All children have a right to education, yet that right is not realised fully (Murray et al., 2019; OHCHR, 1989, 28). In England - an advanced economy - 22% of children enrolled in school are persistently absent, and England’s government does not even know how many school-aged children are not enrolled in school (Children’s Commissioner for England, 2022). Children with special educational needs and/or disabilities (SEND) and/or those living in poverty are those who are least likely to be in school (FFT Education Datalab, 2021). In England during 2022, 16.5% of all children - and 7% of children aged 3-4 years in early childhood education and care (ECEC) settings - had diagnosed SEND, while in 2021, 27% of UK children were living in poverty (Department for Education, 2022; GOV.UK, 2023; Joseph Rowntree Foundation, 2023).

Starting school is a major event in a young child’s life: an introduction to statutory education that is powerful in setting expectations for the school experience in the long-term. Young children starting school enter a new world that is usually culturally and organisationally different from home and their ECEC settings: ECEC settings tend to adopt a social pedagogic model, whereas schools are inclined to implement a transmissive banking model (Moss, 2013). For some children, moving to school is a happy process, but for others – especially children with SEND and/or living in poverty – early experiences of school can be difficult (Kaplan et al., 2022).

For decades, educators in many countries have recognised that starting school can present challenges and have adopted strategies aimed at supporting children’s vertical transitions from ECEC or home into school (Kagan and Neuman, 1998). These strategies are many and varied; they include schools’ engagements with whole new classes of children and their families, or with individual children and their families. Some take place before children start school, some once children are in school, and some involve schools working with ECEC settings or with their wider communities (Early et al., 2001).  However, whilst transfer strategies may ease some children’s move to school, many young children experience discontinuities when transitioning from pre-school to school, presenting problems for the children and their educators, and disadvantaging or - for those already disadvantaged - further disadvantaging many children longer term (Andrews et al., 2017; Pianta et al., 2007).

The fragmented and diverse English ECEC landscape includes childminders, nursery classes in schools, maintained nursery schools (MNS) and private, voluntary and independent nurseries (Coleman et al., 2022; LaValle et al., 2022). MNS constitute the highest quality ECEC provision, due in large part to their structural quality, including higher staff qualifications (Paull and Popov, 2019; Sylva et al., 2010). Importantly, MNS ‘provide high quality ECEC for children most at risk of underachievement’ (Solvason et al., 2021:78; Sylva et al, 2010). Yet whilst 92% of 3-4-year-olds are enrolled in ECEC provision in England (GOV.UK, 2023), the 600 MNS serving predominantly socially deprived populations in England in 1988 had reduced to 392 by 2019 (Paull and Popov, 2019).

Among remaining MNS in England, by 2021, eight within an English Midlands county had identified increasing challenges for children moving from their ECEC settings to school, particularly children with SEND. The county was characterised by growing numbers of children with SEND, children with SEND missing from education, and reduced funding for children with SEND (Hillery, 2021). Staff from the eight MNS invited university academics to work with them to research MNS and school stakeholders’ views of vertical transitions for children moving from MNS to schools in 2022, especially children with SEND.

This participatory qualitative study had two stages and investigated perspectives of primary carers, educators and children, according to principles of equality and mutual respect. University and MNS colleagues worked collaboratively, agreeing the study’s focus and design, and managing, analysing and interpreting study data in partnership. The methodology was instrumental case study, supporting investigation of a complex issue in a real-world context to secure understanding from multiple perspectives (Stake, 1995). Ethics were approved and monitored by the university’s research ethics committee and followed its ethics codes and procedures and British Educational Research Association (2018) guidelines. Purposive sampling was adopted. The Stage One sampling frame consisted of primary school leaders (n=24), reception teachers (n=50), MNS leaders (n=8), MNS teachers (n=60), and parents of children who started school in September 2022 (n=300). The Stage Two sampling frame comprised MNS key workers (n=6) and MNS SEND Co-ordinators (n=4) of children with diagnosed SEND who left MNS to start school in 2022, and school reception teachers who received those children (n=6). Stage One consisted of online questionnaire surveys for all stakeholders. The Stage One educators’ survey addressed respondents’ qualifications and experience, gender, setting type and size, their children with diagnosed SEND and/or funding, provision type for children with SEND, transition strategies, challenges for children, parents and educators when children start school, and ideas for improving children’s experiences of starting school. The Stage One parents’ survey asked if their child had funding and/or an Education, Health and Care Plan, about their child’s progress, and whether aspects of nursery provision had supported them and their child. Stage One data informed development of Stage Two data collection tools. In Stage Two, paired interviews-as-case-studies focused on children with SEND (n=6) in the term after they started school. Adapted Photovoice techniques (Wang and Burris, 1997) were used to conduct the interviews with MNS key workers and MNS SEND Co-ordinators (n=10) who had worked with children with SEND (n=6) in the study MNS before they started school. Finally, a short online survey with five questions was conducted with reception teachers who had received the children with SEND whose educators had been interviewed. Reception teachers (n=6) were asked what transition arrangements they made, what does and does not work well for children with SEND starting school, and suggestions for improvements; just two responded. An MNS manager signposted participants to information about the study, consent forms and the surveys, and set up interviews.

