How early does the disadvantage gap start when we’re looking at children’s outcomes? Does gender also impact on a child’s developmental assessment results?
These are crucial questions that at Nesta we need answers to in order to help close the disadvantage gap. We analysed Stockport’s early years data to find out if different characteristics affect how likely it is that you meet age-related expectations in a communication and language assessment.
We looked at gender, the deprivation of their local area and whether they were pre-term. Our analysis shows that in Stockport, boys who live in more deprived areas are more likely to not meet expectations in their developmental assessments. And once they have that poor result they are likely to continue to have a poor result rather than move to meeting expectations for their age.
