New birth cohort study will study children of the 2020s

A new nationally representative birth cohort study launching in England in the coming year will deliver valuable insights into child development, led by UCL researchers and commissioned and funded by the Department for Education. The Children of the 2020s Study will include babies born in April, May, and June 2021. The research team from UCL, Ipsos MORI, the University of Oxford, Birkbeck, University of London and the Anna Freud Centre will seek to recruit over 8,000 families in early 2022 to take part in the study. Lead researcher Professor Pasco Fearon (UCL Psychology & Language Sciences and Anna Freud Centre) said: "Our study will provide vital evidence about the experiences of young children and their families growing up in the 2020s - a time of extraordinary social and technological change, and of course as the world begins to recover from the COVID-19 pandemic. "This will be an in-depth study of the wide range of factors that affect children's development and education in the early years, including the home environment, nurseries and preschool, the neighbourhood, early years services and the broader social and economic circumstances of the family. We want to understand how these factors impact children's social, cognitive, and early language development, their mental health and readiness for school." Co-investigator Professor Alissa Goodman (Director of the Centre for Longitudinal Studies, UCL Institute of Education) said: "The early years represent an exceptional period in a person's life, with rapid brain growth and the establishment of abilities that are key to later success.