Simone Barnes is a setting support officer in south Gloucestershire and a birth to threes network leader for the Bristol and Beyond Stronger Practice Hub. Throughout her 20 years of varied experience in the early years sector, Simone has developed a passion for championing equality, inclusivity and high-quality provision which advocates the voice of the child.
Making a Difference to Children Disadvantaged Through Poverty by Simone Barnes
The term disadvantage is one that is well known amongst early years professionals. The children’s commissioner describes it as “a term used to describe children facing barriers to success” but also acknowledges that the definition comes with complexities due to the many ways it can manifest itself. (De Souza 2023)
Despite the complexity of the definition, there is no doubt that we have a vital role in tackling disadvantage in the early years. Here, our focus will be on those disadvantaged through poverty. The number of children in poverty has risen to around 29 percent (NCB 2023). The attainment gap between those in poverty and their peers has also increased since the pandemic (Sutton Trust 2024). With this in mind, we need to consider what we can do for these children to make a difference.
Quality Matters
Research has long shown that having access to high-quality early years provision can tackle the effects of disadvantage. Those who have been in the sector for long enough may remember the landmark Nutbrown review in 2012, which highlighted this. Since then, others have had similar findings, more recently Melhuish and Gardiner’s Equal Hours Report (2023), which looks at the impact of the hours that young children have in early years education, with breakdowns according to socio-economic backgrounds. The emphasis on quality should not be overlooked, where a child accesses low quality provision this limits the opportunity impact on their life chances. “It is a false economy to invest in early education to a level insufficient to improve child outcomes and reduce inequalities.” (Social Mobility Commission, State of the Nation 2016).
This knowledge should encourage us to pose the ongoing question: what is quality provision? Most of us will have in-house self-reflection systems in place, which, if effective, will support us with our cycle of reflection. However, we can expand our thinking around quality by seeking out evidence-based approaches that are proven to improve outcomes for children. The Education Endowment Foundation, which is dedicated to breaking the link between poverty and educational outcomes, provides us with such approaches, summarizing the evidence and making it easily accessible.
Equality or Equity?
We know that all children benefit from accessing quality early years provision and seek to provide this. However, in our quest to do this, we can unwittingly promote equality instead of equity. We move the gap, which means we improve the outcomes for disadvantaged children, but we also improve the outcomes for the other children, so the gap remains. Some things we can reflect on in consideration of this are: Are we spending EYPP money in a way that is targeted? Do we recognize why those families who are disadvantaged may find it harder to reach us and strive to adapt to their needs? Or do we label them as hard to reach? Do we recognize that disadvantaged children are still disadvantaged even when they are not displaying ‘problems’ or falling far behind their peers? Are we mindful of the potential for the gap to become more significant between them and their peers beyond the early years? Taking the approach of being equitable through targeted work is the best way to accelerate the learning for those experiencing disadvantage.
Child’s Perspective
Seeing things from a child’s view is what we should strive to do as early years professionals; we work most effectively with children when we have an insight into their world. This practice is something that we can apply in this context.
We need to consider from the child’s perspective what it means to be disadvantaged and use this to inform our work with them and their families. With the unique child in mind, this should be an individualized approach, mindful that the experiences and subsequent impact of disadvantage will be different for every child and family. This means our approach should be adaptable and informed by us gaining a holistic view of the child and their lived experiences as a starting point. We should also be aware of how our own unconscious biases have the potential to cause us to be led by what we think or assume instead of seeking to know as far as possible.
Why Parental Engagement Matters
We know that there are many benefits to working in partnership with parents, one being that children achieve better social and educational outcomes when early years providers encourage engagement in their children’s learning. An example of this is seen in an evidence review by the EEF analysing 97 studies; the key findings were that parental engagement has a positive impact on an average of 4 months’ additional progress (over a year), effects are substantially higher in early years settings (+5 months) and primary schools (+4 months) than secondary schools.
So how do we build successful parent partnerships? The Department For education ‘help for early years providers’ pages offers information covering this.
We must remember, there is no one size fits all approach, just as children are unique and we treat them as such, so are parents. Whilst it may not be easy, it is certainly beneficial, so we must never stop trying and reflecting upon how we can remove barriers and make ourselves more accessible to them. Many of us can easily name what we feel the barriers to engaging parents are; time, capacity, the parents themselves, however what can be harder to reflect on is the underlying barriers that we subconsciously create. A common example is not asking parents questions because we don’t want to seem like we are prying. Of course, this requires a considered approach, but we cannot truly build the connection required to engage parents by avoiding this. Another example is our own histories of engaging parents is unsuccessful, so we try, but our attempts are half-hearted due to our own low effort and expectations. If we are looking for new approaches because what we are doing isn’t working, we should first consider how much effort we are giving to our existing strategies and if we need more time.
Acknowledging the Wider Context of Disadvantage
Alongside knowledge of the individual child and family, we can benefit from knowledge of the wider research to inform our practice. Thinking about communication and language as an example, we know it is one of the prime areas of learning which lay the foundations for the other areas of learning. It is also well-researched as an area of development likely to suffer if a child is disadvantaged. We can then use this knowledge to consider how we provide language-rich experiences. We must, of course, acknowledge that all children need language-rich experiences, but let’s consider it in this context; those children who have already had language-rich experiences at home come so you are enhancing what is already going well. Those who may not have had those experiences come to you in need of those experiences to thrive. There is no equity in taking the same approach for both.
Some children succeed because of you and others succeed in spite of you
Unknown Source
However, it is important to remember not to let the wider context override our professional curiosity. It is vital that we gain knowledge of the child and family and their individual circumstances to avoid an assumption-based approach.
Conclusion
Recognising that a child is disadvantaged and how this may impact them in their early years and beyond is a starting point. However, it’s what we do with this knowledge and how we seek to understand and respond to the needs of the unique child and family that matters. We must have at the forefront of our mind that “disadvantage is not necessarily a predeterminer of outcomes” (Hunt, M 2022). We have a valuable opportunity to positively influence outcomes for our disadvantaged children through well-thought-out targeted approaches. “The early years plays a crucial role in making life chances more equal for everyone. Every child can make progress with the right support” (J. Grenier 2020)
References
Department for Education (DFE) Help for early years providers : Working in partnership with parents and carers (education.gov.uk)
Education Endowment Foundation EEF Evidence Store
Hunt, M (2022) Helping every child to thrive in the early years. How to overcome the effect of disadvantage
Melhuish and Gardiner (2023 )the Equal hours report: The impact of hours spent in early years provision on children’s outcomes at age five, by socio-economic background Equal hours? – Sutton Trust
NCB: National Children’s Bureau (ncb.org.uk)
Nutbrown (2012) Nutbrown review: foundations for quality – GOV.UK (www.gov.uk)
Statutory Framework for the Early Years Foundation Stage (2023) Early years foundation stage (EYFS) statutory framework – GOV.UK (www.gov.uk)
Sutton (2024) ‘Inequality in Early Years Education’ – Sutton Trust Report | Nasen
