Quality of Childcare Settings in the Millennium Cohort Study

Mathers, Sandra; Sylva, Κathy; Joshi, Heather; Hansen, Kirstine; Plewis, Ian; Johnson, Jon; George, Anitha; Linskey, Faye; Grabbe, Yvonne

doi:10.1037/e615522007-001

Cited by 30 publications

(37 citation statements)

References 2 publications

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“…First, studies have found that children not accessing the entitlement are more likely to be from disadvantaged backgrounds. Findings from the second wave of the MCS (2003-5), when children were three years old, found that only three quarters of children accessed any formal provision, and children with higher income and better-educated mothers were more likely to attend than less advantaged children (Mathers et al 2007). Evidence from the Childcare and Early Years Survey of Parents supports this finding: children not accessing the free entitlement at three and four years old were more likely to be from lower income or larger families and to have a mother who did not work and had low educational qualifications (Speight and Smith 2010).…”

Section: Quality and Children's Background: Previous Studiesmentioning

confidence: 99%

A question of quality: do children from disadvantaged backgrounds receive lower quality early childhood education and care?

Gambaro

Stewart

2015

British Educational Res J

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LSE has developed LSE Research Online so that users may access research output of the School. Copyright © and Moral Rights for the papers on this site are retained by the individual authors and/or other copyright owners. Users may download and/or print one copy of any article(s) in LSE Research Online to facilitate their private study or for non-commercial research. You may not engage in further distribution of the material or use it for any profit-making activities or any commercial gain. You may freely distribute the URL (http://eprints.lse.ac.uk) of the LSE Research Online website. This document is the author's final accepted version of the journal article. There may be differences between this version and the published version. You are advised to consult the publisher's version if you wish to cite from it. 1A question of quality: Do children from disadvantaged backgrounds receive lower quality early childhood education and care? accessed by three and four year olds in England varies by children's background.Focusing on the free entitlement to early education, the analysis combines information from three administrative datasets for 2010-11, the Early Years Census, the Schools Census and the Ofsted inspections dataset, to obtain two main indicators of quality: staff qualification levels and Ofsted ratings. These data are combined with child-level indicators of area deprivation (IDACI scores) as a proxy measure of children's background.The paper finds that children from more disadvantaged areas have access to better qualified staff, largely because they are more likely than children from richer areas to attend maintained nursery classes staffed by teachers, and less likely to attend services in the private, voluntary and independent (PVI) sectors.However, within both maintained and PVI sectors, services catering for more disadvantaged children receive poorer quality ratings from Ofsted, with a higher concentration of children from disadvantaged areas itself appearing to reduce the likelihood of top Ofsted grades. This may be in part because Ofsted ratings reflect levels of child development, and therefore reward settings where children enter at a more advanced starting point, but it may also be that it is genuinely harder to deliver an outstanding service to a more disadvantaged intake. The Questions therefore remain about the extent to which quality of provision is consistent across the sector. 4Our focus in this paper is on the way in which variations in quality are associated with children's background. If early education is to play a role in ensuring a more equal starting point for children from different backgrounds, it is important that the highest quality provision is accessible for the children who need it most. We ask how far this appears to be the case in practice in England. Are children who experience disadvantage at home more or less likely than children from richer households to access the highest quality early education?To address this question we combine information from three administrative dat...

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Section: Quality and Children's Background: Previous Studiesmentioning

confidence: 99%

A question of quality: do children from disadvantaged backgrounds receive lower quality early childhood education and care?

Gambaro

Stewart

2015

British Educational Res J

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“…The aim was thus to support parents seeking to attend courses that might improve their employability or to enhance the parent/child relationship. Much less attention was paid to the cognitive development of children, especially in the crèches (Anning et al, 2005; see also Mathers et al, 2007). In their report for the National Evaluation on the employability of parents in 25 SSLPs, Meadows and Garbers (2004) concluded that SSLPs acted mainly as a bridge for parents into the education, training and employment services of other organisations, not least because of the common local perception that the mothers of young children should stay at home.…”

Section: The Reasons For the Policy Shiftmentioning

confidence: 99%

From Sure Start to Children's Centres: An Analysis of Policy Change in English Early Years Programmes

Lewis¹

2010

J. Soc. Pol.

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Sure Start was set up in 1998 as a flagship policy of the first New Labour government, with the promise of ten years funding. However, in 2003 it was superseded by plans for the establishment of Children's Centres, a universal programme rather than one for disadvantaged areas as in the case of Sure Start local programmes. The government claimed that the shift to Children's Centres represented continuity, but, using historical methods and key informant interviews, this paper shows that there was considerable change, particularly in the programme content and governance of the new centres. The paper explores the reasons for the policy shift in terms of factors arising from changes in government's goals for Sure Start and for children's services more broadly on the one hand, and from evidence of programme failure on the other. It concludes by reflecting on why the shift to Children's Centres was claimed as continuity rather than change, and what this tells us about the nature of policy change.

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“…The age three survey had a very detailed module about the sequence and type of arrangements, including any overlaps, since the first survey. A subset of group settings identified in MCS2 was followed up to assess the quality of care they provided (Mathers, Sylva & Joshi, 2007). Unfortunately the childcare module in the MCS2 questionnaire was overcomplicated and under-piloted.…”

Section: Childcarementioning

confidence: 99%

The Millennium Cohort Study: the making of a multi-purpose resource for social science and policy

Joshi¹,

Fitzsimons²

2016

LLCS

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Quality of Childcare Settings in the Millennium Cohort Study

Cited by 30 publications

References 2 publications

A question of quality: do children from disadvantaged backgrounds receive lower quality early childhood education and care?

A question of quality: do children from disadvantaged backgrounds receive lower quality early childhood education and care?

From Sure Start to Children's Centres: An Analysis of Policy Change in English Early Years Programmes

The Millennium Cohort Study: the making of a multi-purpose resource for social science and policy

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