We hoped that this project would develop a useful set of data about early-years practice in local authorities in England and provide new insight about the approaches that work in different contexts. Our aim was for this dataset to support positive developments in practice that lead to improved outcomes for children.

By gathering systematic data about early-years services, practices and activities delivered by local authorities, we were able to:

• identify practices being used in areas with similar characteristics
• generate useful information to share between areas and support collaboration between local authority teams
• understand trends and gaps in practice
• identify and develop promising activities that may be supporting early years outcomes, eg, through testing and evaluation
• identify opportunities for innovation to support our fairer start mission to narrow the outcomes gap for children growing up facing disadvantage.

Our research had two phases:

• an innovative approach to data analysis to identify “clusters” of similar local authorities
• an ambitious survey of local authority practice.

We combined a wide range of publicly available data sets to understand more about the common features that are associated with early years and school readiness outcomes. We wanted to learn about differences between areas that are similar in profile (eg, socioeconomic) but have contrasting levels of school readiness (ie, reaching a good level of development in the Early Years Foundation Stage (EYFS)).

We looked at data from sources that had not typically been analysed in relation to school readiness. These include indicators from the Fingertips Public Health England data, the Access to Healthy Assets and Hazards dataset from the Consumer Data Research Centre and other datasets from gov.uk (eg, access to public libraries).

We developed and piloted a detailed interview framework that we can use with local authority partners to enable us to identify:

• the policies, practice and activities in key early-years service areas, eg, take-up of funded two-year-old education; speech, language and communication provision; Healthy Child Programme (HCP) and health review at 2
• local authority representatives’ views about the practices, policies and contextual factors that make the biggest difference to children’s outcomes.

We included information about specific services offered to families (eg, parenting courses, perinatal mental health support), assessment tools used (eg, what, when, how, by whom) and specific practices adopted by LAs (eg, methods to increase engagement with and quality of services). The dataset also included qualitative responses from local authority representatives.

During the pilot phase, we developed the interview framework through close collaboration with a small number of local authorities and experts to identify the most important areas to explore. We then worked with approximately 30 local authorities to test the interview framework and develop an initial dataset.

Our ultimate aim was to extend the project to survey every local authority in England.

Throughout the project, we identified opportunities to share both our methods and our findings. We worked closely with local authorities and other stakeholders to identify information that is useful for them to deliver services, as well as to identify how to make project findings as useful as possible.

Nesta will use this work to identify promising opportunities for innovation projects within our fairer start mission and to share with LAs in England to support work to improve outcomes for children and families.

Nesta appointed the Australian Council for Educational Research (ACER) to conduct the fieldwork for the survey phase. ACER interviewed and surveyed approximately 30 English local authorities in September and October to develop a detailed understanding of current service delivery and practice. ACER has extensive experience of working on research projects linked to research and children, including working with national governments, local authorities and practitioners. It has recently worked on education projects in Scotland and Wales and has worked with schools and universities across the UK. It brings expertise in both qualitative and quantitative methods to this project.