Data from the Department for Education has highlighted disparities in children’s Early Years development levels. Early Years development is crucial as it lays the foundation for future learning and success.
The overall trends for children’s literacy and development at Early Years Foundation Stage (EYFS) show positive improvements from the year before. Most notably:
- Good Level of Development: In the 2022/23 academic year, 67.2% of children achieved a good level of development, up from 65.2% in 2021/22.
- Expected Level Across All Early Learning Goals: 65.6% of children were at the expected level across all 17 early learning goals, an increase from 63.4% in the previous year.
However, when taking a deeper look at development and children’s characteristics, the data shows key differences between children eligible for free school meals (FSM) and their peers, both within local authorities and across the country.
- FSM Eligibility: The percentage of children eligible for FSM varies widely across England. For example, 24.7% of children in Hackney are eligible, compared to 4.3% in Rutland.
- Achievement Gaps: Children eligible for FSM generally have lower percentages of achieving a ‘good level of development’ (GLD) compared to those who are not. For instance, in Cambridgeshire, 71.6% of non-FSM children achieve GLD compared to 39.8% of FSM eligible children.
In 60 out of the 150 local authorities in England included in this data, less than 50% of the FSM children achieve GLD. In comparison, there are no local authorities where the percentage of non-FSM children achieving GLD is below 60%.
Looking at the 10 local authorities with the highest percentage of FSM-eligible children versus the 10 with the lowest percentage, it appears that FSM children perform worse when there are fewer of them. Where there are less than 10% of children eligible for FSM, the percentage of those achieving GLD is worse than in the 10 local authorities with over 30% FSM-eligible children (49.5% compared to 54.6%).
These findings suggest that less deprived areas may be less well adapted at supporting FSM children, indicating a potential area for targeted educational support and intervention.
View the map to find out more about the situation in your area.
About the map
This map has been created using our Counties and Unitaries – 2021 map template, to reflect the boundaries of the data collected. Due to this, Cumbria has not been included. The data used in this map was released by The Department for Education 30/11/2023, and will be next updated in November 2024.
We have split the data into the following sections:
- Total number of children at Early Years Foundation Stage
- Percentage of children with a good level of development
- Percentage of children at expected level across all early learning goals
- Percentage of children at expected level in communication and language and literacy areas of learning
Each of these sections contain data for FSM eligible children, non-FSM eligible children, and unclassified children.
We have included both a ‘National Average’ and a ‘National Ranking’ for each data point on the authority pages. Both of these are designed to set the localised data within the national context, but can be turned off in the Polimapper settings.