Agenda item

The Committee received a report providing an overview of key trends and developments in the delivery of free early education entitlements for two, three and four-year olds.  The report considered the most recent national statistics released by the Department for Education (DfE) in June 2020 to enable benchmarking of Oldham’s position against other local authorities at that time and also reflected on the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic on the availability and uptake of early education over the past year, setting out priority actionsto redress a recent decline in uptake rates.

Despite a recent trajectory of improvement, school readiness in Oldham as measured by the percentage of children reaching the Good Level of Development in the Early Years Foundation Stage at age 5 remained below national and regional averages.  The impact of the Covid-19 pandemic on access to an early learning environment for many children was likely to further exacerbate the situation and made it more important that a pro-active approach was taken to improving take-up rates for the free early education entitlements.

The three early years entitlements, along with the national qualifying conditions and locally adopted criteria that extended eligibility, were reported, and benchmarking of Oldham’s performance against national, Greater Manchester (GM) and statistical neighbour authorities was presented, along with Ward uptake data.  Headline data was that -

·         with regard to the Universal early education entitlement (3 and 4-year olds), an uptake rate of 98% placed the Borough above the national average (93%) and GM and statistical neighbours;

·         with regard to the two-year old entitlement, a national uptake rate of 69% in 2020 was recorded against a peak in 2018 of 72%, a picture mirrored in Oldham, albeit with a sharper fall, with respective figures of 70% and 84%;

·         with regard to quality, 99% of two-year-olds and 90% of three and four year olds were accessing their free entitlement in good and outstanding settings in January 2020, compared to national figures of 97% and 92% respectively.

It was reported that the Covid pandemic had placed pressures on early years providers. They had faced the combined challenges of lockdown closures, part closures, parental caution and additional requirements to comply with social distancing and infection control measures. However, despite this, to date the market in Oldham had remained reasonably stable.

To address the decline in uptake rates, a Childcare Recovery Plan had been developed to ensure the Council’s sufficiency duty can be met in the mid to long-term and can help support recovery of the local economy. The Plan aimed to:

i)       support the financial sustainability of the local childcare market, recognising that many settings may not be able to operate at full capacity and that parental demand may be reduced;

ii)      support the re-opening of childcare provision to ensure childcare is available as far as possible for parents who need it, and when they need it, taking account of changing parental needs and preferences; and

iii)     return uptake rates for the 2, 3 and 4 year-old free early education entitlements to their pre-Covid levels and beyond.

The following issues were raised and considered -

·         where take-up rates indicated, for example, a termly take-up of 103%, this arose from the processing of attendances across ward boundaries and attendances from outside the Borough;

·         the reported increase in the number of potentially eligible parents between 2018 and 2020, which had been disproportionately higher when compared with other local authorities and had been a factor in reduced uptake, was attributed to Universal Credit data provided to the authority that set the baseline for eligibility.  It was noted that this data had since returned to a more normal position but it remained unclear what caused the increase in the earlier data provided;

·         in terms of provision going forward from the Covid pandemic, the Council had a statutory duty to ensure sufficient childcare provision and needed to be proactive in areas where it looked to be lacking.  The current focus was on protection of existing places, as set out in the Recovery Plan and in linking to national agencies working with providers and providing business support grants.

RESOLVED that the report be noted.