Academic Year 2018/19

Early years foundation stage profile results

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Introduction

These statistics provide national and local authority level details on the achievement at the end of the early years foundation stage profile (EYFSP) from 2013 to 2019. 

The EYFSP is a teacher assessment of children’s development at the end of the early years foundation stage (the end of the academic year in which the child turns five years old, this is typically at the end of the Reception year). 

The publication which was first released in October 2019 on GOV.UK covers the:

  • percentage of children achieving each assessment rating in the early learning goals
  • percentage of children achieving at least the expected level in the prime areas of learning and in the specific areas of literacy and mathematics (a good level of development)
  • average total points score (APS) across all the early learning goals (the supporting measure)
  • percentage of children achieving at least the expected level within the communication and language, and literacy areas of learning.

Users may create breakdowns by reporting year, outcome and gender within the ‘create table’ tool at the bottom of the page. 

The ‘create table’ tool can also provide national figure breakdowns by ethnicity, special educational needs, and free school meal eligibility status for 2017/18 and 2018/19. 

Additional data

Underlying data in CSV format for years 2017/18 and 2018/19 has also been released on this platform within the download associated files section. 

The additional tables provide national and local-authority-level information on EYFSP attainment by pupil characteristics, specifically:

  • gender
  • ethnicity
  • eligibility for free school meals
  • special educational needs
  • English as a first language
  • month of birth (national level information only)
  • deprived areas

Data  for earlier years can be found at GOV.UK.

Headline facts and figures - 2018/19

Headline facts and figures for the Early years foundation stage profile (EYFSP) results for the 2018 to 2019 academic year, at national and local authority level.

  • The percentage achieving a good level of development continues to increase, but at a slower rate.
  • Girls continue to do better than boys, but boys are improving at a faster rate.
  • Increase in inequality gap between all pupils and lowest attaining 20%.

Explore data and files

All data used in this release is available as open data for download

Download all data (zip)

Open data

Browse and download individual open data files from this release in our data catalogue

Browse data files

Guidance

Learn more about the data files used in this release using our online guidance

Data guidance

Create your own tables

You can view featured tables that we have built for you, or create your own tables from the open data using our table tool

Create tables

All supporting files

All supporting files from this release are listed for individual download below:

List of all supporting files
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Key measures

See the Methodology section for definitions of the key measures.

The percentage achieving a good level of development and the percentage achieving at least expected in all early learning goals (ELGs) continue to rise, although the rate of improvement has slowed in recent years. The average point score remains the same as last year. 

Good level of development

71.8% of children achieved a good level of development in 2019, up slightly by 0.3 ppts on 2018.

Achieving at least expected in all 17 early learning goals

The percentage of children achieving at least the expected level across all ELGs was 70.7%, up by 0.5ppts from last year.

Average total point score

The average point score remains the same as last year at 34.6. 

For context, a child achieving the expected level on all 17 ELGs would score 34. One ELG being either ‘exceeding’ or ‘expected’ would move that child's total point score up or down respectively by 1 point. 

 

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Early Learning Goals

See the Methodology section for definitions of the key measures.

In 2019, Numbers was the only ELG where there was an increase in the percentage of children achieving at least the expected level compared to 2018. For 14 individual ELGs, there was a small decrease in the percentage of children achieving the expected level. 

Despite this downward trend across individual ELGs, 0.5ppts more children achieved at least the expected level across all their ELGs. 

The Reading, Writing and Numbers ELGs continue to have the lowest percentage of children achieving at the expected level or above. The largest improvements from 2013 were for Writing and Numbers.

Within the communication and language and literacy areas of learning 72.6% of children achieved at least the expected level of development across all the early learning goals up from 72.4% in 2018 and 56.9% in 2013.

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Average total point score

See the Methodology section for definitions of the key measures.

The most common total point score is 34 points (Fig C) with 28% of children achieving this score. 

