Is England’s early years sector really among the best in the world?

If England’s early years sector were judged solely by the public debate around it, you might assume the sector is struggling.

Yet a major new study by the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) suggests something different. England has one of the world’s most effective systems for early education and care, with strengths in children’s early literacy, numeracy, executive function and social-emotional development.

The OECD rates England as “one of the top-performing” jurisdictions in its report Building Strong Foundations for Life: results from the 2025 early learning and child well-being study.

Five-year-olds in England perform strongly in early literacy, numeracy, executive function and social-emotional development.

But the OECD report also highlights an important weakness: the significant social class gap in outcomes.

This suggests that the challenge we face in England is not simply about raising quality. It is about ensuring that quality benefits every child.

Strengths in England’s early years system

The OECD finds that children aged 5 in England “score highly in foundational learning domains compared to other participating jurisdictions, with only Korea scoring higher in some measures”.

English children rank second in their early literacy, and third in early numeracy, giving them a high combined score.

They also perform strongly in executive function - the capacity to focus on a goal, manage distractions and hold information in mind while working on it.

Social and emotional development is another strength: England has the strongest outcomes among the participating jurisdictions in this domain.

These findings matter because children’s all-round early development is important, encompassing how they think and learn, their ability for form positive relationships, and their emotional development and wellbeing.

The OECD results suggest that England has built a system capable of supporting children well across these key dimensions.

Consistent quality

The report also offers encouraging evidence about the consistency of provision.

The OECD notes that ensuring consistently high quality across early years settings and schools “is a major challenge for any education system”. In its report on England, the OECD says that the variation in children’s outcomes associated with the school they attend is “substantially smaller than in most other jurisdictions”.

In other words, children’s outcomes appear to be less dependent on which school they attend than in many of the other participating systems.

A word of caution

We should, however, be careful that we don’t end up with a global league table for five-year-olds.

Making robust assessments of children’s learning and wellbeing when they are so young is notoriously difficult. Children can respond differently to unfamiliar assessment situations, and making comparisons across countries and education systems introduces further complexities. So it is wise to be a little cautious about these outcomes.

The level of international participation in the OECD study is also quite small. Around 23,000 children participated in the Early Learning and Child Well-being Study 2025 across eight jurisdictions, including over 2,500 children in England.

For comparison, 760,000 15-year-olds in 91 countries took part in the OECD’s Programme for International Student Assessment.

None of these concerns should lead us to dismiss the findings altogether.

When interpreted carefully, the OECD’s report provides us with valuable insights into how different systems support young children’s learning and development.

At a time when public discussion often focuses on what is going wrong, these findings should give the sector confidence.

Challenges remain

But we should not let the positive overall picture obscure one of the report’s most important findings.

There are significant gaps in development between children from lower- and higher-income backgrounds, particularly in early literacy and numeracy.

These gaps are smaller than those observed in the Flemish Community of Belgium, but larger than those reported in other comparable jurisdictions, including Korea and the Netherlands.

That sets a clear challenge.

England has developed a strong early years system. But high-quality provision does not, by itself, eliminate the effects of socioeconomic disadvantage.

That means we need to continue to work on improving the quality of interactions and teaching across the sector. High-quality interactions (rooted in back-and-forth conversation and effective scaffolding) are disproportionately positive for children from lower-income backgrounds. We also need to make sure that professional development reaches the practitioners and settings that need it most, particularly those in areas of social disadvantage. We have a growing evidence base about how to do this effectively, including the Education Endowment Foundation’s Early Years Evidence Store and the Early Years Stronger Practice Hubs.

But this is happening against a difficult backdrop. Early years settings and schools face recruitment and retention difficulties, staff shortages and financial pressures. This makes it hard for them to make the investment needed in staff professional development that will make a difference.

England has built one of the strongest early years systems in the OECD study. The task now is to ensure that its benefits are shared more equally. A strong start should not depend on a child’s circumstances: every child should have the opportunity to thrive in the early years.

Dr Julian Grenier is the Education Endowment Foundation’s early years adviser