up-to-date with the rules, regulations, and processes.As for early education and childcare providers, they are required to manage the system on a day-to-day basis, spending time that they would rather dedicate to working directly to deliver better child outcomes.Local authorities (LAs) on the other hand are constrained in how they can deploy resource to work with eligible families, and the providers of the funded entitlements to reach and engage, and ensure supply meets demand and funding conditions.All of this exposes the imperfections of a system that needs an urgent review.A new direction should and could ensure greater equity, justice, and prioritise efficient investment and greatest impact.

There are many great recommendations in the report.We welcome the recommendation to decouple the funding rates from the funding available for LAs to discharge their market management role.Currently, the majority of that comes from the option for LAs to retain up to 5% of place funding. Something the previous government established and set the ambition to reduce (in time) to 3% - in response to more funding being allocated as the entitlements expand through 2024-2025.Indeed, the cap will change to 4% in 2025-2026.

Increasing the take-up of disadvantaged families – which are the ones where the greatest impact can be made, the gaps reduced, and most support is needed, takes work.It takes good data management, direct and targeted communications, inspiring and coordinating family facing inputs, outreach work (including in some cases door-knocking), information sharing, and brokerage in the form of mentoring and coaching for those small number of parents who need that little bit extra help and encouragement.

The problem is, the way in which LAs are funded rewards those areas where take-up is easier because they either don’t share the socio-demographic conditions that characterise low-take-up, or they have greater scale and economic power. In turn, the system disadvantages those LA areas that are the opposite of that.It is a toxic cycle.Indeed, in those areas where they achieve 90% take-up can receive around seven times more funding than the areas struggling at 50% take-up.There is a way forward, now is the opportunity to build a case for redistributing and redirecting existing funding by streamlining the system to refocus more on universal investment rather than deploying significant resource to regulating rigid criteria, checking and auditing to mitigate a risk that simply doesn’t exist.By that I mean, spend more time on the workforce and the delivery of early education and childcare for more children, without expecting disadvantaged and working families to fit eligibility criteria, to know about it and understand it, to apply for their entitlement, for it to be checked, then confirmed, and reconfirmed, head counted, and funded.Surely that resource, time and effort, and the barriers they present are better redesigned.

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