Looming inequality crisis among five-year-olds as new EPI study calls for targeted government investment in the early years

Young learners in England are facing a deepening crisis, according to the Education Policy Institute's (EPI) latest Annual Report, which highlights growing attainment gaps in early years education. Particularly concerning is the gap identified for children with special educational needs and disabilities (SEND), which has reached a record high. 

EPI's Annual Report compares student attainment in 2024 with the most recent year before the Covid-19 pandemic, 2019. The report analyses attainment gaps based on economic disadvantage, gender, ethnicity, English as an additional language (EAL), SEND, and geography. 

Key findings from EPI's 2025 Annual Report are:  

• Disadvantaged five-year-olds are falling further behind their more affluent peers, as the impact of the pandemic appears to have had long lasting effects on infants' development. 

• For five-year-olds with SEND, the gap is even wider: they are more than 20 months behind their peers – the widest gap on record. 

• Although the disadvantage gap has narrowed slightly in primary and secondary phases, disadvantaged pupils remain significantly behind their peers, and the gap remains up to one month wider than before the pandemic. 

• Fewer disadvantaged young people are participating post-16 than at any point since 2019, leaving more than one in five disadvantaged 16-year-olds out of education or training. 

• Attainment continues to vary markedly across ethnic groups. At both key stage 4 and in 16-19 education, the attainment of White British pupils has declined since 2019 relative to all other ethnic groups, leaving disadvantaged White British students with some of the lowest attainment levels. 

• Since 2019, girls have made consistently less progress than boys across secondary school once their attainment at age 11 is taken into account.  

EPI calls on the Government to: 

Assess and increase disadvantage funding across all phases by:  

• raising overall disadvantage funding, weighted towards persistently disadvantaged pupils; 

• increasing the early years pupil premium to match the pupil premium in later school years; 

• introducing a new student premium in the 16-19 phase. 

Publish the delayed child poverty strategy which should be backed by funded commitments including: 

• abolishing the two-child benefit cap; 

• introducing a national auto-enrolment scheme for free school meals; 

• extending funded free meals to pre-school children.  

Improve outcomes for the youngest pupils with SEND. As part of wider SEND reforms, the government should prioritise training in child development and different types of SEND, making it a mandatory part of initial teacher training and early career development. 

Tackle the root causes of school absence, as a key contributor to the widening disadvantage gap, through: 

• strengthening SEND identification; 

• expanding school-based mental-health provision; 

• developing initiatives that build pupils' sense of belonging. 

Identify and address the root causes of the sharp drop in post-16 participation among disadvantaged students.  

Investigate and address the complex picture of low attainment among disadvantaged White British students in the wake of the pandemic. 

Undertake further research into the post-pandemic decline in girls' secondary-school progress to better understand gender attainment gaps and explore potential links with broader mental health and wellbeing inequalities. 

Natalie Perera, Chief Executive of the Education Policy Institute, said: 

“Our latest Annual Report shows that, several years on, the education system has yet to recover from the profound impact of the pandemic. Our youngest and most vulnerable learners are still paying the price. This should be a significant concern for policymakers. 

“Without swift action, we are baking lifelong disadvantage into the system. Tackling child poverty must be at the heart of the response. The government's child poverty strategy is already overdue – further delay is no longer acceptable. Higher levels of funding for disadvantage, addressing student absence, and fixing the SEND system, which is at crisis point, are urgent priorities.” 

Sam Tuckett, Associate Director for Post-16 and Skills at the Education Policy Institute, said: 

“There has been a troubling widening of the post-16 participation gap since 2019. More than one in five disadvantaged young people are currently not participating in education or training post-16.  

“It's likely that the same students who were persistently absent in secondary school are also dropping out of education post-16. To address this growing gap, the government must understand and address the root causes of young people disengaging from our education system.”