In the Mapping Early Years Practice Project carried out between 2022-23, our project partner the Australian Council for Educational Research (ACER) conducted a survey and in-depth interviews with representatives from 27 Local Authorities (LAs) in England. Initial findings from data analysis by Nesta’s data scientists revealed a wide variety of early years policies and practices.
To better understand how LAs have used data in their early years work, the current study returned to the original dataset and conducted a qualitative analysis of the interview data, focusing on three questions:
- How was data being used by LAs to support early years work?
- What were the challenges reported by LAs in relation to using data?
- What were the attitudes to using data within different LAs?
