Early Years Impact Report, Shaping the Future
Early Years Impact Report, Shaping the Future
UEL’s unique interdisciplinary & applied approach to early years and youth
The University of East London has a strong tradition in supporting children and families through research and education in a range of related disciplines including early childhood education and care, developmental psychology, neuropsychology, counselling, community work, global development, law, health promotion, and social work.
We have brought this wealth of experience and disciplines together in 2024 to launch the East London Centre for Early Years and Youth. The Centre takes an interdisciplinary approach, working closely with wider faculties whilst combining and building upon the schools of Psychology and Education and Communities as the newly created School of Childhood and Social Care.
The School incorporates two world-leading research centres in the early years space: UEL’s Baby Development Lab, which plays an internationally leading role in early years research; and the International Centre for the Study of the Mixed Economy of Childcare, whose work supports and advises governments in the UK and abroad on reforming childcare funding and workforce policy, and on social and emotional wellbeing. These developments reflect the increasing importance of our research in the early years field, as scientists and social researchers begin to fully appreciate just how vital our first 1000 days of life are to future success and well-being.
UEL has a 126-year history of training and supporting teachers in east London and beyond.
Newham, UEL’s home borough, has some of the highest levels of economic deprivation and health inequalities in Europe, and its children experience one of the highest rates of disruption to early-life emotional and social development anywhere in the country, with severe consequences for mental health in childhood and beyond. Over the past two decades, our research has explored how we can improve the lives, mental health, educational and wellbeing outcomes for some of our most vulnerable young people.

For example, the rates of special educational needs and disability amongst children in our catchment area are some of the highest nationally. UEL’s award-winning RIX research centre focuses on improving the lives of children and adults with learning disabilities.
By harnessing the power of partnership, UEL’s researchers are supporting global, long-term, and intergenerational change. UEL is working to extend the international impact of its early years research through a partnership with the Governor of Western Australia and the Telethon Kids Institute, facilitated by the Royal Foundation, whose focus on making a positive difference in early years aligns closely with the University’s multi-disciplinary and innovative approach to rethinking early childhood as the foundation of a healthier and fairer society. UEL also leads a European wide consortium (the European Cooperation in Science & Technology Network) in the measurement of how early home and educational environments influence development across 20 different countries. A global focus also informs work done in collaboration with the Home Office evaluating cross-cultural differences in early autism diagnosis.
The baby development lab
UEL’s Baby Development Lab plays an internationally leading role in early years research, pioneering state-of-the-art wearables and naturalistic brain recording techniques to study how the diverse early living environments and relationships experienced by babies and children in our catchment area influence early stress – both in the child themselves and their parents/caregivers – and to investigate how adversity influences the way parents interact with their children.
Research findings from UEL’s Baby Dev Lab have reached over 50,000 early years practitioners in 2000 primary schools, leading to substantial changes in early years teaching environments to support learning and development.
Since 2019, the Lab has received £3.2 million in external funding, from funders including the European Research Council, the Economic and Social Research Council, and the Medical Research Council. This research is being used in the public and private sectors to improve children’s wellbeing, including by the Department for Education, Public Health England, Thomas Cook and Center Parcs.
Our wider interdisciplinary research also uniquely focuses on the different home environments (real-world and digital) that children from socio-economically diverse and deprived backgrounds experience, and how they can be optimised to protect vulnerable children.
Case studies
Peer action collective
The Peer Action Collective (PAC) is a £ 5.2 million programme which aims to give young people the chance to make their communities safer, fairer places to live.
It is co-led by researchers from UEL’s Institute for Connected Communities and is jointly funded by the Youth Endowment Fund, the #iwill Fund and the Co-op Group.
The Peer Action Collective supported young people aged 10-25 to conduct research and social action related to youth violence. The project had a diverse network of participants with 20-40 per cent of young people identifying as being from the global ethnic majority and more than 10 per cent of young researchers living with a disability. Additionally, over 75 per cent of the projects took place in some of the most deprived parts of England and Wales.
The project has so far had significant success, with more than 80 per cent of young people involved in the project gaining an increased understanding and over 90 per cent of them reported a commitment to ongoing involvement in social action.
The programme is now on its second round, focusing on youth violence research.
Sport in your futures
The first of its kind in the UK, this programme aims to directly tackle health and social inequality in east London through increasing exposure and access to high-quality sport facilities and experiences at the University.
Taking a ground-breaking approach to university community outreach, the programme offers under-served early years
and primary school children in Newham, Tower Hamlets and Hackney, the chance to take part in sporting activities on campus, watch British Universities and Colleges Sports matches, meet sporting scholars and hear from specialist UEL staff on the benefits of sport to health and wellbeing.
