To the point...

Eight years after the new dawn - the era of evidence-based policy-making and investment in children's success, rather than merely successful children - research is vindicating the early years experiment. But only up to a point. The limits of the early years experiment reveal that it was burdened with too much.

Vidhya Alakeson's new report, Building on early years: a review of the literature, shows that the wish that early years work would empower disadvantaged children in the school system and society at large is doomed, as the undoubted gains fade once children enter primary school.

Once children leave nursery they enter a word of classes warehousing 25-30 pupils, confronting a too-early induction into literacy and numeracy that fails to build on the nursery culture of play, encounters with knowledge and the development of social and problem-solving skills. That dramatic pedagogical transition erodes their pre-school gains, particularly among disadvantaged children. Within a couple of years the flower has faded.