Education and the Labour Government

An Evaluation of Two Terms

Geoffrey Walford

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2013
• eBook ISBN: 9781317998488
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

This book presents a valuable and authoritative evaluation of the real impact Labour's two terms have had on the British education system.

On the 1st May 1997 the British electorate witnessed a watershed moment. After an eighteen year Conservative rule, a New Labour government took office. When asked what his top three priorities were for the first term, Tony Blair stated that they would be 'education, education, education.' This book questions the extent to which the policy has met the rhetoric; examining Labour's education policy, practice and achievements during Blair's two terms in office.

This selection of writings by highly respected academics in this field charts and evaluates the effects of policy changes on the various sectors of the educational system and on the major indicators of inequality.

This book was previously published as a special issue of the Oxford Review of Education.

Transforming the early years in England

Kathy Sylva and Gillian Pugh

Part 1: The promise

While the nineteenth century was distinguished by the introduction of primary education for all and the twentieth century by the introduction of secondary education for all, so the early part of the twenty first century should be marked by the introduction of pre-school provision for the under fives and childcare available to all. (Rt Hon Gordon Brown, MP, Chancellor of the Exchequer, 2004 Comprehensive Spending Review)

With its resounding electoral victory in 1997, Labour set about increasing services and support for young children and their families. Not only did they plan to increase spending on early years provision, they intended to alter its nature and the way services were delivered. In 1998 the ‘National Childcare Strategy’ was unveiled and this went far beyond education. It called for: free nursery education places for all four year olds whose parents wished it, Ofsted (Office for Standards in Education) inspections to assure quality of provision of free nursery education places, and 25 Early Excellence Centres to be set up across the country which would serve as ‘models’ for high quality practice integrating early education with childcare. Labour's vision was to meet the educational needs of young children but also the needs of their families for childcare and parent support or education.

The new government put early years high on its agenda of reform. They were not working from a blank slate, for during their years in opposition there had been a series of influential reports recommending an expansion in early education and an integrated approach to services for young children and their parents (see DES, 1990; Ball, 1994; Audit Commission, 1996, for example). The model for early excellence centres had been articulated by Pugh (1994), drawing on developments which went back to the earliest days of nursery education, but more specifically on the small number of ‘combined nursery centres’ which had been established since the 1970s.

In 1998 the Green Paper Meeting the Childcare Challenge was published. It went far beyond extending a half-day free educational place to three year olds. Some 1.6 million places were promised by 2004, and child care and early education were to become one experience for children and a seamless service for families. Responsibility for all ‘day care’ services for children under eight was transferred from the Department of Health to the Department of Education and Employment, which was to take a lead in ‘joining up’ the provision and funding of services for young children and their families. With its concern for expanding child care to support parents' return to work, the Department of Work and Pensions also had a stake in these services. Within months of coming into office, the government also established a Treasury-led cross-departmental review of services for children under eight, which led to proposals for the establishment of the Sure Start initiative, whereby some 250 (and later 500) local Sure Start programmes were to be set up in disadvantaged neighbourhoods, providing community-based support for parents and children under four. Financial support was offered to families on low incomes through the Working Families Tax Credit. The Foundation Stage was established for children from three until the end of reception year (aged five/six), a curriculum framework entitled Curricular Guidance for the Foundation Stage (DFEE/QCA, 2000). This was followed by Birth to Three Matters, a complementary framework for practitioners working with the growing number of children under three in early years services (DfES/Sure Start, 2003). All were part of an explosion of initiatives, programmes and funding streams.

The goal of this paper is to explore this recent history in terms of innovation in policy (i.e. the promise), the grounds for change (i.e. the research), delivery of new services (i.e. the achievement), and the tensions and gaps which remain (i.e. the shortfall). The paper will focus heavily on research evidence in terms of the effects of early years provision on children. Will the new policies make a difference for children and their families?

Part II: The research

Why are the early years important?

From its very first days Labour promised policies which would be ‘informed by evidence’. Their speeches and reports on the early years were infused with research findings, all providing the rationale for policy initiatives.

