Among the government’s top priorities is its “opportunity mission” to break the link between a child’s background and their future success. The Plan for Change states that this will be achieved by delivering “accessible, integrated maternity, baby and family support services through the first 1,001 days of life and high-quality early education and childcare”.
The key measurable – one of only six for this parliament – is for 75 per cent of five-year-olds in England to reach a good level of development (GLD) in Early Years Foundation Stage Profile (EYFSP) assessments by 2028. That’s some ask, as only two thirds of five-year-olds currently meet this target.
Assessments for five-year-olds and “rising fives” take place in the summer term of Reception year. There are 17 separate indicators related to basic literacy, numeracy, communication skills, physical development and awareness of the world around, with the child assessed through observation and play. Teachers will assess conservatively, on the lookout for where additional support is likely to be needed. That is particularly so in the field of literacy and in areas such as self-regulation. They may mark the child down, raising a flag for further observation.
This won’t necessarily be the first time a child is assessed. There will typically be a development check-up, often made by health visitors, when a child is aged two. Primary schools will want a baseline assessment not long after a child joins them so that progress can be tracked until they leave at the end of year six. But the EYFS is a statutory framework and the data are submitted through the local authority to the Department for Education and then published.
In good news, London has the highest overall percentage of children achieving a GLD at age five, at 70 per cent, while Yorkshire and Humberside has the lowest at 66.1 per cent. There is a spread of scores across London’s boroughs as you would expect, with Islington’s children recording the lowest GLD proportion, at 65.1 per cent, and Richmond’s the highest at 77.1 per cent, making it the only one to meet the government’s objective. So, there is still some way to go.
In a major review of the early years data, an Institute for Government report found that four groups of children persistently fall far behind their peers: those eligible for free school meals; those identifying as Gypsy/Roma; Travellers of Irish heritage; and children with special educational needs and disabilities (SEND). The strongest demographic predictors of local authority performance on “school readiness” are the proportion of children with SEND, followed by the proportion from low-income households, who are identified through eligibility for free school meals.
The numbers are stark. Across London, only 22.2 per cent of children with SEND will record a GLD at five, while of those with an Education Health Care Plan recognising severe and complex needs, just 4.5 per cent will meet the goal. For children eligible for free school meals, under two-thirds (58.3 per cent) will achieve a GLD. The correlation between poverty and SEND is well evidenced, and although poverty is not a cause of SEND it increases the likelihood of developmental and learning difficulties and may mean delays in identification and access to support.
The Department for Education is prioritising key areas for achieving the school readiness milestone. These focus on expanding access to government-funded childcare, boosting the early years pupil premium (EYPP) and improving the curriculum and teaching standards. There will be a continuing roll out of Family Hubs across the country, which, it is hoped, will help improve early identification of SEND. There’s little on parental responsibilities, which seems strange. After all, getting children school ready is a shared endeavour.
What magic takes place in the Family Hubs, and how will they better support school readiness? They have been government policy since 2020. Run by local authorities, they are designed to be a one-stop shop for a variety of services for children and young people up to the age of 19 (and up to 25 for those with SEND), such as parenting support, midwifery, and things like housing or debt advice.
The Conservatives allocating a paltry £20 million to fund pilot hubs in selected areas, but more resources have followed and 75 local authorities are now funded to set them up, including 16 in London. Other boroughs have followed suit by bringing more closely together their early years and early help services for families and carers, and amplifying them within a Family Hub setting. Kensington & Chelsea, for example, has two main hubs, one in the north of the borough and one in the south, with four other venues also offering support.
Family Hubs are, however, a pale imitation of the Sure Start centres introduced by the last Labour Government in 1999, which lost their ring-fenced funding through the austerity years from 2010 onwards. Their remit is broad, resources are stretched thin, especially for early years, and local provision remains patchy.
Some have good links to primary schools, but many are too far away to encourage vital joint working. Even where they are accessible, some hubs will provide key services on site, while others will act more as referral gateways. Where a child’s development is not on track, and might indicate special educational need, Family Hubs can begin to have that difficult conversation about additional levels of engagement or possible referrals to more specialist support being needed – a realisation parents and carers often shy away from.
In contrast, Sure Start centres offered a much wider and more intensive set of interventions focused just on 0–5-year-olds and were generously funded. There were, at their peak, 550 centres across London, targeted at the most disadvantaged areas and accessible by a pram walk. Many were forced to close after 2010, but some remained as children’s centres.
Academic research has now firmly established the long-term impact of Sure Start centres on generating improvements in educational attainment and behaviour in school, on reductions in hospitalisations and in the number of children receiving support for SEND by adolescence. In monetary terms, the Institute for Fiscal Studies estimates that spending on Sure Start generated tangible net savings to the Exchequer as well as significant benefits to the children themselves in terms of enhanced earnings as they entered adulthood.
In January 2025, the government announced a £126 million funding boost for the Family Hubs and Start for Life programme for the fiscal year 2025–26, with much of the money aimed at programmes designed to support parent-child relationship development – infant feeding support, perinatal mental health support, early language development. The Spending Review reiterated its commitment to increasing access to free nursery provision and Family Hubs and significantly more funding has been earmarked for school nursery provision.
But funding for Family Hubs is blended, as local authorities must also contribute some match funding and in-house resources such as staff, management and premises. All this at a time when London Councils reports boroughs experiencing a £150 million overspend on children’s social care in 2024–25, driven by increased demand and higher placement costs. This necessitates hard choices about where to rein in spending, some of which would appear to undermine the ambition of Family Hubs. For example, children’s centres in Ealing and Lambeth are at risk of closure, signalling a further retreat from universal provision for under-five.
Schools have well-honed practices for supporting children as they approach the move from nursery to reception, but parents and carers too have a huge role to play in getting their children ready for primary school. Many schools look to engage with parents and carers in a relaxed way, by inviting them in for tea and coffee at the point of drop off so that they can begin to sketch out what they can do to get their child ready.
For children from families whose first language is not English, schools double up support with strategies for encouraging parents to engage with aspects of the curriculum to help with developing vocabulary, self-regulation and interpersonal skills. It requires a lot of leg work and fine tuning to find out what works with which parents, and how best to create positive engagement. A 20-minute chat over a coffee or a modelled sing-song in class with their child is likely to work best. No parent or carer wants to sit through a 45-minute Power Point presentation on phonics!
But perhaps something more formalised is needed. Government-supported school readiness checklists they can seem overwhelming for busy parents and carers. When a child receives confirmation of their place in reception, there should be an expectation that parents and carers attend a couple of sessions at the school alongside Family Hub staff to better understand what level of readiness is expected. This would give the whole summer for parents and carers to be thinking about and engaging with their children, leaving time for Family Hubs to provide additional help in advance.
Let’s try and get ahead of the curve for once by creating closer links between parents and carers, Family Hubs and schools. Each have their own role to play, but together they can be game changers.