One of Labour’s five missions for government is to break down barriers to opportunity so that every child has the chance to fulfil their potential, regardless of their background. Yet Labour’s plans to address the attainment gap between children from poorer and more affluent backgrounds – a gap that was already widening before the pandemic and has since worsened – are so far inadequate and unequal to the task.
A report published by the Centre for Young Lives last week exposes how much class-based disadvantage manifests before children even start school. About 48% of those eligible for free school meals are not “school ready”; ie, not performing at an age-appropriate level across the statutory assessment that happens before they begin year 1. This compares with 38% of those not eligible for free school meals. This has got worse as a result of the pandemic; more children, for example, are starting reception wearing nappies and unable to communicate or socialise with other children.
This matters hugely in terms of development. Children who are not school ready are much more likely to fall behind (more than 50% performed below average in reading assessments aged seven, compared with just 6% of those who were school ready) and are more likely to disengage as they get older (those who were not school ready at five were more than twice as likely than their peers to be persistently absent from school later on). It has knock-on impacts for their education, employment and health for the rest of their lives.
So any strategy to close the attainment gap must have a strong focus on early years support that acts to close the socioeconomic divide that widens even before children start school. The evidence shows that targeted programmes such as the last Labour government’s Sure Start scheme and high-quality nursery provision are effective in doing this. But early years services are in a perilous state after 14 years of public spending cuts. Sure Start has effectively been dismantled, and the nursery sector is very fragile as a result of government funding the free entitlement at too low a rate: the rate of nursery closures has increased in the past year, with the poorest areas the worst hit, and the number of qualified early years practitioners is at an all-time low. We invest far too little in training early years professionals compared with other countries. Moreover, child poverty rates are rising.
Labour’s plans to close the attainment gap from the early years onwards are skeletal. The government has pledged £15m for 300 new nursery classes, or about 9,000 children, in English schools; a good thing, but very incremental. Ministers are also rolling out free breakfast clubs to all primary schools; evidence suggests that this might have a marginal impact on attainment at age seven but less so by 11. But there is no policy to re-establish a Sure Start programme, with most support targeted at children from disadvantaged backgrounds, nor to upskill early years professionals, particularly in poorer areas. There are no proposals for supporting schools to roll out catch-up interventions for children falling behind, such as reading tuition. And no plan to address the fact that almost one in three British children are now growing up in relative poverty.
Ministers would say they are constrained by the state of the public finances. That is not good enough; every year that a Labour government fails to invest in closing the attainment gap is a year that more children are failed. This is not just an economic issue – the long-term costs of children leaving school without the skills and knowledge they need to get on in life are profound – it’s also morally unconscionable. The money must be found.
