We wanted to understand how locally held data could be better used to understand variation in early years outcomes across the city of Birmingham, as well as differences in up-take of early years services for families.

Nesta wants to close the educational outcome gap at age five between children growing up in disadvantage and their peers by 2030. Attendance at early childhood education and care (ECEC) settings has an impact on child outcomes. In the UK, greater time spent in ECEC is associated with improved language development, non-verbal ability and socio-emotional outcomes, regardless of household income and disadvantage level. Birmingham is the third most deprived city in England; 4,937 children were eligible for free school meals in 2022 (around 33% of the total cohort). Of these only 55% had a good level of development. If the outcomes of children in Birmingham on free school meals were brought in line with the national average (65% reaching a good level of development), then an additional 480 children would be ‘on track’ at the end of their reception year of school.

A data-informed approach was needed to identify which communities in Birmingham were currently under-represented in the take-up of ECEC and early years services and which communities were experiencing poorer outcomes for children aged 0-5. This knowledge could be used by service planners and commissioners to target activities that aim to increase up-take of ECEC and other early years services, which we believe will contribute to closing the educational disadvantage gap.

We combined available demographic data with outcomes and service usage data to:

• understand more about the groups of children and families (pregnancy to age 5) experiencing the poorest early years outcomes and with the lowest uptake of services
• map the data available that could improve understanding of early years outcomes and service use and identify where there are opportunities for improvement
• draft a plan for a data visualisation tool that could be built within Birmingham City Council’s data system to give a “real-time” profile of families and children aged under 5 in Birmingham

This work will be delivered collaboratively with key stakeholders across Birmingham City Council and Birmingham Forward Steps and our project steering group.

By combining available data we:

• identified six wards in Birmingham that had the poorest early years outcomes and lowest take-up of early education entitlement
• learned that these wards differ considerably in their sociodemographic characteristics, namely ethnicity, religion and main language spoken
• demonstrated the value of bringing together early years outcomes and early education entitlement data to better understand and support service delivery
• demonstrated the possible additional value that could be achieved if these datasets were brought together to create an early years data tool.

Through interviews and a series of co-designed workshops with stakeholders across Birmingham we:

• learned that there is a shared vision for the creation of an early years tool, including a shared aim to have a public-facing platform in the tool that sits on Birmingham’s City Observatory
• co-developed a design brief that sets out a plan for the creation of the early years data tool
• set up an implementation steering group that will now develop the tool in Birmingham City Councils’ data system(s).

This knowledge will be used by the council in their development of the early years data tool and in their activities to improve outcomes and increase take-up of early education entitlement.