Evaluating the short- and medium-term impacts of Sure Start

This project evaluated the impact of Sure Start on child development, building on previous research. 

Why this project is important

Sure Start was one of England’s major early years policies, offering a ‘one-stop-shop’ for families with children under five. It was introduced in 1999 as Local Programmes in disadvantaged communities and later expanded into a universal service as Children’s Centres throughout England. In 2010 it operated around 3,500 centres, but since then the programme had its funding cut and services declined. Evidence shows that early childhood interventions can significantly shift children’s developmental trajectories, but that some interventions have more lasting positive impacts than others. The team’s previous research found that greater access to Sure Start significantly reduced hospitalisations among primary school children in disadvantaged areas. This project analysed the programme’s effects on a broader range of outcomes, provided evidence for the potential mechanisms underlying the programme’s effects, and undertook a comprehensive cost-benefit analysis. 

Ultimately, the work sought to shape the future of England’s early years landscape by providing strong evidence on the merits of allocating public funds to universal early years services. 

What did the project involve?  

The researchers analysed large administrative datasets in order to understand Sure Start’s impacts during the expansion period (1999-2010), covering both Local Programmes (1999-2004) and Children’s Centres before the removal of the ring-fencing around Sure Start funding in 2010. This design allowed the researchers to estimate impacts on outcomes up to early adolescence. 

The impact evaluation exploited variation in access to Sure Start generated by the staggered rollout of the programme across England to compare the outcomes of children living in the same neighbourhood who experienced more or less access to Sure Start in their first five years of life. It then assessed impact on a range of children’s outcomes including education test scores, school exclusions, illness related and unauthorised school absences, juvenile crime, and the use of social care and special educational needs services.

What did the project find?  

1. Sure Start benefited children and young people’s health and education, improving educational attainment in school and reducing hospitalisations. 

2. Sure Start had mixed impacts on children’s socio-emotional and behavioural outcomes. The results showed that Sure Start had clear benefits in reducing children’s internalising behaviours, such as depression and anxiety disorders. However, effects on externalising behaviours, such as conduct disorders, aggression and violence, were less clear-cut. 

3. Impacts of Sure Start were remarkably long lasting, with the positive effects of the programme stretching well beyond early childhood and at least into adolescence.  

4. Sure Start was not a ‘silver bullet’. The results suggested that while integrated early years services can benefit children’s lives in a long-lasting way, light-touch universal early years services cannot on their own address all challenges that children and young people face. The research found that early access to Sure Start had few impacts on the most intensive services, and so it is unrealistic to expect that early years services would ever completely replace the need for later, more specialised interventions.  

5. The benefits of Sure Start were widespread, but some groups were more strongly affected. The positive effects of Sure Start were spread relatively evenly across different groups, which suggests that the fact universal access to Sure Start services was important for the outcomes generated. However, there was also evidence that in some cases Sure Start reduced inequalities between groups. 

6. Long-run benefits are likely to significantly exceed the costs.