Home / Press releases / New reception pupils are the ‘least school-ready’ for generations New analysis from Nesta reveals that the average pupil in England missed more than a quarter of their early years education due to the pandemic Wednesday, 08 September 2021 In A fairer start In Education Children starting reception this term are expected to face the most challenging school start for generations, as new analysis from Nesta reveals that the average pupil in England missed more than a quarter of their early years education due to the pandemic. In 2019, the average four-year old spent 25 hours a week at nursery - around three full days - in the year before they started school. The new analysis estimates that children starting reception this month will have only spent an average of 18 hours a week at nursery - just over two full days. “With new reception classes starting this week, children are likely to need additional support to help them adjust to the school environment and catch up on some of the development they will have missed out on due to nursery closures,” says Louise Bazalgette, who leads projects aimed at improving school readiness for disadvantaged children. There will be more struggling children who need extra support to help them to fulfil their potential Louise Bazalgette “No class is ever at exactly the same level, but there are likely to be even greater differences than usual this year due to the pandemic. There will be more struggling children who need extra support to help them to fulfil their potential. The Department for Education has provided catch up funding, but with only £80 per pupil it will be challenging to support the wide range of needs pupils may have in areas ranging from their social and emotional and physical development, to more academic areas like literacy and maths. “Early years education is an incredibly important part of a child’s life, shaping educational and employment outcomes for decades to come. Nurseries and other forms of early years education including childminders provide much more than childcare, they offer essential opportunities for children to learn, play and socialise to develop skills that help them to get on in school. Free entitlements to early education also play a vital role in narrowing the outcome gap between richer and poorer children.” The analysis found that nursery attendance fell dramatically at the start of the pandemic, recovering gradually after the first wave but never returning to pre-pandemic levels. From the start of the autumn 2020 term to the end of the summer 2021 term, the overall average attendance was 73% of previous levels. “We found that the pandemic affected nursery attendance across the board, with no clear link between an area’s socioeconomic indicators and its nursery attendance,” explains Data Scientist Izzy Stewart, who led the analysis. “We also didn’t find any strong correlation between infection hotspots and poor attendance, suggesting that the effect was largely down to behavioural factors.” Methodology Media contact Part of Press Also of interest Open Jobs Observatory: Identifying the locations of online job adverts This article is one in a series that walks through our key algorithms in the Open Jobs Observatory. Project Update 21.09.21 Open Jobs Observatory: Assigning online job adverts to occupation groups This article is one in a series that walks through our key algorithms in the Open Jobs Observatory. Project Update 21.09.21 Open Jobs Observatory: Extracting skills from online job adverts Open Jobs Observatory: Extracting skills from online job adverts Project Update 21.09.21 Stay up to date Get our regular newsletter and tailor your updates on our missions, programmes and events Sign up Press Jobs Privacy Terms of use Accessibility Contact us © 2021 Nesta Nesta is a registered charity in England and Wales 1144091 and Scotland SC042833. Our main address is 58 Victoria Embankment, London, EC4Y 0DS. You can reach us by phone on 020 7438 2500 or drop us a line at information@nesta.org.uk. All our work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License, unless it says otherwise. We hope you find it useful. Cookie Control We use cookies to help us improve this site and your experience. Find out more. Accept recommended cookiesSet cookie preferences