Language is the Gateway to Success
Susie Owen, Deputy Director Early Years: Quality, Outcomes and Providers, Department for Education, outlines Government plans for social mobility.
The early years are the cornerstone of social mobility — the foundations of talent and opportunity develop in the first years of a child’s life, enabling them to access school and future career success. Thanks to the hard work of early years professionals across England, children’s outcomes have been improving, with 71% of children reaching a good level of development at the end of reception in 2017, compared to 58% in 2014. During the same period the attainment gap between children on free school meals and their peers at the same age has also decreased by 10%, from 19 to 17 percentage points.
However, too many children still fall behind early, and it is hard to close the gaps that emerge. Language is the gateway to success in school, and later life. Children with poor vocabulary at age five are more than twice as likely to be unemployed at age 34. We must tackle these gaps at the earliest opportunity, to give all children the opportunity to thrive.
More than a quarter of children — 28% — finish their reception year without the early communication and reading skills they need to thrive. That is why the Secretary of State in a recent speech, set out his ambition to cut that number in half over the next ten years.
This builds on the actions set out in Unlocking Talent, Fulfilling Potential, published last December, which included measures to close the word gap in the early years. As set out in the first chapter of that plan, we are working with partners across the early years sector and beyond, to build our understanding of what works and to support local authorities, health commissioners and the wider early years workforce to make informed, evidence-based decisions to better support disadvantaged children. Our goals are three-fold:
- to ensure that more disadvantaged children experience a language rich early environment;
- to improve the quality, availability and take up of early years provision for disadvantaged children; and
- to ensure a coherent ‘place-based’ approach to supporting children’s language development in the early years.
Language-rich early environments
The benefits to children from attending high quality early education are well known. However, we also know that what happens at home is crucial — it is where children spend most of their time. In his speech in July, the Secretary of State for Education set out his plans for making improving children’s early language and literacy a society-wide mission, and is inviting business, broadcasters and a broad range of other organisations to be part of a coalition to explore innovative ways to boost early language development and reading in the home. The National Literacy Trust, as well as leading businesses and broadcasters (including WHSmith, British Land and KPMG) have signed up, and will attend a summit in the autumn, as will the BBC and ITV.
Together with the Education Endowment Foundation, we are investing £5 million to trial in the North of England evidence-based home learning environment programmes that support early language development. We have also formed a partnership with Public Health England to help provide health visitors with additional tools and training to identify and support children’s early speech, language and communication needs.
Improving quality and take-up
We must continue to prioritise making high quality pre-school education accessible to those from disadvantaged backgrounds. The Secretary of State has launched a capital bidding round of £30 million, inviting leading schools to come forward with projects to create new high-quality nursery places, demonstrating innovative approaches to closing the gap for disadvantaged children.
As well as investing in buildings, we must invest in people. We need to ensure that provision is high quality, and that our early years workforce has the skills and knowledge to support children’s early language development. We will be investing £20 million to train and develop early years professionals, working with local authorities to set up over 100 early years professional development partnerships which will bring together PVI and school early years settings in some of the most disadvantaged areas of the country. A national delivery partner will be appointed to deliver high quality training to the partnerships. We expect the procurement of the delivery partner to begin in autumn 2018.
A ‘place-based’ approach
Unlocking Talent, Fulfilling Potential also announced the creation of the Social Mobility, Early Years and Language Peer Review Programme, which we are partnering with the Local Government Association to deliver. Local services and local authorities sit at the heart of what a locality offers disadvantaged families and have an important role to play in coordinating the efforts of different partners such as public health. High quality integrated services are essential if we are going to make a positive impact for those children and families most in need of support.
We have successfully piloted the peer review programme with Wigan and Cambridgeshire/Peterborough; an experienced group of peer reviewers spent 3–4 days working with each authority to understand how effective their local services are at improving early outcomes for disadvantaged children at age 5, including the effective use of children’s centres. Each peer review ends with a feedback session for the Director of Children’s Services, followed by a report that the local authority can use to improve their practice. Over the next eighteen months we will work with up to 30 local authorities to support them to develop strategies to improve children’s outcomes in the early years.
Through the programme, we will also work with local authorities that are effectively closing the gap on school readiness, and speech, language and communication needs, to understand what is already working and spread this learning back into the sector by sharing best practice.
Useful Links
Unlocking Talent Fulfilling Potential: A Plan For Improving Social Mobility Through Education
Speech: Education Secretary Sets Vision for Boosting Social Mobility
Education Endowment Foundation
To find out more about any of the programmes mentioned in the article, or to register your interest, please get in touch with the team at earlyyears.socialmobility@education.gov.uk.