Social prescribing in children and young people
Social prescribing empowers young people to improve their mental health and well-being through attending community activities and services, as opposed to medical interventions. Over several years, UEL’s Institute for Connected Communities (ICC) has led work evaluating the success of social prescribing and researching best practices in London, nationally and internationally.
UEL researchers evaluate surveys from young social prescribing users at the beginning and end of their social prescribing programmes, as well as provide a cost-benefit analysis of the programme and analysis of Case Study healthcare service. Subsequently, our researchers can make recommendations to improve and refine the programme for the benefit of the users including the Department of Health & Social Care (DHSC) in England as well as health services around the world.
For example, the ICC conducted a DHSC-funded outcome, process and economic evaluation of the Social Prescribing
for Young People Pilot nationally, focusing on three areas within the UK - Sheffield, Luton and Brighton & Hove -
between September 2018 and September 2020. This led to a further project, funded by the National Institute for
Health Research, called CHOICES examined how social prescribing for children and young people may fit
into the wider landscape of young people support services.
More recently, the ICC has led the evaluation of a European Commission-funded project called COPE which adopted
social prescribing to support several hundred young people in NEET (not in education, employment or training)
circumstances.
Our researchers have consistently found statistically significant improvements in the mental well-being of young
people resulting from attending social prescribing programmes. Subsequently, our work has helped to
identify that social prescribing can support the mental health of young people while they are waiting to access
formal mental health services. Additionally, as waiting lists for NHS services continue to rise, our work in evaluating
the effectiveness of these programmes has helped stretched services.
City living: The impact of urban environments on early childhood development
Baby Development Lab-led research has found that by the age of one, children growing up in noisier home environments
have higher levels of physiological stress, affecting both their cognitive performance and their emotional responsiveness. The research included both babies and parents participating in lab-based studies where readings were taken from physiological stress monitors. Children growing up in urban environments showed lower sustained attention and greater emotional instability – although they also showed faster learning speeds in some contexts.
A major focus of the Lab’s work is on how to help adapt teaching styles to play to the strengths of high-stress, inner-city children. Additionally, UEL has secured a Medical Research Council grant to lead work to further understanding of ADHD, a disorder that disproportionately affects children from lower socio-economic backgrounds, but about which there has been little research to date. The Lab’s specialisms will allow researchers to investigate how early home environments affect ADHD development.
A further project examines how outdoor learning in natural settings affects young children from urban backgrounds – concentrating in particular on children from underprivileged socio-economic backgrounds. With almost 70% of the world’s children expected to grow up in cities by 2050, UEL research has proven links between increased access to outdoor learning and improved cognition, behaviour, and school performance in young children.
The team are committed to finding new, evidence-based ways to improve the lives of local children and families and using that knowledge to roll out life-changing impacts across the UK and beyond.
The science of a smile
This pioneering work is developing new techniques to measure for the first time, brain activity and physiology concurrently in an interacting parent/carer and child. These brand-new techniques make it possible to explore and better understand how smiles and shared emotions open up parent-child communication and trigger brain synchrony, meaning we can understand more about how being in the same state simultaneously enables feelings of shared understanding
- e.g. finding it easier to see something from someone else’s perspective - and the neural activity driving that in both babies and adults. Establishing mutual smiles and laughter is one of the most powerful ways of establishing good parent-child responsiveness and communication, which is what drives almost all early development. In short, smiles supercharge learning.
Newham Learning
Newham Learning is a partnership of over 40 schools that work collectively to give every pupil the best start in life. It aims for all the borough’s children and young people to have the best possible educational opportunities, outcomes, and life chances. UEL is involved across the partnership, including undertaking collaborative research into early childhood
development, supporting the establishment of thematic learning communities, presenting at headteacher conferences, and taking an active role in the strategic vision for the partnership through representation on its Board.
Staying safe in an online world
UEL was part of a consortium of partners awarded €5 million Horizon 2020 funding to better understand drivers of cybercrime. UEL’s research focused on developing prevention strategies to discourage young people from engaging in cybercrime activities. Their research found that two-thirds of young people in Europe engaged in some kind of online risk-taking that could lead to criminal activity.
Their research aimed to better understand the drivers behind this and to prevent initial exploration from developing into more serious cybercriminal behaviour. As a result of the research, a new taxonomy of cybercrime has been created to inform governments, policymakers and law enforcement across the globe. A number of resources have also been created for young people and their families to raise awareness of what types of online behaviours are risky, harmful, or criminal. The materials have been disseminated throughout the EU to thousands of young people and parents on Safer Internet Day 2023 via the network of Safer Internet Centres.
