1. Early Years – early language, social mobility and the home learning environment
15 March 2018

2. Tackling the development gap at age 5
Government is committed to improving social mobility and extending opportunity for all.
Tackling the attainment gap between disadvantaged pupils and their peers is a crucial part of unlocking the potential of every child and, for many children.
For many disadvantaged children a language gap is already in place before they start school, making it harder to help them master the basics of literacy that many take for granted.
Research by Save the Children shows that five-year-old children who struggle with language are six times less likely to reach the expected standard in English at age 11 then children who have has good language skills at five, and ten times less likely to achieve the expected level in maths.
‘Word gap’ – By the age of three, more disadvantaged children are – on average – already almost a full year and a half behind their more affluent peers in their early language development. (Source: Read On. Get On. (2014) Read On. Get On. How reading can help children escape poverty. And around two fifths of disadvantaged five-year-olds are not meeting the expected literacy standard for their age (Source: DfE, Early Years Foundation Stage Profile 2015 to 2016)

3. Unlocking Talent, Fulfilling Potential: New actions to tackle the ‘word gap’
Identify and spread evidence-based home learning environment programmes that support early language development.
Invest £5m to trial interventions to improve early language in the home – ensure that any positive findings are disseminated to local commissioners. Launch an evidence review on how family learning and adult literacy approaches can be used to involve actively parents in supporting their children’s early language development.
Form a partnership with Public Health England to enable health visitors and early years practitioners to identify and support children’s early speech, language and communication needs.
Provide £50 million funding to create more high quality school-based nursery provision for disadvantaged children.
Identify communities with low take-up of early education – particularly for disadvantaged children – and provide bespoke support to improve this
Develop and deliver a comprehensive offer of support to improve early language and literacy – especially for disadvantaged pupils including investing £50m to improve early language and literacy, including a new national network of English Hubs and funding to enhance early years practitioners' professional development.
Spread best practice to where it is needed, including from high performing local authorities to underperforming areas:
Launch a new £8.5 million ‘system leadership’ programme of sector-led peer support and challenge, where high performing local authorities will help others to develop effective strategies to improve outcomes, including through the effective use of children’s centres and alignment with local troubled families programmes. Alongside this, work with the Education Endowment Fund to set up a new dedicated early years ‘what works fund’ – focussed on enhancing the evidence-base professional development opportunities
Improve the outcome goals in reception, with a particular focus on reducing burdens and strengthening literacy and numeracy in the early years
Identify and share best practice on what should be taught in reception year.
Source: Unlocking Talent. Fulfilling Potential: A plan for improving social mobility in education, DfE,

4. Home Learning Environment (HLE): Evidence
Study of Early Education and Development (SEED) impact at age 3 report showed that aside from maternal education, the HLE is the single biggest influence on a child’s vocabulary at age 3, when controlling for a wide range of background, family, educational and other factors.
However, the quality of the HLE is lower in disadvantaged families, and worsening – research indicates that the time the gap in time spent on key activities such as reading to children that low-education and high-education parents spend with their children has widened to nearly 10 days a year (39 minutes a day) since the 1970s, when there was no appreciable gap.
In the 1970s parents spent minutes on key activities such as reading to children and there was no significant difference by parental educational level. From the 1980s onwards the education gradient widened, and by 2015 children with two low-educated parents receive on average 71 minutes every day, while those with highly educated parents receive 110 minutes every day. The study excludes lone parent households so is likely to underestimate the problem.

5. Home Learning Environment (HLE): Why set up a trial?
The HLE trial builds on existing work. In 2017, the DfE awarded almost £1.7m to voluntary and community sector organisations to work with disadvantaged or deprived communities to encourage the take up of 2-year olds places and to engage with parents to create a positive home learning environment, with a focus on early language and literacy.
The Evidence base for HLE support programmes is improving over time, but the Education Endowment Fund, Early Intervention Foundation and other organisations have identified the need for concerted further research in this area to decisively determine ‘what works’.
Therefore, it makes sense to conduct a series of robust trials of the best and most innovative programmes.

6. Local commissioners are funding a wide range of parenting programmes
Source: Children’s Services Omnibus: Wave 2 Research Report, November 2017 found that 9 out 10 responding local authorities provided one HLE/parenting programme. Two of the most popular programmes – Triple P and Incredible Years – are aimed at improving child behaviour.

7. Trial of Home Learning Environment (HLE) support programmes in the North of England
In the Social Mobility Action Plan we announced plans to invest £5 million in trialling evidence-based HLE interventions in the North with a specific focus on improving children’s early language and literacy – as one of the measures to close the word gap in the Reception Year.
The project aims to identify the most efficient and scalable way to deliver HLE interventions to:
a) positively impact on disadvantaged outcomes by age 5 in Northern LAs, particularly language and literacy; and
b) build and strengthen the evidence base to support a business case for future investment in HLE interventions at a national or local level.
In January 2018 we published an invitation to tender for an external organisation to procure and manage the trial. We expect a contract to be in place by the end of March The successful contractor will be responsible for launching a call for proposals in May 2018.
For information, we considered running a similar trial across the 12 Opportunity Areas. However, the OAs have limited capacity to do this, given the many interventions targeted at them. We can still invite the 5 Northern OAs to participate in the trial, and will include them if there is strong local desire/capacity to be included.