Themes emerging from Stage One were ‘Transitions’, Transition barriers’, ‘Partnership with families’ and ‘Voice of the child’. Stage Two themes included ‘Teamwork’, ‘Relationships’, ‘Demands on staff’, ‘Educator status’, ‘Focus on rubric’, ‘Focus on child’, ‘Funding’, ‘Safeguarding’ and ‘Exclusion’. Findings suggest the study schools and MNS adopt various strategies aimed at supporting young children starting school. However, practices, views and positionings of children differ in each phase; for example, MNS leaders and educators were more focused than school leaders and educators on listening to young children’s voices. Findings also indicate that educators in both phases find management of children’s transitions to school demanding and difficult, acknowledging that ‘The system isn’t right’. However, findings also suggest there is potential for educators in each phase to learn from each other, and that greater involvement of parents may be beneficial. Some ‘meeting points’ (Moss, 2013) provided continuities for young children’s transitions to school. These included discussions between educators frrom different phases, educators visiting settings and homes, pedagogical documentation and education, health and care plans. However, whereas nursery educators were committed to following children’s interests, school educators tended to expect children to conform to school culture and requirements. Equally, school leaders and educators appeared less motivated than MNS leaders and educators to want to improve children’s experiences of starting school. UNICEF (2012:2) proposes that school readiness not only requires ‘children’s readiness for school’ but also ‘schools’ readiness for children; and families’ and communities’ readiness for school’. Yet the present study’s findings highlight disjuncture between social pedagogic and banking models that requires children to accommodate divergent conceptualisations of childhood in ECEC and school (Moss, 2013). This situation is antithetical to supporting children to start school successfully and reveals one reason for high numbers of children in England whose right to education is not realised.

Andrews, J., Robinson, D., and Hutchinson, J. (2017) Closing the Gap? London: EPI. British Educational Research Association (BERA) (2018) Ethical Guidelines for Educational Research. Nottingham: BERA. Children’s Commissioner of England (CCE) (2022) Where are England’s Children? London: CCE Coleman, L., Shorto, S., and Ben-Galim, D. (2022) Childcare Survey 2022. London: Coram Family and Childcare. Department for Education( 2022) Special educational needs and disability. https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/1082518/Special_educational_needs_publication_June_2022.pdf Early, D.M., Pianta, L.C., Taylor, R.C., and Cox, M.J. (2001) Transition Practices. Early Childhood Education Journal. 28 (3): 199-206. FFT Education Datalab (2021) Who’s left 2021? https://ffteducationdatalab.org.uk/2021/10/whos-left-2021/ GOV.UK (2023) Reporting Year 2022. Education provision: children under 5 years of age. https://explore-education-statistics.service.gov.uk/find-statistics/education-provision-children-under-5 Hillery, M. (2021) New research reveals an alarming 40,137 of children across the East Midlands will miss out on their education because of factors beyond their control. Northampton Chronicle and Echo. 31.8.21. Joseph Rowntree Foundation (2023) Overall UK Poverty Rates. https://www.jrf.org.uk/data/overall-uk-poverty-rates Kagan, S.L. and Neuman, M.J. (1998) Lessons from Three Decades of Transition Research. The Elementary School Journal. 98 (4): 365-379. Kaplan, G., Mart, S., and Diken, H. (2022) Transition to school process of children with disadvantages. Journal of Childhood, Education & Society: 3(1): 28-47. La Valle I., Lewis J., Crawford C., Paull G., Lloyd E…and Willis E. (2022) Implications of COVID for Early Childhood Education and Care in England. London: Centre for Evidence and Implementation. Moss, P. (Ed.) (2013) Early Childhood and Compulsory Education: Reconceptualizing the relationship. Abingdon: Routledge. Murray, J., Swadener, B.B. and Smith, K. (Eds.) (2019) The Routledge International Handbook of Young Children’s Rights. Abingdon: Routledge. OHCHR (1989) The United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child. http://www.ohchr.org/en/professionalinterest/pages/crc.aspx. Paull, G., and Popov, D. (2019) The role and contribution of maintained nursery schools in the early years sector in England. London: Department for Education. Pianta, R.C., Cox, M.J., and Snow, K.L. (2007) School Readiness and the transition to kindergarten in the era of accountability. Baltimore: BPC. Solvason, C., Webb, R. and Sutton-Tsang, S. (2021) ‘What is left…?’: The implications of losing Maintained Nursery Schools for vulnerable children and families in England. Children and Society. 35(1): 75-89. Stake, R. (1995) The art of case study research. Thousand Oaks: Sage Sylva, K., Melhuish, E., Sammons, P., Siraj-Blatchford, I. and Taggart, B. (Eds.) (2010) Early Childhood Matters. London: Routledge. UNICEF (2012) School Readiness: A conceptual framework. New York: United Nations Children’s Fund. Wang, C. and Burris, M. (1997) Photovoice. Health Education and Behavior. 24: 369-387.