Excellence centres come out on top

Any type of pre-school education is better for intellectual and
social development than none at all, research published last week
reveals.

But a report, by the Institute of Education and Birkbeck College in
London and the University of Oxford, finds that children at
government early excellence centres, which offer combined education
and child care, make greater intellectual and social progress than
those at private nurseries.

Possible reasons highlighted in the report include private
nurseries having a higher turnover of staff than other settings and
their staff being younger and less qualified.

The long-term research, which looked at all types of pre-school
child care and covered 3,000 children aged three and four from 141
centres, also finds that the activities parents do with their
children at home are significantly more important than the
qualifications they possess.

“What parents do is more important than who they are,” said report
author Edward Melhuish.

High quality pre-school education can also reduce social exclusion,
the research shows.

The government is currently developing a national network of
children’s centres under the Sure Start programme which will offer
a range of services to families, including health, education, child
care and parenting support, to improve the provision of pre-school
services.

– The Effective Provision of Pre-School Education (EPPE)
Technical Paper 8b from www.ioe.ac.uk/projects/eppe