The spread of total point scores shows the level of variation in achievement (see Fig D):

  • 43.8% of all children achieved a total point score of more than 34 - achieving ‘exceeded’ in at least one early learning goal (ELG) - up from 35.6% in 2013 and the same as in 2018
  • 28.0% of all children achieved a total point score of less than 34 - achieving ‘emerging’ in at least one ELG - down from 45.8% in 2013 and 28.4% in 2018.
  • 6.3% of all children achieved a total point score of less than 20, up from 6.0% in 2018 but lower than 6.9% in 2013.
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Gender gap

Key measures by gender

Girls continue to perform better than boys in all three key measures with 77.6% of girls achieving at least the expected level in all early learning goals (ELGs) compared to 64.0% of boys.

Girls’ performance has plateaued in 2019 with no change to average point score or the percentage achieving a good level of development compared with 2018. The percentage achieving at least the expected level across all ELGs has improved by 0.1 ppt.

Since 2018 there has been a 0.8 ppt increase in the percentage of boys achieving at least the expected level and a 0.5 ppt increase in the percentage achieving a good level of development. Their average point score remains the same as 2018 at 33.4.

This means the gender gap has decreased for the percentage achieving at least the expected level and the percentage achieving a good level of development. The gender gap for average total point score remains the same,  (see Figs. E1 to E3).

Early learning goals by gender 

Girls continue to perform better than boys in all of the ELGs. The gender gap for the percentage achieving at least the expected level is largest in writing (12.2ppts), reading (10.1ppts) and exploring and using media and materials (10.1ppts). The gap is the smallest for technology (3.1ppts).

The gender gap has increased since 2013 for four ELGs: self-confidence and self-awareness; shape, space and measures; the world, and technology but has decreased or stayed the same for all the other goals.

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Gap for lowest attaining children

This section looks at the total average point score gap between all children and the lowest 20% of attaining children to determine if the gap is narrowing.

How the percentage inequality gap is calculated

The gap is calculated as the percentage difference between the mean average of the lowest 20% and the mean average for all children.

The average total point score for the lowest attaining 20% has decreased slightly from 23.2 in 2018 to 23.0. However, it is up from 21.6 in 2013. 

The average total point score for all children has not changed from 2018 to 2019, remaining at 34.6. This is up from 32.8 in 2013. 

The inequality gap has increased by 0.2ppts from 2018 to 2019, now an 11.6 percentage point gap. 

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Local authority variation

The majority of local authorities improved on last year’s performance in the three key measures. The variation between the highest and lowest performing local authority is reducing over time. There continues to be significant variation between local authorities with:

  • those achieving a good level of development [1] varying from 63.1% in Middlesbrough to 80.6% in Richmond upon Thames
  • those achieving at least the expected level in all learning goals [1] varying from 61.4% in Middlesbrough to 80.3% in Richmond upon Thames
  • the average point score varying from 32.1 points in Middlesbrough to 39.0 points in Richmond upon Thames
  • the attainment gap between all children and the lowest attaining 20% of children [1] varying from 22.1% in Richmond upon Thames to 45.5% in Middlesbrough

[1] Excludes City of London and Isles of Scilly due to small numbers of schools.

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Help and support

Methodology

Find out how and why we collect, process and publish these statistics

Early years foundation stage profile results

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National statistics

The United Kingdom Statistics Authority designated these statistics as National Statistics in accordance with the Statistics and Registration Service Act 2007 and signifying compliance with the Code of Practice for Statistics.

Designation signifying their compliance with the authority's Code of Practice for Statistics which broadly means these statistics are:

  • managed impartially and objectively in the public interest
  • meet identified user needs
  • produced according to sound methods
  • well explained and readily accessible

Once designated as National Statistics it's a statutory requirement for statistics to follow and comply with the Code of Practice for Statistics to be observed.

Find out more about the standards we follow to produce these statistics through our Standards for official statistics published by DfE guidance.

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Contact us

Ask questions and provide feedback

If you have a specific enquiry about Early years foundation stage profile results statistics and data:

Early Years Statistics Team

Email
EarlyYears.STATISTICS@education.gov.uk

Telephone: Jessica Vickerstaff
01325 792592

Press office

If you have a media enquiry:

Telephone
020 7783 8300

Public enquiries

If you have a general enquiry about the Department for Education (DfE) or education:

Telephone
037 0000 2288

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