Early Years Alliance chief executive Neil Leitch has criticised the move to drop the statistics, and said the DfE needs to 'improve' them.
He said that the statistics are ‘misleading’ because they do not reflect current occupancy levels at early years settings.
The DfE has been collecting local authority-level data on early years childcare provision during Covid-19 since April 2020 on a weekly, and more recently, fortnightly, basis.
However, school attendance statistics continue to be published weekly.
In the latest release, the DfE said that it plans to stop collecting early years attendance statistics at the end of the summer term, ‘unless there are significant changes to guidance around attendance at early years settings in relation to Covid-19.'
Mr Leitch was responding to a question about whether the sector had recovered from the pandemic during the Petitions Committee hearing yesterday on the impact of Covid on new parents a year on, and childcare.
Commenting on the 76 per cent attendance figure, he said, ‘We’re only three-quarters of the way in terms of attendance levels.
'I think it’s important to understand that that could be an incredibly misleading figure because it doesn’t talk about occupancy.
'It says, for example, if a child attended on a Monday, and they only attended for two hours, but previously last year they attended for six hours, it still records them as being there in that place. So, what it doesn’t give you is the nuance of, how many hours are they taking? How many parents have reduced the number of hours they take in a setting? Particularly when it comes to paid-for hours, which frankly keeps most settings alive.’
Asked about whether occupancy figures existed, he said, ‘We would suggest to the DfE they should improve their data collection. It’s interesting that yesterday alongside those statistics came a request as to whether they should now drop collecting those statistics. My suggestion is they should improve collecting those statistics, not drop them.’
Mr Leitch highlighted those settings in deprived areas were the most in jeopardy and more likely to close, citing that the Alliance operated 130 settings two years ago wholly in those areas, but this had now reduced to 65. ‘That’s the consequences of underfunding and pretending that you adequately fund the sector,’ he said.
The end of furlough, and ‘unknown’ levels of redundancies, and more hybrid working, with more employees likely to work from home, is likely to impact settings, he said.
‘This is about the long-term viability of the early years sector,' Mr Leitch added. 'If a setting cannot financially make it work, it will go by the wayside.
'What is critical to remember is that this isn’t just about getting predominately mums back to work, this is about child development. This should be about educating our children. Even if you’re working at home…This should be about the child as much as parents.’
Latest figures
In the latest release (13 July), the DfE estimates that 875,000 children were currently attending early years childcare settings on Thursday 8 July – about 54 per cent of the number of children who usually attend childcare in term time.
On a typical day in the summer term the DfE would expect attendance to be 1,154,000, due to different and part-time patterns of childcare during the week. It estimates that the 875,000 children currently attending early years settings is approximately 76 per cent of the usual daily level.
However, due to many children attending early years settings on a part-time basis, the department said it would not expect all children to be in attendance on the day of the data collection.
In the release, the DfE said, ‘This data has been crucial to the Department during the Covid-19 pandemic to ensure it holds timely data on the use of childcare, and we are incredibly grateful to LAs and providers for taking the time to send it to us during this time.
‘Having reviewed the need for this collection for internal decision-making in the context of other data sources around the early years, as well as acting on feedback from the sector, we are proposing to end this data collection at the end of the summer term.
‘This means that unless there are significant changes to guidance around attendance at early years settings in relation to Covid-19, we are considering not resuming the collection in the autumn term. This will reduce some of the time and resource pressures on LAs and providers.’
- The latest statistics for Attendance in education and early years settings during the coronavirus (COVID-19) outbreak are available here
- The DfE is inviting feedback on its plans to end the early years attendance data collection. Email earlyyears.entitlements@education.gov.uk.
