A third of children starting school in England aged five are not “school ready”. For children from disadvantaged backgrounds, that figure is much higher – just under half of children eligible for free school meals enter the classroom not having met the level of development expected for their age. This gap could not be more important: children who start school already behind are more likely to fall further behind and to disengage from their education as they get older.
Until now, the government has had too little to say on ensuring more children start school with healthy levels of development; as we have previously argued, it has been a conspicuously missing element of the government’s mission to break down barriers to opportunity. So it is very welcome that Keir Starmer last week included a specific target to improve school readiness – the prime minister has pledged to increase the numbers of children who are school ready from two-thirds to three-quarters by the end of this parliament – as part of Labour’s new “plan for change” milestones.
If this ambitious target is met – with a particular focus on children from poorer backgrounds – this will transform the life chances of tens of thousands of children a year. But the target can only be a starting point; in the coming weeks and months ministers will need to implement changes to make it a reality.
The biggest headache they face is whether there are the resources required to make a difference. Evidence shows that the last Labour government’s Sure Start scheme and high-quality nursery provision, particularly for children from disadvantaged backgrounds, helped to close the socioeconomic gap in school readiness. Yet after 14 years of public service cuts, children’s centres are a shadow of their former selves.
Early years support for children with special educational needs is strained beyond measure. The nursery sector is in crisis, with nurseries forced to close because of rising costs and a lack of funding, and the number of trained professionals at an all-time low. And levels of child poverty are forecast to rise by 400,000 over this parliament unless the government increases benefits and tax credits for low-income parents.
This is a fundamental problem for government more widely. When resources are so constrained – and Labour’s public spending targets are very challenging – it becomes difficult to find resources to spend on early intervention services, because there is such high demand for acute services. From substance misuse to education to health services, the state effectively waits for problems to get very bad before addressing them, which is terrible on both a human and an economic level.
Labour must avoid this trap, otherwise it will have no hope of meeting its school-readiness target. In the spending review next spring, ministers simply have to find resources for tackling child poverty and investing in the kinds of early years services that are so important to helping all children get the most out of their education.
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