Pre-school
The Labour government’s flagship Sure Start (1998), which addresses child poverty via children’s centres. This initiative aimed programme aims at giving every child the best possible start in life, by offering many services to children in economically deprived areas, services to families includes information on early years care, education and family health, proving a universal service (McMenamin, 2013). Between the years of 1999 to 2000, the cost of Sure Start centres grew too expensive, whereas the funding for children’s centres was far less (Lewis, 2013). As of 2003, Sure Start centres would operate as children’s centres, covering the whole country and providing limited services to affluent areas (Lewis, 2013).
As discussed earlier under the section of reasons for patterns of attainment, that 80% of a pupil’s achievement is determined by external factors, it is important to analyse Sure Start. Sure Start is aimed at children under the age of four, prior to their enrolment in compulsory education at primary school, and is in relation to the 80% external factors. The 80% of a pupil’s achievement is determined by external factors, this raises the context aspect of policy. That pupil from economically deprived backgrounds are already at a disadvantage before they enter primary education, due to external factors highlighted earlier, being the contributing factors to attainment gaps. For this reason, I have chosen to analyse Sure Start, because it is an early intervention that happens before school before internal factors come to play and is aimed at combating
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As a result, in the White Paper Excellence in Schools (1997), the government acknowledged that children benefit from early years education and planned to broaden their expansion in Early Years Development Partnership and Plans (Bassery et al,