Do children assessed as ‘not school ready’ at the end of Reception, ever ‘catch up’ by the time they leave Primary school?

Portfolio Holder for Education, Cllr Colin Hayfield, recently posed the above question whilst attending a Closing the Gap Board meeting and as a result some further work has been carried out to provide some insight into the numbers of children that aren’t assessed as ‘school ready’ in Reception and do not ‘catch up’ by the time they leave primary school.

Data from the four statutory assessments that take place during the school life of a primary age child were analysed – early years foundation stage profile, phonics, and Key Stage 1 and Key Stage 2 Reading, Writing and Maths (RWM).  The results from all four of these assessments were looked at for two cohorts of pupils – those who left primary school in July 2017 and those who left in July 2018.

What do the numbers show?

The progress data indicates that there is a group of children in both the 2017 and 2018 cohorts that end Reception without being ‘school ready’ and that do not appear to catch up academically during their primary school life.

The tree diagram below presents an interesting picture and shows that the progress data for these children was well below zero, indicating that they made significantly less progress on average than pupils across England.

(Click image to open a full sized version)

As it may be expected, there is a high prevalence of disadvantage, SEN, male and summer born children in this particular group.

The report has recently been shared with the Closing the Gap Board, the Nuneaton Education Strategy Group and the Area Analysis Groups for information and further discussion.

What is being done to address this?

Warwickshire's Early Years Board is currently developing a strategy for early years that includes a range of partners. One of the key areas included in the strategy’s recommendation is that:

The Early Years Board should set the standard for high aspirations and expectations across all those who provide services and support for children from birth to five, with a direct focus on vulnerable groups to improve achievement of the ‘Good Level of Development’ and decrease the ‘gap’ between vulnerable groups and their peers.   

Some of the activities outlined in the draft strategy (to be consulted on) include:

• Identify, track and better meet the needs of vulnerable groups through the Warwickshire Coding Project
• Align priorities and resources to support early years providers and schools in the most deprived areas, or where the Good Level of Development is identified to be weaker to close the gap
• Identify and share good practice where data identifies that the gap is closing
• Improve support for early education providers and families to facilitate early learning at home through work force development and a Warwickshire approach to family engagement in learning
• Develop system leadership models for early years education to share best practice and provide support systems which lead to improved practice