Report questions effectiveness of pre-school education initiatives

December 14 2010

Attempts to boost numeracy and literacy levels among pre-school children over the past few years have largely failed, a new report has concluded.

A team working at Durham University's Centre for Evaluation and Monitoring looked into the benefits conferred on children under the age of four by a range of projects, including the government's own Sure Start scheme, over the past eight years.

Notably, they found no evidence to suggest that such initiatives helped improve standards of reading, maths and vocabulary among young children, though the study did find that that such schemes tended to be most beneficial to pupils from middle-class backgrounds.

Indeed, study leader Dr Christine Merrell concluded: "Our findings reinforce the concern that the poorest families in our society are not accessing the full range of educational opportunities and resources designed to help them."

She added that it is imperative to ensure that such schemes, which do have "valuable aims", are fully-accessible to parents and children from all sections of society.

However, the coalition government has stated it will protect the Sure Start scheme, which was initially rolled-out by the previous Labour administration, from budgetary cuts.

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