A POLITICAL AND ECONOMIC PERSPECTIVE

1. Compensating for disadvantage and equalising educational opportunities

1.1. Justifying early childhood programmes in terms of ensuring school readiness, equalizing opportunities and promoting social justice has been widely cited as an underpinning rationale for ECCE.

2. Early childhood and human capital

2.1. In presenting policy messages, data framed in the language of early human development, social reform and equal opportunity was translated into the language of economics, human capital, and returns on investment.

2.2. ECCE, their website graphically suggests a linear relationship exists between human capital investment and rates of return in early childhood, with benefits well above costs, but also shows rapidly diminishing returns from investment during later childhood.

3. Human capital, ethics and politics

3.1. Not just about increased human capital; they are also about social capital an altered relationship to their social environment, selection into classroom settings and groups where there are positive attitudes and expectation.

3.2. Research points towards the importance of integrating policies for ECCE within comprehensive school reform targeted to embrace all, with the goal of achieving a balance of continuity and challenge to developing minds.

4. Evaluating long-term outcomes from early Intervention

4.1. The most influential scientific evidence comes not from evaluations of Head Start itself, but from smaller scale, carefully controlled experimental evaluations of model programmes.

4.2. The impact of the study rests on its startling long-term evidence, notably lower drop out rates and higher school achievement amongst treatment group children, and lower referral rates to special education, and lower incidence of crime compared with the control group.

4.3. The policy implication of this line of research is not just about ensuring the readiness of young children for school. It is also about ensuring the readiness of schools for children