When the Labour government led by Tony Blair created Sure Start, the decision to invest in early years care and education was based on evidence. All children are entitled to a state school place, five days a week, from the age of four or five. With free nursery places offered only on a part-time basis (currently 15 hours a week but due to rise to 30), support for the youngest children and their parents was rightly identified as a gap in the welfare state.
Sure Start was designed to plug this with a holistic offering of play, early learning, health and family support. One key function of the new centres was to join up existing services, making them easier to navigate. By prioritising poorer neighbourhoods, inequalities between richer and poorer children would, it was hoped, be smoothed out and vulnerable children helped to keep up.
Studies of the long-established US programme with similar aims, known as Head Start, had shown that targeted support to low-income families had the desired effect. In addition, science and health research in the years before Sure Start demonstrated the crucial importance of early-life experiences and relationships. By raising the quality of the services offered to preschool-age children and new parents, Sure Start’s architects believed they could enhance the prospects of a whole cohort – particularly its least privileged members.
We now know that they were right. In the UK as well as the US, research has shown that public investment in support for young families leads to benefits later on. The Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) has found that children from low-income backgrounds who grew up near a Sure Start centre saw an average improvement of three GCSE grades. Its latest report reveals that Sure Start areas had 20% fewer children who served a custodial sentence by age 16. While this is among the most dramatic effects revealed by the study, there are several others that merit attention, as well as some less positive findings that require nuanced interpretation. For example, increased referrals to social services cannot easily be glossed as either positive or negative; any evaluation depends on circumstances.
It is not possible to state categorically that Sure Start was the decisive protective factor for children who avoided jail – or for the people who avoided becoming victims of crime due to reduced rates of theft and some other offences. Nor can we say for sure that Sure Start was the reason why children aged between seven and 11 spent 13% less time in local-authority care than children in other areas. But the study points strongly towards these conclusions. Ministers should pay attention to calls from the IFS and other social researchers to work with them in future.
Not every project needs to be trialled. Children’s access to playgrounds, for example, is a self-evident social good. But the importance of evidence should not be underestimated, particularly by politicians seeking support for public spending.
Like previous studies of Sure Start, this one includes a measurement of “costs averted”. It is worth knowing that 19p out of every pound spent on Sure Start was recouped through savings on criminal justice and social care. But such calculations are secondary to findings that relate directly to people’s lives. Ministers should take pride in their party’s record of supporting families.
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