Poverty review head calls for revamp of early years
Catherine Gaunt
Tuesday, September 21, 2010
The early years should be re-named the Foundation Years, as part of a plan to reform education policy and target support for children from before birth to age five, according to the Labour MP who has been commissioned by David Cameron to investigate the way poverty is defined and how to tackle it.
In a progress report on the Independent Review of Poverty and Life Chances, given to the Prime Minister last week, Frank Field, the former welfare minister, outlined his idea for 'a new index of life opportunities'. He proposed this to be used to measure whether children have achieved the basic levels of development for a five-year-old and the home characteristics necessary to succeed in school and then later life.
The index would be based on social and emotional development, cognitive and language skills, communication skills and well-being - indicators that evidence has showed make the most difference to future life opportunities.
Speaking at Haileybury School, in Hertfordshire, Mr Field said, 'Underpinning this and to show how we might genuinely drive progress in extending life opportunities, our report will sketch out for the first time what a reformed early years provision, or as we believe it should be called, Foundation Years, might look like.
'What happens in the first five years of a child's life matters as much as, if not more than, what happens in schools, yet around seven times as much public money is spent educating children in schools than on helping parents during critical pre-school years.'
However, he said 'income alone' was not the main driver of the achievement gap between children from rich and poor families.
'This isn't rocket science. It is where hard evidence comes together with common sense. Good parenting and home learning environments matter most to young children's eventual life chances - more than extra money and more than schools.'