Research and policy
Research: Towards universal early years provision: analysis of take-up by disadvantaged families
13 Dec 2010
The Department for Education has published Towards universal early years provision: analysis of take-up by disadvantaged families from recent annual childcare surveys. The study aimed to analyse how the take-up of early years provision varies by different dimensions of disadvantage and the main barriers experienced by disadvantaged families.
The study used data from the 2008 and 2009 surveys in the Childcare and Early Years Survey of Parents series. From these surveys the study pulled out data on three and four-year-old children who were eligible for free early years provision. In total, just under 4,400 children were part of the study with a little over 1,300 of those children coming from highly disadvantaged families.
Some of the interesting study findings were that:
- 92% of all eligible three and four-year-olds were taking advantage of their early years provision.
- Children were less likely to take up early years provision if their mothers did not work or had no qualifications, if they came from a larger family or a family with lower income.
- Children from single parent households were more likely to take up provision when all factors were taken into account.
- 13% of the most disadvantaged families were not taking up the provision at all.
- The age of the child is a factor with 24% of disadvantaged families with three-year-olds not taking up early years provision compared with only 5% of disadvantaged families with four-year-olds not taking up provision.
- Deprivation levels did not appear to make a difference to disadvantaged families taking up early years provision.
- Among those parents whose children did not take up the early years provision, 38% said it was because they did not know the government covered costs for some hours of nursery education for children of certain ages.
For the full report please see the Department for Education website.
