Labour’s 2015 manifesto aims to improve life for children and it suggests that one effective means of achieving that aim is to invest in early years’ provision. The claim is that a child’s language development…
Please mum! Just half an hour more?
Boy with TV remote via DarkOne
It is predictable that the Labour Party’s election pledge to expand Sure Start has turned into a row over how many children’s centres have actually closed since the coalition government took over in 2010…
Processing children into units of human capital as quickly as possible risks the production of ‘damaged goods’.
Genius baby via Bartosz Budrewicz/Shutterstock
In order to make young children “school ready”, the English government is now encouraging parents to place their children in school nurseries shortly after their second birthday. But there is evidence…
First day at school? Did you prep for the test?
Andrew Milligan/PA Archive
From September 2016, within five weeks of starting primary school, all children in England will receive an assessment that will stay on their record. But we have been here before and it didn’t work. The…
Better speech and brighter horizons.
John Stillwell/PA Wire
Penny Roy, City, University of London and Shula Chiat, City, University of London
All children with early language problems are at increased risk of struggling at school, and having reduced employment opportunities and life chances, but the risk of early language problems is disproportionately…
Time to go back to work?
Toddler via Photographee.eu/Shutterstock
Over the last 20 years, early childhood education and childcare for the under-fives has become a major policy priority in the UK. Get more mothers into work, it’s argued, and we can start to close the…