Nursery World - Managing Equality and Diversity, Part 9: Poverty

How are some settings providing the extra support that disadvantaged children need, asks Gabriella Jozwiak

The early years education context has clearly been identified by recent governments as one of the preferred locations for addressing social inequalities’, states Newman University senior lecturer Mark Cronin in his introduction to Poverty and Inclusion in Early Years Education.

In recent years, early years settings have been expected to support low-income children in various ways, including offering 15 hours of weekly Government-funded childcare to disadvantaged two-year-olds. The difficulties of doing this in an under-resourced sector have been well reported, including Department for Education-commissioned research from 2018 that found providing the care was more expensive because of higher staff-to-child ratios, and higher levels of need and support for families in terms of explaining the entitlement. National Day Nurseries Association (NDNA) research among its members suggests more than half make a loss on funded places for two-year-olds.

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