A new project has been launched to explore how better data-sharing can help ensure kids are school ready.
Nearly a third of children (32%) are starting school without the basic skills they need, which rises to almost half of children eligible for free school meals (48%). This has a direct impact on their educational outcomes.
Making data available across different public services could help get the right support to parents, carers and children faster. For example, it may be a health visitor spots something, as does an education practitioner - but if those observations are sitting on separate pieces of paper, no one joins the dots – and it could cause a child to fall through the gap.
Starting with Leeds City Council, London Borough of Hammersmith & Fulham and Councils in the Liverpool City Region Combined Authority - the project will explore how services could be better connected so that the professionals working with a child can actually see what each other knows and help parents get the support for their child faster.
Parents are also being asked to share their experience of accessing early learning support – and where they believe better sharing of information between public sector organisations about their children could have helped with getting access to the support they needed faster.
Technology secretary, Liz Kendall said: "Too many children are arriving at school without the skills they need, and too many parents have had to fight through a complex, disconnected system to get their child the support they deserve. That burden falls hardest on disadvantaged children.
"We are determined to change old fashioned public services where assessments are recorded by paper and children’s needs are missed.
"Parents, carers and children deserve better and our hard-working early years and healthcare professionals deserve the tools they need to do their jobs – not blockers. The more connected we make our services, the greater the difference we can make for children and families."
As the project develops, the data gathered from local authorities, education practitioners and health visitors on early years could help inform the development of a new collection on the National Data Library (NDL), following best practice and with appropriate safeguards on data sharing. Right now, only non-personal, aggregated data such as information on traffic levels is available on the NDL.
