First project: The Labour government’s ‘school readiness’ target and opportunity mission

The first project in the series examines the Labour government’s early years agenda – the explicit aim of which is to ‘close the opportunity gap’ by breaking the link between a child’s background and their future success. This will, it says, be achieved by setting up every child for the best start in life and the key milestone for this parliament is for 75% of children to be ‘school ready’ at the completion of Reception year, aged 5.

We use the government’s early years agenda as a case study to explore how policy-making processes engage with people whose needs have, to date, been least effectively addressed by government. Our approach is both ‘top down’, looking at the incentives, behaviours and accountabilities shaping decision and policy making – and ‘bottom up’, by examining the experiences of those affected and the practitioners who work with them. Our aim is to understand why policy making has failed these groups and how it can be improved to deliver better outcomes.

The findings in the reports below relate to early years policy, but have the potential to improve policy making and delivery in other areas, now and for future governments.