The first empirical question addressed in this chapter is whether or not early measures of ability are correlated with later ability and qualifications. Clear differences have been shown in the educational performance of children from different social groups before they enter school. Although this result is far from being novel, the chapter has shown that these early differences are not greatly off-set by the schooling system in the UK. These early differences are shown to influence ultimate schooling outcomes but the chapter has also shown that when children enter school, the weakening position of children in less educated or lower SES families is, at least, halted. This suggests that schooling institutions are capable of influencing developmental trajecteries.
Given that early ability does forecast economic outcomes, the second question is; what determines early ability? The chapter finds that the primary source of differences in early development is the education of the child’s mother, presumably as the primary carer. Other factors such as family size, father’s social class, income, nutrition, housing and maternal well-being have also been shown to be important but the implication of the strong mother’s degree and well-being effects is that parenting skills are crucial, particularly in the early years. This finding raises the policy question of whether or Government-led interventions can reduce educational inequality.
The traditional intervention is through investments in pre-school institutions. Chapter 2, however, provides evidence that once selection issues are confronted, pre school institutions such as nursery schools might have negative effects on educational development, perhaps because of excessive class sizes. This was found to be true for children of all broad social groups so that investment in extra-familial institutions will possibly not reduce inequality and might just lessen the mean level of development. It is clearly crucial that additional resources are spent on improving the quality of pre-school provision so that interactions with adults are maintained and the early effects of poor peer groups are addressed.
Investments in families might well be more productive. The £540 million of the Sure-Start programme will primarily be devoted to bringing together child-care
organisations so that communities have access to organised and co-ordinated systems of support. Professionals and carers are provided with evidence-based guidance about practice. The evidence of this chapter is that this expenditure can reduce early inequalities
if the actual programmes can provide children from dis-advantaged families with the kind of interactions that are the every-day experiences of children from richer and more
educated families. The programme is a clear and positive attempt to reduce the process of inter-generational disadvantage. It is also necessarily experimental and it is welcome that the DfEE places such a high emphasis on evaluation. The Guidance to local areas
applying for Sure-Start funding states that Sure-Start “will learn from what works and spread good practice^^.” This is also to be welcomed but there is still much to learn.
It is to be hoped that evaluation programmes attempt to control for the importance of parental education in dis-advantage and so consider how different specific
interventions take account of different levels of parental education. Moreover, to the extent that it is the children of interested parents who will benefit from the possibilities facilitated by Sure-Start, evaluation will also face a selection problem. It is shown in Chapter 4 that children of parents who take an interest in their education are much more likely to do well at school. In these data, of the at risk group of 124 children in the lowest quartile of the development index at 42 months, 24 had mothers who showed little or no interest in their children’s schooling as assessed by teachers when the children were ten years old. Of these 24 children, only 2 (8%) went on to achieve A ’Levels or higher. On the other hand, of the 98 whose parents showed some or high interest in education, 30 (31 %) went on to get A ’Levels or above. To the extent that parents choose to participate in Sure-Start programmes, the raw results of the programme will look a lot better than they would if the selection issue was controlled for.
The non-coverage of those who do not choose to get involved in programmes or do so only indirectly will clearly be a concern. It is also important to note that Sure-Start is an area-based intervention and will, therefore, completely miss those families that happen to live outside targetted areas and are, therefore, excluded from social exclusion programmes. This suggests that, as well as through Sure-Start, such skills should be taught at school, rather than waiting until the period of compulsory schooling is over.
Finally, although parenting skills are important, it is not yet known how well they can be taught. Research summarised by Waldfogel (1999) suggests that there is
considerable room for optimism about intervention programmes but this is based on US research and little is yet known about interventions in the context of UK inequality. It
DfEE, op.cit.
must also be recognised that the material aspects of dis-advantage also have strong effects on educational inequality. Investments in human capital to diminish future inequality cannot ignore the contributions of low incomes, unemployment, bad housing and poor health to educational inequality. Despite these concerns, the chapter has provided evidence that the investment of additional time and resources in supporting the development of pre-school children is not simply a cheap cover for the failure of Governments to increase direct income redistribution but could provide large potential benefits if interventions can, as proponents believe, genuinely intervene in the production of pre-school ability.