Sure Start: one of Labour’s most permanently transformative successes

Looking back over Labour’s 13 years, there are plenty of achievements to celebrate alongside plentiful regrets for things done and things left undone. Hindsight is a fine thing and no doubt if Blair and Brown knew then what we all know now, they would have done many things differently.

But on one thing just about everyone agrees. Labour’s early years programme was radical and essential. What government now would dare remove free nursery schooling for all three and four year olds? This government is following through Labour’s promise to extend it to many two years olds as well. Until then there was very little provision. In our book, ‘The Verdict: Did Labour Change Britain?’ we give the highest marks to Labour’s nursery and Sure Start programme as one of that government’s most permanently transformative successes.

Remember the history: at first Gordon Brown was reluctant to invest in early years until Harriet Harman, as Social Security Secretary, persuaded him that she would never hit her target for getting more single parents back to work without affordable childcare, as evidence from the rest of Europe made clear. He was persuaded by the economic argument, and the need to get mothers off benefits. Unfortunately he was not willing to challenge the large private nursery and child minder sector, and chose to fund childcare through a kind of voucher scheme – childcare credits -instead of regarding this as an extension of the welfare state to be provided like primary schools, as in Nordic countries. This has meant haphazard provision, more in affluent areas, none in poor areas, with a high turn-over of businesses as childcare makes only marginal profits.

But the movement for a much bolder and less utilitarian concept sprang up at the same time. The idea for Sure Start came partly from the American High Scope Perry pre-school programme, an experimental branch of the US Head Start scheme. Research that caught the imagination of Labour policy-makers showed that deprived children who had two years intensive home and nursery support did far better than a control group of identical children outside the scheme. The effect lasted right into their adult lives, so they were less likely to go to jail, mental hospital or draw benefits, more likely to graduate from school, get jobs and own their own homes. By the age of 30, every $1 spent on early years had saved the state $7 of expense on dysfunctions they had avoided.

Inside the Treasury, Norman Glass, a senior official, seized on the idea with enthusiasm, a unique case of a treasury mandarin calling for more spending and personally shepherding the scheme through to fruition. He persuaded Gordon Brown that childcare to get mothers working was only one of the benefits a high quality early years programme could yield in the long run. The promise was made: there would be a Sure Start in every community.

So 3,500 were set up, rightly starting in the poorest areas, and always intended to be most intensive in places of most need. The best Sure Starts offered childcare, midwives, health visitors, speech and language therapists, family counsellors, parenting classes, drop-in advice services and back-to-work training for parents. Some had cafes, staffed by parents. The idea was to make these Children’s Centres a hub for the whole community, a place for families to go, either free standing or attached to a primary school. Catch a family from pregnancy, offer support and advice and any problems could be eased early on.

Labour always boasted of creating a ‘cradle to grave’ welfare state, but until then, the cradle was missing. This was just the start of a whole new service that would take years to develop and embed into local communities, to integrate with GPs and schools. It was always bound to be hard to get the families with the worst problems to come of their own free will: the acute depressives, alcoholics and drug addicts or others with severe difficulties shied away from contact with families who might look down on them – or they were simply not able to participate: they would need far more intensive one-to-one outreach help. It would probably have taken at least another decade to make sure start the universal and comprehensive service it needed to become so that no future government dare diminish it. It hadn’t yet reached that stage, but it was a glorious beginning.

All politicians of all parties say they believe in ‘social mobility’, easy to will the ends without willing the means. The best hope for children from deprived backgrounds is that they catch up at the youngest age. Those who are hardly spoken to or read to fall behind the rest fast. By the age of 18 months the dim but well-off child starts to overtake the clever but poor child. High quality nursery education and stimulation from well-qualified nursery staff can make all the difference to a child’s readiness to learn before reaching reception class, when it is nearly too late. After that, everything is remedial: Sure Start and good nursery schooling is a better investment and yet we spend on education almost in inverse proportion to its usefulness: secondary gets more funding than primary, universities more than schools. The social class divide grows with year in education.

Although this government paid lip service to Sure Start, the closure of over 400 and the severe cutting back of services within many of the rest is an entirely predictable tragedy. Some Sure Starts are now no more than a shell with a weak private nursery inside, and Ofsted’s inspections of nursery quality are sadly perfunctory and too rare. Labour made the mistake of devolving the Early Years budgets to local authorities from a central unit, when John Prescott was pressing for localisation: some councils, mostly Tory, were never enthusiastic. This government has removed the ring fence altogether with devastating results.

Worse still, the government regards childcare as no more than warehousing babies and children while parents work: children’s minister Liz Truss presses for a change in the law so one childminder can care for six toddlers to cut costs. They dare not take away nursery schooling, but forget any idea of quality or improving the life chances of children. This is the end of the great ideals that founded Sure Start, with wrap-around after-school care and breakfast clubs for school children too. Labour will need to set about repairing and reclaiming Sure Start Children’s Centres as a top priority.

Polly Toynbee is a journalist and writer. She is a columnist for the Guardian and the author of many successful books including Hard Work: Life in Low-Pay Britain and Did Things Get Better? An Audit of Labour’s Successes and Failures.

This article appears in Sure Start, Sure Future? a pamphlet of reflections on the future of Sure Start produced by Labour Friends of Sure Start.

Sure Start, Sure Future? is a springboard for ongoing debate. To share your views please come along to the pamphlet launch on 2^nd July. For more details please visit www.laboursurestart.com