Two lines of research explain why early learning is important. First are the many studies on the development of the brain, suggesting that early learning contributes to the brain's developing architecture. Scientists made clear that early learning stimulates optimal brain development (Blakemore & Frith, in press). Although the brain research is beguiling (Bruer, 1997; House of Commons, 2000a), the more powerful research comes from developmental psychology (see Gopnik et al., 1999) which shows how the earliest interactions between child and carers provide the cultural structure that underpins the development of intellectual schemas. In essence, the neurological research confirmed the importance of learning in the early years whereas the psychological studies suggested which kind of learning was best (Sylva, 1994a; Melhuish, 2004). Children learn from conversations with adults and older peers, and it is through these conversations that young children acquire the cultural ‘tools’ to aid them in setting and achieving goals and in becoming part of communities (Bruner, 1986). Sylva extended the argument by showing that early learning experiences shape children towards a ‘mastery’ orientation in learning or a ‘performance’ one. Well before entering school the young child has acquired learning dispositions as well as key cognitive skills (Sylva, 1994b).

Finally there were scores of studies, especially from the USA, which demonstrated the powerful effects of early education on children's readiness for school and for their attainment throughout education and even employment. Melhuish (2004) reviewed the international literature on the effects of early education and care, concluding ‘for provision for three years onwards the evidence is consistent that pre-school provision is beneficial to educational and social development for the whole population … the evidence on childcare in the first three years for disadvantaged children indicates that high quality childcare can produce benefits for cognitive, language and social development. Low quality childcare produces either no benefit or negative effects’. Note that the word ‘quality’ has entered the debate.

Most striking in the international literature are the Perry Pre-school study (Schweinhart et al., 1993) and the Abercedarian study (Ramey & Ramey, 1998). Both used randomised control designs and both demonstrated the lasting effects of early education and care, especially for children from disadvantaged backgrounds. The Perry studies were especially persuasive because they showed that early education (half day, ages three to five years) improved high school grades, decreased delinquency and adult crime, and improved employment status and earnings. Even more important, early education saved the taxpayer money because for each $1 of investment in the service, $7.16 was saved in social, health and justice systems later on (Barnett, 1996).

Research in the early years has been substantial in the UK. Throughout the Labour government a large-scale longitudinal research study on effective education in the early years has been carried out by the EPPE team (Sylva et al., 1999), commissioned by the government in 1997. This has been influential in guiding the development of policy and has been used by ministers and the Treasury as the ‘evidential base’ for expanding universal services and targeting enhanced provision for the poor.

The Effective Provision of Pre-School Education (EPPE) project is the first major European longitudinal study of a national sample of young children's development between the ages of three and seven years. To investigate the effects of pre-school education, the EPPE team collected a wide range of information on 3,000 children. They also studied their parents, home environments and the pre-school settings children attended. Settings (141) were drawn from a range of providers (local authority day nursery, integrated centres, playgroups, private day nurseries, nursery schools and nursery classes). A sample of ‘home’ children (who had no or minimal pre-school experience) were recruited to the study at entry to school for comparison with the preschool group. In addition to investigating the effects of pre-school provision, EPPE explored the characteristics of effective practice (and the pedagogy which underpins it) through twelve intensive case studies of settings with positive child outcomes. EPPE has demonstrated the beneficial effects of high quality provision on children's intellectual and social/behavioural developmental measured at school entry as well at the end of Years l and 2 (Sammons et al., 2002, 2003; Sylva et al., 2004).

Key findings on the effects of pre-school at age five and also at age seven

• Impact of attending a pre-school—lasting effects (Sammons et al., in press)

– Pre-school experience, compared to none, enhances all-round development in children.

– The duration of attendance is important, with an earlier start being related to better intellectual development.

– Full time attendance led to no better gains for children than part-time provision.

– Disadvantaged children in particular can benefit significantly from quality preschool experiences, especially where they are with a mixture of children from different social backgrounds.

– The beneficial effects of pre-school remained evident throughout Key Stage 1, although some outcomes were not as strong as they had been at school entry.

• Does type of pre-school matter?

– There are significant differences between individual pre-school settings and their impact on children; some settings are more effective than others in promoting positive child outcomes.

– Good quality can be found across all types of early years settings; however even after taking account of a child's background and prior intellectual skills, the type of pre-school a child attends has an important effect on developmental progress. EPPE found that integrated centres (these are c...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Introduction: education and the Labour Government
• 1 Transforming the early years in England
• 2 Primary schooling under New Labour: The irresolvable contradiction of excellence and enjoyment
• 3 Diversity, specialisation and equity in education
• 4 Labour government policy 14–19
• 5 New Labour and higher education
• 6 Lifelong learning and the Labour governments 1997–2004
• 7 New Labour and teacher education: the end of an era
• 8 Reinventing ‘inclusion’: New Labour and the cultural politics of special education
• 9 Race, ethnicity and education under New Labour
• 10 A reconstruction of the gender agenda: the contradictory gender dimensions in New Labour's educational and economic policy
• Index