Researchers compared 19,000 under-fives, half in Sure Start areas, the rest from similarly deprived districts, but found no discernible developmental, language or behavioural differences. Crucially, they were not asked to compare children actually in Sure Start programmes, only those living in the area, many of whom had no contact with it.
The ambiguous results are not the fault of the researchers, whose problems were legion. Poor areas have a high turnover of families, so any evaluation missed many children with a lot of Sure Start help who moved away, while catching newcomers who might have had none.
Every Sure Start is different but without a fixed template, researchers couldn't know what they were measuring. In future far more reliable data will come from following the progress of the same nine-month-olds tested this time, monitored every two years.
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