Governments Pre- Schooling Programme Has No Effect
Investigations by the University of Durham into the effectiveness of the Governments pre school education initiatives – Sure Start, free nursery schooling and Every Child Matters, appear to have had no effect in boosting the development of children entering Primary school. The apparent failure of the 3 billion pound programme that commenced in 2001 has come as a shock to academics. Dr. Christine Merrell of the University of Durham Curriculum, Evaluation and Management Centre who co-authored the report also advised that the sample of 35,000 children failed to reveal why the policies had failed.
Maybe the common denominator is the absence or dilution of parents support in these early years. Although the Governments preschool programme drew on experiences in the USA and Australia it maybe failed to fully engage the considerable mentoring effect of parents.
Time spent at Pre School establishments can help in social interaction and relieve some of the load on a working parent, but the results of the survey indicates we should not rely solely on the learning development of the programme.
Time spent at home on a one to one basis between parent and child, patiently going over pre-school learning games such as numbers and counting games at the pace of the child, develops a learning bond that can remain for the whole schooling programme. The use of modern learning games developed specifically to engage the parent child bond can establish the bedrock of parent child mentoring that can endure for the whole learning journey.
Alistair Owens
