"How much difference may depend on how well Labour impressed on voters and future policy-makers the necessity of Sure Start and the need to make them all as good as Carousel." The Verdict p166
It is ironic that when I come to talk about one of New Labour's successes, Blair barely mentions it in his memoirs at all. The announcement that the coalition intend to extend Sure Start to allow the poorest 20% of families to receive 15 hours of free pre-school education a week from the age of two (rather than three) is to be applauded. It was also a labour Party manifesto promise. Given the sweeping cuts across the public sector it is a thorough endorsement of one of New Labour's early initiatives.
In a book about leadership, perhaps a straightforward success story is simply too undramatic to warrant much attention, but, Sure Start represents New Labour making a real difference by embarking on some old fashioned social engineering. Research indicated that less intelligent children from well-off backgrounds had overtaken brighter children from poor backgrounds by the age of six. Sure Start aimed to bring under 5s from poor backgrounds up to the same educational standards as their contemporaries from better off backgrounds at the point they started primary school. The success of the programme is best indicated by its popularity with middle class parents.
Childcare provision has doubled in Britain, with a mixture of private provision and 3500 state centres in the most neglected areas. This also allowed many parents to get training or a job for the first time. In 2008 a team of researchers from Birbeck University concluded that the programme was working. “In [Sure Start] areas children showed better social development, with more positive social behaviour and greater independence, and parents showed less risk of negative parenting and provided a better home-learning environment.”
The test, of course, is to see how well they do through school.
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