The Department for Education’s annual Early Years Foundation Profile Results for 2024/25 - the annual assessment for evaluating children’s development at age five - were published last week. To achieve a good level of development, children must reach the expected level across the three prime areas of learning (communication and language, physical development and personal, social and emotional development), as well as Literacy and Mathematics.

In 2024, Labour launched its pledge to boost the number of children reaching a good level of development, as part of its aim to improve ‘school readiness’. This was an important mission – too many children are arriving at reception behind where they should be. The impact of the Covid pandemic has been long-lasting, and teachers have shared concerning instances of some children arriving at Reception Year still in nappies, or unable to communicate properly or socialise with their classmates.  

Not reaching a good level of development at age 5 has also been linked with a range of longer-term impacts on outcomes and future life chances including poorer mental health and health outcomes, lower attainment, higher risk of becoming NEET, and lower earnings across a lifetime. 

The headlines

Last week’s statistics reveal a modest rise in overall levels of children reaching a good level development. In 2024/25, 68.3% of children achieved a good level of development, up from 67.7% on the previous year. Good level of development stood at 65.2% in 2021/22. 

Literacy is still the area of learning where the least children are meeting the expected level (70.5%), while Expressive Arts and Design overtook Physical Development as the Early Learning Goal with the highest number of children at the expected level. 

Yet despite gradual improvements in recent years, overall levels of good level of development still fall well below pre-pandemic levels. In the last academic year before the pandemic, overall levels of good level of development stood at 71.8%. Due to changes in the data collection in 2021, comparisons between pre and post pandemic levels of GLD aren’t entirely accurate, but it does provide a stark picture of how children’s development was impacted by lockdowns and disruption, and insufficient early years support for many young children and their parents. 

More importantly, while it is encouraging to see a modest improvement over the last two years, if annual increases remain on their current trajectory, the Government looks set to miss its milestone target of 75% of children reaching a good level of development by 2028. 

Concerning trends of widening inequality

The latest data also reveals stark and widening gaps between children reaching a good level of development, and those who aren’t. While the number of children meeting the expected level across all early learning goals has increased, so has the number of children reaching none or very few. In short, while more children are doing better across the board, more are also doing worse. 

 Inequalities continue to widen, as certain groups of children fall further behind their peers and continue to be held back by disadvantage. 

The data shows that in the North West, children in the 10% most deprived areas, boys, children on free school meals, children with SEN, and children from certain ethnic backgrounds are falling behind their peers as less likely to reach a good level of development. 

75.3% of girls reached a GLD in 2024/25, compared to only 61.6%% of boys – a gap of 13.7 percentage points. While the gender gap decreased in 2024/25 from the previous year, overall, the gap has widened by 0.5 percentage points since 2021/22. 

One of the most significant gaps was between children eligible for Free School Meals (FSM) and children not eligible for FSM. In 2024/25, there was a 21.2 percentage point gap between these two groups, increasing by 0.7 percentage points on the previous year. 

The gap is even more stark when you look at boys specifically, with only 43.5% of boys eligible for FSM reaching a good level of development in 2024/25 compared to 66% of boys not eligible. For girls eligible for FSM, while still higher than boys, their progress has stagnated in recent years, decreasing this year from 60.1% in 2023/24 to 59.3%. 

The trends remained similar to previous years for ethnic groups. Irish Traveller, Gypsy/Roma, African, Caribbean and ‘any other Black/African/Caribbean background’ having the lowest proportion of children reaching a good level of development. The gap between the highest and lowest attaining ethnic groups widened from 2023/24 to 46.9 percentage points this year. 

In 2024/25, a higher proportion of children assessed under the EYFS profile had a special educational need, following the wider trend of increasing SEND. Among children with any SEN, only 20.6% of children reached a good level of development, a 55.9 percentage point difference compared to children without SEN. While the proportion of children with SEN achieving a GLD has been steadily rising, the gap remains considerable. For children with EHCPs, only 4% achieved a good level of development. As with the broader overall trend, across each category of SEN, boys are falling behind girls. 

What needs to change?

The headline statistics may be seen as a step in the right direction for the Government, but there is a long way to go, and the gaps and trends highlighted above show there are some entrenched problems which need to be addressed. Even if the Government does reach its 75% milestone, many children – often the most disadvantaged – will remain left behind, with diminished life chances. 

Several Government commitments over the past year have signalled a welcome recognition of how crucial the first few years of a child’s life is to future life chances, including most recently their decision to scrap the two-child limit which will lift almost half a million children out of poverty. The Government has also committed to new school-based nurseries, and the Best Start in Life strategy announced a range of new measures to improve parents access to high quality early years support, including a commitment to rollout 1,000 new Best Start Family Hubs by 2028 and statutory targets for meeting GLD for local authorities. 

Our recent report Best Start: A Fresh Start for Children and Family Support – sets out our key principles and recommendations to Government and local authorities, as the rollout of new hubs begins. The commitment to deliver a hub in every local authority is welcome, however our report explored the link between areas that are reaching a good level of development and the association between levels of deprivation and areas of ‘childcare deserts’. Our findings stress the importance of targeting support to areas where it’s needed the most to ensure children facing disadvantage are not held back simply because of their postcode and circumstance. 

The latest statistics show a very small step in the right direction for early years outcomes, but only for some children. To improve the life chances for all children, the Government will have to ensure Best Start Family Hubs, and its other family support policies target those children and families who face the biggest challenges in the early years and stop thousands of children getting left behind before they have even started school.