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.
