As part of its plan to improve social mobility in the early years, the Department for Education has set out its ambition to halve the number of children who leave Reception without the language and literacy skills they need to thrive by 2028.
On 10 June, Nadhim Zahawi, Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Children and Families, gave an interview with Nursery World setting out the latest developments on what DfE is doing to realise this ambition. You can read it here.
Overall, DfE is investing over £100m in its early years social mobility programme. The programme works to improve children’s outcomes working through three key domains – the home, early years settings and local services. It is composed of over 400 projects running in more than 130 local authorities across England. These projects provide early years professionals, organisations and local government with a wide variety of support, including free training, resources, and events.
To help you understand this offer, DfE has provided the following documents:
Summary – Early Years Social Mobility Programme
A summary of the Department’s overall approach, and information on all DfE-funded projects.
Map – Early Years Social Mobility Programme Local Projects
A map of England showing which social mobility projects are operating in in each local authority.
Map – Early Years disadvantage VCS grants
A map of England showing which VCS projects are operating in each local authority
Underlying data – Early Years Social Mobility Programme
Spreadsheet of underlying data showing the distribution of projects, for use by Local Authorities and other national stakeholders.