The recent research paper presented at the EARLI conference (in Budapest on 30 August) has called into question the effectiveness of the UK Government's investment in early years provision. Dr Christine Merrell and colleagues reported a study of assessments conducted on six cohorts of children (2001-2006) at school entry. The PIPS tests (Curriculum, Evaluation and Management Centre, University of Durham) were individually administered by the reception class teacher and focused on emerging literacy and numeracy skills, including writing, vocabulary, phonological awareness, letter recognition, word/sentence reading, and early number skills.
The Durham team begin their paper with a review of the major Government initiatives of and it is within this highly political context that they present their findings and interpret them as evidence of government failure. Journalists were quick to suggest that the large increase in spending did not lead to improvements in children's development, since the Merrell findings show no gains in literacy and numeracy attainment across the six-year period.
Although the Merrell study is relevant to the debate about the entry profiles of some children in England, it cannot answer questions pertinent to the evaluation of early years policies or the wisdom of investment. Using this data to evaluate the impact of Government initiatives has several weaknesses.
Narrow outcomes
The Sure Start programme is aimed at a wide range of outcomes related to children and their families; it was not specifically targeted at developing children's skills, such as reading words and sentences. New initiatives for the Foundation Stage centre on work with parents, inter-agency co-operation, and enhancing children's social skills and dispositions to learn. These wider features of early years programmes are not assessed in the Merrell study.
Impact period for targets
The Sure Start policy was initiated in 2000, aimed at families with children under three in disadvantaged areas (ie, children not necessarily represented in the Merrell sample). It was rolled out in five waves and the national evaluation showed most took three years before they were fully functional. The children most likely to be affected by local Sure Start programmes would not have entered school in the 2001-2006 period.
The ongoing evaluation of Sure Start is much better placed to explore the impact of this programme because it focuses on the diverse goals of the policy and studies children and families in the disadvantaged areas targeted.
Impact of curriculum
A more fundamental problem with the findings is that pre-schools started to follow the Desirable Learning Outcomes in 1996 (later subsumed into the Curriculum Guidance for the Foundation Stage, 2000), which was linked with newly-introduced Ofsted inspections. Such input would predate the University of Durham time series data and again may account for little change in children's literacy and numeracy profiles.
Type of pre-school
The authors have no information on the kinds of pre-school experience the children had, nor whether they were involved in any Sure Start local programmes. There is no information on quality, effectiveness, or duration of pre-school experiences, which are all important predictors of child outcomes at school entry in the Effective Provision of Pre-school Education (EPPE) research, a study designed specifically to investigate the effect of pre-school.
Rigorous studies from around the world have demonstrated the benefits of quality pre-school, especially for the disadvantaged. In England, the EPPE 3-11 research has identified positive and continuing benefits of pre-school at ages five, seven and ten years.
It is always of interest to see new analyses of existing data sets that may provide fresh insights into policy and practice. However, it is vitally important that data used are appropriate to the questions asked. The Merrell analyses provide little evidence to back the high-profile media claims that the investment in programmes for children and families or the expansion of pre-school has been wasted. Such coverage gives a misleading message about the benefits of pre-school and earlier curriculum innovations in early years settings.
Kathy Sylva, University of Oxford
Pam Sammons, University of Nottingham
Iram Siraj-Blatchford, Institute of Education, University of London
Edward Melhuish, Birkbeck, University of London
Brenda Taggart, Institute of Education, University of London
EPPE's latest published findings on reading, maths, and social behaviour were presented at the BERA conference this week and use a robust research design that takes account of children's backgrounds and the quality of the pre-schools. Caution is needed to avoid over-interpreting the recent Merrell study; such high profile coverage gives a misleading message about the benefits of pre-school and the impact of earlier curriculum innovations in early years settings. The Merrell study should not be misused to try to evaluate the impact of major initiatives aimed at families and young children and the promotion of multi-agency collaboration.
