Every child deserves the same chance to develop to their full potential regardless of their family circumstances, but currently, many children are not reaching a good level of development (GLD) by the time they start school.

In July 2025, the government set ambitious targets for local authorities in England to improve these outcomes to 75% of children reaching a GLD by 2028. It has been just over a year, and on 22 October the Department for Education released the data that measures this progress: the 2025/26 Early Years Foundation Stage Profile (EYFSP) results. This is the first full year of data that shows how England is performing against the target.

Despite overall progress, this year's data reveals persistent gaps in outcomes for children based on their eligibility for free school meals and where they live.

This is an increase on last year’s figure of 68.3% and equates to roughly one more child in a class of 30 reaching a GLD. While this is the biggest annual rise since the new EYFSP framework came into use in 2021, nearly 3 in 10 children still don’t reach GLD. Changes in how assessments are used in schools and the introduction of GLD targets for all 153 local authorities in England might have impacted how results were collected; therefore, comparing these results with last year’s should be done with caution. 

From 2022 to 2025, year-on-year improvements in the proportion of children reaching GLD have been slow and not enough to reach the 2028 target. Scores were rising by about 1 percentage point a year when a 1.35 increase was needed. 

This year’s increase of 4 percentage points is a significant change to the previous trend. If progress continues at the average rate across the last four years, 75.9% of children would reach GLD in 2027/28, beating the target.

Since 2021, the percentage of children eligible for free school meals (FSMs) reaching a GLD has risen from 49.1% to 54.8%, with more than half that increase taking place this year. But scores for those not on FSMs have increased more, from 68.8% in 2021/22 to 75.8% this year.

Since the pandemic and introduction of the new EYFSP, there has always been a gap between these two groups of around 20 percentage points, with this year’s gap of 21 percentage points the highest it has been.

This matters for the government’s 75% target. A national average of 75% could be reached without narrowing the large gap between FSM-eligible pupils and their peers. Over 75% of children not eligible for FSMs are already reaching a GLD, while FSM-eligible children are still more than 20 percentage points below it.

Three local authorities have already met their target (City of London, Richmond upon Thames and Rutland) and another ten are within 2 percentage points. Of the other 139, Kensington and Chelsea is the furthest away, 8.3 points below its target. However, the scale of the challenge varies considerably by area: the number of children not reaching GLD ranges from 11 in the City of London to 4,490 in Kent.

As well as an overall GLD target, each local authority has a separate target for the proportion of FSM-eligible children reaching GLD by 2028. Of the 10 local authorities furthest from their overall target, half of these are also in the 10 furthest from their FSM target (Kensington and Chelsea, Calderdale, Stockton-on-Tees, Brighton and Hove and Gateshead). 

There are also some areas with good overall results where outcomes are poorer for disadvantaged children. Wokingham is close to meeting its overall target - only approximately four children short at 79.8% against an 80.0% overall target - but it is among the 10 local authorities furthest from its FSM target, at 47.8% against 59.0%.  

It is important to note that the level of deprivation and therefore scale of the challenge of closing the FSM gap varies considerably across areas: for example, in Slough only 12.8% of children are eligible for free school meals (267 children) compared to 38.9% in Manchester (2,368 children).

Local authorities face varied challenges, from large numbers of disadvantaged children in some places to wide gaps between FSM-eligible children and their peers in others. There is no one-size-fits-all solution, and local authorities will have to tailor their approaches to local needs. We know from reviewing their published Best Start in Life plans that they have taken into account the specific challenges in their areas when setting these plans. 

The rise in children reaching a GLD is a positive step forward, with the government’s 75% target looking within reach. However the gap between children eligible for FSMs and their peers is wider than it has ever been. To break down barriers to opportunity, the focus should be not just on reaching a national average of 75%, but also ensuring the children most in need of support receive it. This will give more children a fairer start and the opportunity to reach their full potential in the early years.

It’s also worth noting that there is increased scrutiny on the EYFSP data this year: as well as being a priority for local authorities given their targets, the Department for Education is now sharing school-level EYFSP data with schools and responsible bodies, and Ofsted can see this data. There is no way to know from the data whether these changes have affected how children were assessed in 2025/26, but there should be some caution when interpreting this year’s jump.

Prior to 2021, the Department for Education grouped children with unknown FSM status with children eligible for FSM. Since 2021, they changed to report children with unknown FSM status as a separate group. In this analysis, we have kept their pre-2021 approach, grouping the children with unknown FSM status with those not eligible. We have done this because this group is large - between approximately 10,000 and 15,000 children over the last four years - and because these children consistently achieve a lower GLD rate than even FSM-eligible children, by between 5 and 11 percentage points depending on the year.