Credit: Rodnae Productions.

Alison Clark, Claire Cameron and Peter Moss.

Political parties are preparing their offers on early childhood policies for the next election. While it’s encouraging to see consensus exists that early childhood education and care is a priority, the myopic and short-term approach shared by all parties – more and cheaper ‘childcare’ seems to be the common theme – is deeply disappointing. Tinkering with a dysfunctional system is preferred to taking the long view and transforming early childhood in England.

Taking the long view on early childhood is the subject of the next event in our programme marking the 50^th anniversary of the Thomas Coram Research Unit.  Since 1973, TCRU has conducted ground-breaking national and international research on early childhood policy, provision and practice, research that has collectively presented a more ambitious path for the early years. (more…)

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Rachel Benchekroun and Claire Cameron.

Given the growing pressures on families in the context of ongoing austerity policies and the current cost-of-living crisis, as well as the immense financial pressure on early years providers, greater investment is needed from central government to enable early years settings to provide safe, supportive and sociable spaces for families with young children. (more…)

Peter Moss.

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Ahead of his UCL Lunch Hour Lecture on 11^th May, Emeritus Professor Peter Moss sets out why ‘just more childcare’ is not the answer to England’s early years needs.

Last week’s Spring Budget saw the latest of many attempts by successive governments to fix England’s broken early childhood system. More funding was directed at childcare. But expensive childcare is just one symptom of a flawed system, itself the product of decades of government neglect followed by a failure to think critically and holistically once early years gained policy attention from 1997.

The result today is a hodgepodge of fragmented services, coupled with weak and poorly co-ordinated leave provision. (more…)

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Margaret O’Brien

In a recent BBC Radio 4 debate, the Right Honourable Jacob Rees-Mogg MP claimed that the UK has the best maternity rights in the world. The programme was aired on the 31^st January, to debate the third anniversary of Brexit. In it, he also assured the audience that rescinding EU employment regulations would have no detrimental impact on British working parents – and that in comparison to our European neighbours we in the UK already benefit from exceptional maternity rights, with laws originating from the UK itself.

In fact, Jacob Rees-Mogg’s claim of world-leading maternity rights for Britain is an odd statement and contrary to international evidence. (more…)

Catherine, Duchess of Cambridge, Professor Pasco Fearon, and Professor Alissa Goodman, during a 2021 visit to UCL. Credit: Parsons Media for UCL.

Alissa Goodman

It was exciting to be invited earlier this week to the launch of Shaping Us, the new Royal Foundation Centre for Early Childhood campaign to raise awareness of how important the early years are for shaping the adults we become.

At the launch, the Princess of Wales showed her obvious passion for and commitment to improving the lives of all children, from their earliest stages of life. Her serious personal interest in the deep scientific underpinnings for why the early years matter is also very striking. (more…)

Credit: Phil Meech for UCL IOE.

Guy Roberts-Holmes and Lucy Kaufmann.

The Department for Education (DfE) had attempted to introduce its contested and controversial Reception Baseline Assessment (RBA) for four-year-olds since 2015. Reflecting a wider realisation of the COVID-19 pandemic as a powerful catalyst for ‘re-imagining’ education with digital education technologies, the DfE implemented RBA as a statutory assessment in September 2021. (more…)

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Diane Hofkins.

Few of us will have been sad to see the end of the year 2022, and yet, throughout the year, our IOE writers sought to make things better. They analysed findings on topics from dyscalculia to climate change to exams to international development and proposed ways forward.

Take for example Sandra Leaton Gray and Andy Phippen’s helpful February post about children and internet safety, with its down to earth advice on listening to children and talking through concerns and its reassurance that most children use the internet safely. This post also featured my favourite illustration of the year (see above). Or Katya Dowdle’s debate-provoking proposals for more oral exams in higher education (HE). For (more…)

Jo Van Herwegen, Elisabeth Herbert and Laura Outhwaite.

A good grasp of maths has been linked to greater success in employment and better health. But a large proportion of us – up to 22% – have mathematical learning difficulties. What’s more, around 6% of children in primary schools may have dyscalculia, a mathematical learning disability.

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Developmental dyscalculia is a persistent difficulty in understanding numbers which can affect anyone, regardless of age or ability.

If 6% of children have dyscalculia, that would mean one or two children in each primary school class of 30 – about as many children as have been estimated to have dyslexia. But dyscalculia is less well known, by both the general public and teachers. It is also less well researched in comparison to other learning difficulties.

Children with dyscalculia may struggle to learn foundational mathematical skills and concepts, such as simple counting, (more…)

Jess Zhou and Keri Wong.

The COVID vaccine roll-out has been one of the most successful vaccination campaigns in UK history, yet not everyone is on board. Studies of adults report some 15% of the population are resistant to getting vaccinated and up to 35% indicate they are hesitant towards COVID vaccines. These figures are not dissimilar to hesitancy rates for other vaccines and can have real implications for ongoing public health messaging and global pandemic intervention strategies.

Parents with children under 18 – who make vaccination decisions for themselves and for their children – form one group in need of better support because vaccine decision-making is particularly challenging. Understanding how parents made decisions about the COVID vaccination and what support they needed is important as this is a much-neglected group in COVID public health messaging.

Our UCL Vax-PaC Study led by Dr Keri Wong (PI) and Asako Miura (co-I) aimed (more…)

Early diagnosis is crucial. Photo:  RetyiRetyi / Pixabay

Miriam McBreen and Jo Van Herwegen.

In our second blog post responding to the DFE’s Green Paper on the future of special educational needs and disabilities (SEND) and alternative provision (AP), we look at how processes need to change to ensure the system more effectively supports these pupils.

This includes a need to improve the Education, Health and Care Plan (EHCP) process, in particular with regards to diagnosis and labelling, and to support practitioners to work more effectively with families.

First of all, the EHCP process needs updating. While the SEND code of practice suggests actively involving the child and parents, our research suggests the child’s voice is often not captured where it could be. Research from Tyan and Van Herwegen suggests the voices of children with intellectual disabilities as young as five years old can be accurately captured when professionals have appropriate training. This highlights the (more…)