Study finds employment skills start from early years

A new National Foundation for Educational Research (NFER) study has been published which has found that if early years behavioural and cognitive skills are addressed as children progress through education, the job market could be boosted.

The report is the latest instalment of the five-year Skills Imperative 2035: Essential skills for tomorrow’s workforce research programme, which has been funded by the Nuffield Foundation. Previous research has found that a set of EES will be vital in the future labour market.

The report urges the government to encourage schools to develop the six Essential Employment Skills (EES) which are: communication, collaboration, problem-solving, organising, planning and prioritising work, creative thinking, and information literacy. The study is based on a hypothesis that a child’s cognitive and behavioural skills are precursors for their EES in early adulthood.

A key finding is that skills development is cumulative and, as children get older, inequalities in their cognitive and behavioural outcomes become more exacerbated, and harder to undo. This highlights the need for intervening when a child is young to stop them from falling behind, whilst still appreciating that there remains considerable scope to influence young people’s outcomes at an older age.

Children who show behavioural difficulties are more likely to have lower cognitive outcomes later in childhood, and, to a lesser extent, the opposite is also true. Additionally, differences in school performance can compound inequalities in children’s cognitive and behavioural outcomes that predate their start at school.

The study also found that children’s extra-curricular engagement in positively associated with their behavioural and cognitive development for children aged 8-17, but it is well documented that children from disadvantaged backgrounds have less access to these opportunities.

The report thus recommends that governments should consider how to expand access to holistic family support programmes for disadvantaged families, as well as supporting disadvantaged pupils to access extra-curricular activities. Furthermore, all schools should explicitly support the development of EES as a critical part of a good education, including socio-emotional, self-management skills, and cognitive skills. 

Jude Hillary, the programme’s principal investigator and NFER’s co-head of UK policy and practice, said: “Intervening at an early age to support young people who have low cognitive and behavioural skills and are at risk of falling behind is critical to improving their future outcomes. The consequence of inaction could see increasing numbers of young people leaving education without the skills and qualifications they need to enter growing occupations, which are predominantly professional occupations requiring higher skills, particularly EES. This will only add to the existing skill shortage in the UK and further constrain national efforts to stimulate growth.

“To deliver future skills needs and grow the economy, the government needs to adopt a ‘cradle to grave’ approach to skills development, promoting the development of a broad mix of cognitive, behavioural, and technical specific knowledge and skills, starting from the early years.”