Sure Start Has Closed The Gap - Why Do The Tories Want To Scrap It?

From an original article by Stuart King, Labour Parliamentary candidate for Putney, Roehampton and Southfields.

This is one of those really important stories that the media simply won't report. SureStart, the Labour Government initiative to help children and young families in our least affluent areas has succeeded in eradicating the gap between how children in its catchment area develop educationally compared to affluent areas. This straightforward chart shows the impact SureStart's had in Roehampton.

Let me just explain what the jargon means. There are two key measures for assessing how children are "developing": PSE stands for Personal, Social and Emotional development - in other words how children interact with each other, cope spending time on their own, and their relationships with their parents. CLL is Communications, Language and Literacy - ie how a child is developing educationally.

What is interesting about this graph is it shows the gap between deprived children and others closing, but attainment rising for all children. Council officers attribute this to the beneficial effect that Sure Start, as a universal service, has had for all Wandsworth’s children.

There are two questions that need to be answered now. First, isn't this more Labour-generated propaganda? The answer to that is no - I took these tables from a report written by the Conservative-run council last week; which is available here. In fact, Councillor Kathy Tracey, the Conservative Cabinet member for Children's Services in Wandsworth attended the Roehampton Partnership on Friday endorsing the successes the report highlights. Second, the cynics will question whether this has anything to do with SureStart rather than general factors. In response to that, it's really interesting that there are two other "big" SureStart schemes in the borough: one in Battersea and one in Tooting. Both started after Roehampton's - Battersea came next and Tooting was much more recent.

The same charts for each show lags in children's development - more in Tooting than Battersea and both behind Roehampton. The principal difference between them is the length of time Roehampton SureStart's been running - and it certainly isn't comparative deprivation: Roehampton is far more disadvantaged than Tooting, for example (Which is why Roehampton's SureStart got set up first).

Actually, there's a third question - and it's one that Wandsworth's Conservatives have to answer. It's simply this: SureStart works and here's the proof - so why is your party, the Conservative Party, planning to abolish SureStart if you get into power?

Cllr. Andy Gibbons

Labour Speaker Children and Young People