NATIONALISATION OF THE FAMILY

Labour’s Sure Start scheme, which has already cost £3.1billion, has been found to be a failure by Birkbeck College, London, which had been commissioned by the Government to conduct research into the scheme.

Sure Start is supposed to offer childcare and parenting classes at children’s centres in some of England’s poorest areas. The scheme is due to be expanded from 400,000 to 3million over the next 5 years. The aim is to have a Sure Start centre in every neighbourhood.

The research found that, overall, children had not shown any improvement in language or behaviour since the Sure Start’s launch in 2001. In fact, children of teenage mothers actually did worse than those who had not had access to the scheme.

One of the more insidious aspects of Sure Start is its capacity to foist political correctness on young children [needless to say]. The guidance to the scheme’s officials is that they need to ensure that children ‘unlearn any negative attitudes and behaviour they have already learnt’ in order to ‘offset the process whereby children may learn to be racially prejudiced at an early age’.