This project used a mixed-method approach to explore how Birmingham City Council and its partner organisations could better utilise early years data to improve understanding of families in Birmingham and provide more tailored support.

For Strand 1 of this project we brought together a range of data sources in order to better understand areas with the poorest early years outcomes and take-up of EEE. These datasets included:

• data on outcomes at age two, measured using the Ages and Stages Questionnaire (ASQ-3) and obtained from Birmingham Forward Steps (Birmingham City Council’s health and care partner) for 2022, 2021 and 2020
• data on outcomes at age five, measured using the Early Years Foundation Stage Profile (EYFSP) and obtained from Birmingham City Council's Data and Intelligence Team for 2022
• data on take-up of early education entitlement (EEE) at ages two, three and four years old obtained from Birmingham City Council's Early Years team for the spring term of 2023
• data on the location, quality and operating hours of local early years services and settings (where available) obtained from Birmingham City Council's Early Years team and Birmingham Forward Steps
• various other locally held and publicly available data sources to better understand areas, including data on the number of children in temporary accommodation, ethnicity and deprivation data

We selected six wards that we identified as having the poorest early years outcomes and lowest take-up of early education entitlement.

For Strand 2, we conducted 15 interviews with key stakeholders across Birmingham City Council and its partner organisations to understand the early years data currently available, its limitations, desired functionalities for a data tool and technical parameters that might influence its functionalities, development and deployment. We then conducted three co-design workshops to ideate, test and prototype an early years data tool that accounts for needs and technical parameters captured in interviews as well as key learnings from Strand 1. We then created a design brief for the tool that brought together insights and views from across the interviews and co-design workshops and agreed a process with Birmingham City Council for how they could use this brief to develop an early years data tool.

We also developed an interactive data report that showcased the analysis conducted in Strand 1 and acted as a prototype for the co-design workshops in Strand 2.

Perspectives of key stakeholder groups across Birmingham’s early years infrastructure were obtained in the interviews and co-design workshops. These stakeholders included:

• service planners, information managers and analysts in the Early Years team in Birmingham City Council
• contract managers and information and data analysts from Birmingham Forward Steps, Birmingham City Council’s health and care partner with responsibilities for the delivery of health visiting, children’s centres and collecting the ASQ-3
• leads in the Insights, Policy and Strategy team in Birmingham City Council
• leads in the Special Educational Needs Coordinator (SENCo) team in Birmingham City Council
• leads of organisations that support state-funded, private, voluntary and independent early years service providers across Birmingham

Throughout the design process we also considered requirements of four key user groups across Birmingham:

• early years service staff and management in Birmingham City Council
• commissioned partners of Birmingham City Council
• current and potential providers of early years provision
• parents, carers and families

Footnotes:
1. The Early Years Foundation Stage Profile (EYFSP) is a statutory assessment of children’s development at the end of the early years foundation stage (which takes place in reception at age 5). It is made up of an assessment of a child’s outcomes in relation to seven areas of learning: communication and language, personal, social and emotional development, physical development, literacy, mathematics, understanding the world and expressive arts and design.
2. In this analysis, areas were defined as wards. In England wards are electoral districts at sub-national level that are represented by one or more councillors. On average, wards are home to 5,500 people but ward population counts can vary substantially. Birmingham has 69 wards, accurate as of January 2024.
3. Perry Barr may be performing better on outcomes and take-up of early education entitlement due to recent concerted efforts by Birmingham to improve take-up of early education entitlement. However, due to a lack of retrospective data on take-up of early education entitlement, we cannot conclusively say that this is the reason for any differences seen in take-up between areas.