Digital Commons Network^™

The National Evaluation Of Sure Start Local Programmes In England, Angela Anning, Mog Ball, Jacqueline Barnes, Jay Belsky, Beverley Botting, Martin Frost, Zarrina Kurtz, Alastair H. Leyland, Pamela Meadows, Edward Melhuish, Jane Tunstill

Faculty of Social Sciences - Papers (Archive)

In the latter part of the 20th century evidence was accumulating about the effectiveness of various intervention programmes for young children in disadvantaged families. Some small-scale interventions were evaluated by randomised control trials as in the case of the Abecedarian project (Ramey et al., 2000), the High/ Scope Perry Preschool Project (Schweinhart, Barnes, & Weikart, 1993) and evaluations of home visiting (e.g. Olds, 1997). Others were evaluated by quasi-experimental methods as with the large-scale Head Start project (e.g. Barnett, 1995; Kresh, 1998). Despite some weaknesses in the evidence for large-scale interventions, the accumulating evidence of the benefits of early intervention …