Labour’s 2015 manifesto aims to improve life for children and it suggests that one effective means of achieving that aim is to invest in early years’ provision. The claim is that a child’s language development…
Articles on Early years
Displaying 41 - 59 of 59 articles
Learning from TV programmes is rooted in repetition and interaction.
It is predictable that the Labour Party’s election pledge to expand Sure Start has turned into a row over how many children’s centres have actually closed since the coalition government took over in 2010…
In order to make young children “school ready”, the English government is now encouraging parents to place their children in school nurseries shortly after their second birthday. But there is evidence…
From September 2016, within five weeks of starting primary school, all children in England will receive an assessment that will stay on their record. But we have been here before and it didn’t work. The…
All children with early language problems are at increased risk of struggling at school, and having reduced employment opportunities and life chances, but the risk of early language problems is disproportionately…
Over the last 20 years, early childhood education and childcare for the under-fives has become a major policy priority in the UK. Get more mothers into work, it’s argued, and we can start to close the…
Childcare is likely to be a key battleground for the UK’s 2015 general election. The Labour party has committed to a universal quality childcare service. It sees it as a strategic political, social and…
When are children “ready” for school? There is much debate about when the transition between play-based pre-school and the start of “formal” schooling should begin. The trend in the UK primary school curriculum…
The rate at which children learn language varies substantially from child to child. Some children show rapid vocabulary growth before they go to school, while others learn so slowly that they can end up…
All children deserve a good start in life, and we know that high quality early years provision can help to support children’s development. Research shows that it is particularly beneficial for disadvantaged…
Every few months a story appears about the declining speech and language skills of children arriving in primary school. The epithet “the daily grunt” was invented by one newspaper to capture the lack of…
Choosing a good quality nursery is one of the most important decisions any parent will make during the first years of their child’s life. In a recent report, UK school and childcare regulator Ofsted acknowledged…
The coalition government is to introduce the testing of young children soon after they enter primary school at the age of four or five. English children are already tested far more than children in most…
The coalition has placed a series of new plans on the table with regard to childcare and early years education. Most eye-catching is the new “tax-free childcare” scheme: from September 2015, for every…
The idea that parenting matters for early child development is now widely accepted. We also now know a great deal about the role of parenting in social inequalities in development. Parents with more resources…
Learning certainly starts at birth, and some believe even before. Care by parents in the first three years of a child’s life is absolutely critical in order to learn how to walk, talk, self-regulate, and…
Proposals to allow schools to start looking after two-year-olds go to the heart of a long-standing tension in education policy: is early childhood provision about childcare for working parents or is it…
Would you pay the equivalent of a coffee a day to guarantee a system whereby Australian children got the best start in life? From January this year, the Australian education system is changing its approach…
Top contributors
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Honorary Research Fellow, Department of Education, University of Oxford
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Associate professor, University of Oxford
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Professor of Developmental Language & Communication Disorders, UCL
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Strategic Lead for Early Years and Director of the Early Years Community Research Centre, Sheffield Hallam University
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Professor of Speech & Language Sciences, Newcastle University
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Associate Professor Leeds University Business School, University of Leeds
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Emeritus Professor of Early Childhood, School of Childhood and Social Care, University of East London
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Compton Foundation Centennial Professor of Social Work for the Prevention of Children's and Youth Problems, Columbia University
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Lecturer in Education, University of Huddersfield
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Postdoctoral Research Associate, University of Liverpool
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Associate Professor in Developmental Psychology, University of Salford
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Senior Lecturer in Psychology & Education, University of Cambridge
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Lecturer in the Neurobiology of Personality, King's College London
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Professor of Economics and Director of the ESRC Research Centre on Micro-social Change, University of Essex
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Professor of Epidemiology, University of York