Early years provision and children’s life chances

Government support for early years provision has multiple policy aims
relating to social mobility, economic wellbeing and social justice. Good
early education for all three-, four- and five-year-olds and disadvantaged
two-year-olds promotes children’s all-round development and prepares
them for formal learning in school. This is meant to lay the foundation for
children’s social mobility, particularly for disadvantaged children, via
improved educational outcomes, better employment prospects and a
reduced chance of remaining or becoming poor. The more recent economic
wellbeing rationale is to facilitate parents’ – notably mothers’ –
access to the labour market, thereby strengthening young families’ socioeconomic
position, and so helping them to avoid or escape poverty. And
the social justice aim refers to the role early years provision can play in
eliminating social and cultural inequalities and underachievement, and
promoting the inclusion of children with learning or physical disabilities.1
Arguably, the UK early years system has yet to meet these aims fully.
They each imply that governments must make extra efforts to ensure services
reach children at risk of being excluded from such provision, yet official
statistics confirm that children from poorer families still access less early
education and affordable, high-quality childcare than their better-off peers.2