The UEL Institute for Connected Communities is also part of a UKRI-funded collaboration working with partners from policy, practice and industry to understand the challenges that tech companies using metaverse apps face while ensuring that as many children, including those with neurodivergent conditions, can use their platforms safely. The project identified knowledge gaps and resource needs of professionals and practitioners who work with children at risk of abuse and exploitation in the metaverse and listened to the voices of children themselves to understand their needs for safety and support while using the metaverse. The Virtual Reality Risks Against Children research project aims to help industry and policymakers create a safer and more supportive environment for children online.
Transitioning to school readiness
Newham has the second highest rate of child poverty in the capital and the lowest life expectancy of all London boroughs. High-quality teacher training, including in early years, is therefore vital to providing young people in Newham with the best possible start in life and their education journey.
As one of the largest providers of early childhood courses in London, UEL’s academic team has extensive experience not just in teaching, but also in family support and early intervention methodologies. Capitalising on the University’s location, UEL has earned an excellent reputation for working in partnership with schools to prepare teachers to work in the most diverse classrooms in the country.
Our reputation has recently been further validated by Ofsted, with our primary and further education provision ranked as ‘outstanding’, and our secondary provision being ranked as ‘good’.
In Newham and around east London, UEL’s reputation is very strong. By reputation alone, it’s a good enough reason to work with UEL above anybody else. But the fact that it’s been in east London for 125 years, it knows east London better than any other university – that’s the unique selling point.”
David Bailey
Director, Newham Learning
Trainee teachers and UEL staff are embedded in local schools, multi-academy trusts and communities, and trainee teachers spend extensive time in classrooms on placement in local schools. This means that every day, hundreds of UEL trainee teachers are in classrooms across the city and region, improving their teaching practice and supporting young people in some of London’s most deprived communities. UEL teacher training is informed by the latest research, including research into improving emotional resilience and wellbeing through positive education programmes, which led to changes in government education policy around the teaching of wellbeing and resilience in the UK and EU.
UEL works in partnership with the London Early Years Foundation (LEYF), which runs UEL’s on-campus nursery at Docklands - many of our students are parents, and the Children’s Garden Nursery and Pre-School offers and provides care for their children, placements for Early Years students and is also a community nursery open to all, with its children and staff reflecting the rich diversity on UEL’s doorstep.
UEL hosts the Newham Learning Conference, Head Teachers Conference, and the largest Early Years Practitioner Conference in the UK, as well as other school training events on campus.
By bringing practitioners together and fostering collaboration between schools and the academy, UEL is contributing to the growth and improvement of the educational landscape in its borough and beyond. These efforts are leading to better learning outcomes for students and building a more cohesive and effective education system overall.
Protecting and supporting children in a digital age
As society progresses towards an increasingly digital future, it will be crucial to understand the challenges and opportunities that lie ahead. With expertise in computer science, AI, cybersecurity, data analytics, and digital innovation, UEL is at the forefront of research and education in this rapidly evolving field.
New technologies such as the metaverse offer huge potential benefits. But they also come with increased risks – particularly for children and young people. UEL’s Institute for Connected Communities and the newly launched Online Harms and Cybercrime Unit explore a range of issues surrounding online harms and cybercrime.
Its Director, Professor Julia Davidson OBE, is Chair of the UK Council for Internet Safety’s Evidence Group and provides expert advice to national and international governments. Professor Davidson has also directed a study for the UK Government exploring adult online hate, harassment and abuse, which highlighted patterns of abuse based on age, sexual orientation, race and religion.
Most recently, she worked on a review for the NSPCC of evidence on the online risks and harms experienced by children in the UK. The review focuses primarily on evidence concerning children’s exposure to online sexual risks, in line with the NSPCC’s priority work around child sexual abuse, and outlines a series of recommendations for tech companies and Ofcom.
Looking to the future
UEL is breaking down barriers to work and education – it’s at the core of the University’s mission. This mission extends to all of our work, including research and training in education and early years, to ensure that everyone has a fair, healthy, and positive start in life.
Our philosophy is rooted in partnership, as we strive for progress as part of a wider educational ecosystem that supports the vision of raising standards for children and families, particularly in underprivileged areas.
As UEL celebrates its 2024 Year of Science, following on from its historic 125th anniversary in 2023, our work in the field of early years research and training reminds us to look to the future. How will children learn in the future?
What should early years teaching and care look like to support our youngest and most vulnerable? What role will
AI have? How can we ensure rapidly advancing technology is harnessed to improve outcomes and complement our
uniquely human qualities and skills, to build a fairer, more sustainable world? These are some of the many questions
it is incumbent on us to ask and work with our communities to find answers to, in our role as custodians of this
institution, which will continue to transform lives long after current students, staff and stakeholders have left it.
In the meantime, every member of UEL’s communities can be proud of the part that they are playing in having an impact now, to give others the chance to flourish and thrive in the future.
Download the full report
Early Years Impact Report 2024 - Shaping the Future
pdf, 3.16 MB