NAO recommends more regulation for early education

Released 03/02/2012

National Audit Office has published a report recommending that the DfE needs to do more to regulate the provision of early years education in order to get value for money from the scheme

Entitlement to free nursery services was introduced by Labour in the late 90’s and has continued to expand for over a decade

The Department for Education (DfE) needs to do more to regulate the provision of free early years education for three and four-year-olds, a report by the National Audit Office (NAO) has found.

The report, published today by the NAO, also stated that the DfE had made progress in delivering free entitlement to early education since 2008/9.

However, the NAO report siad that more should be done to regulate variations in the quality and take-up of the provision nationwide, as well as the impact that early years education has in later years if it is to obtain value for money from the scheme.

In 2010, the Coalition announced that all three and four-year-olds would be entitled to 15 hours of childcare a week, at a cost of £1.9bn in 2011/12.

The report also found that the national take up rate for three and four-year-olds in early education had been sustained at 95% since 2008 despite an eight per cent increase in the number of eligible children in that time.

Head of the NAO, Amyas Morse commented on the report’s findings: "The Department for Education needs to do more to put itself in the position to assess whether the forecast long-term benefits of free education for three- and four-year olds are being achieved,” he said. “It also needs to understand how the arrangements for funding providers of that early education drive its availability, take-up and quality.

"Both of these are necessary if it is to get the best return for children from the £1.9 billion spent each year,” he added.

Daniela Wachsening, education policy adviser at the Association of Teachers and Lecturers, commented on the report’s findings and the importance of early years education:

“There is absolutely no doubt that high-quality early years education makes a massive difference to children’s development, and is particularly important for children from disadvantaged families,” she said.

“But the government is jeopardising the chances of disadvantaged children by cutting the grants to local authorities, which has led to the loss of high-quality early years places and drastic reductions in children’s and family services to the detriment of the most vulnerable children.

“In its fixation with crude ‘value-for-money models’ the government is favouring flexibility and local discretion above the provision of high-quality education for all children.”

The National Association for Head Teachers (NAHT) has given its support to conclusions drawn from the report, though warned against misinterpretation of the findings that could demean the importance of free early year’s education.

Russell Hobby, general secretary of the NAHT, said: “Evidence is regularly emerging of a connection between investment in children’s education at a young age and their later progress. The report by the National Audit Office adds weight to that evidence, particularly at age five, and should not be interpreted as running counter to that view.”

Hobby continued to state that the findings on the inconsistency of the provision were “unsurprising” and “not unique to early years education”

“Equally, no one would argue that there is inconsistency of quality between individual providers and between local authority areas which needs to be addressed,” he added.

“Education alone can never succeed in fully compensating for deep-rooted and complex social inequalities. The findings contained in the NAO report suggest that much still remains to be done to bridge this gap. We consistently support the regular calls for a concerted and coherent policy approach that links all agencies of early intervention with early years education provision, the quality of which is not dependent on post code or social class.”

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