Gove: Coalition government wrong to 'neglect' Sure Start

The coalition government of 2010-15 was wrong to “neglect” the Sure Start strategy, its former education secretary has said.

Lord Gove also said that current education secretary Bridget Phillipson is correct in focusing on children’s school readiness, as many young people who find themselves not in education, employment or training (Neet) do so after a difficult start at primary school.

The Conservative peer made his comments today at a Centre for Social Justice (CSJ) panel event in London, which focused on tackling the increasing number of young people who are Neet.

‘Critical’ to prioritise school readiness

The Sure Start strategy was announced in New Labour’s 1997 manifesto, inviting certain local authorities to pilot early excellence centres that combined education and care for the under-5s.

However, under the Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition government, in which Lord Gove was education secretary between 2010 and 2014, the ringfenced grant for Sure Start funding was removed and replaced by the early intervention grant. National guidance on children’s centres shifted the focus to “high-need” families rather than universal services.

Speaking at today’s event, Lord Gove said that while Sure Start was “not perfect”, the coalition government was wrong to “neglect” the policy at the time, and that Ms Phillipson has “been right” to emphasise the importance of school readiness.

Lord Gove said: “I think that an emphasis on school readiness is correct. I think that one of the things that the coalition government got wrong was its neglect of the Sure Start system.”

He added: “Sure Start is not perfect. But a means of ensuring that there is structured support for parents in order to ensure that children are school-ready is absolutely critical.”

The former education secretary said that “many” young people who go on to become Neet are those who arrived at primary school “unready”.

“Talk to any teacher in primary school, and they will tell you that a troubling number of children arrive at school not potty trained, not capable of holding a pencil appropriately, insufficiently socialised, already disruptive,” Lord Gove said.

“Now there are huge pressures on the families that find themselves in those situations - huge social and economic pressures - but the best thing that we can do for those children is to make sure that the structure and the support are there for their parents in order to prepare them.”

The current Labour government has set a target for 75 per cent of children to reach a “good level of development” by the end of Reception, but the latest annual survey from Kindred Squared found that Reception staff reported spending over an hour a day on toilet assistance.

‘More testing’ the answer to assessment reform

Lord Gove and former Labour minister Alan Milburn - author of an interim report on the increase in Neet young people - were questioned by the Liberal Democrat spokesperson for education, children and families, Munira Wilson, on whether GCSE and A-level assessments required an “overhaul”.

The former education secretary said that, in fact, students are not tested enough and that testing is “the best way of ensuring children retain knowledge, use knowledge - and it is the best path to meritocracy”.

The “problem” with vocational qualifications, Lord Gove claimed, is that they are “insufficiently rigorous”. Making them more challenging would help to achieve “parity of esteem” between academic and vocational qualifications.

Lord Gove claimed that Scotland and Wales had “decided to move away from more rigorous forms of assessment” and that both countries had fallen in international league tables as a result, coinciding with widening gaps between affluent and disadvantaged students.

He was speaking amid government plans to reduce exam times for GCSE students and calls from Pepe Di’Iasio, general secretary of the Association of School and College Leaders, for students to sit fewer exam papers.

Disadvantage gap progress ‘tailed off’

Journalist and CSJ panel host Jo Coburn asked Lord Gove whether the educational reforms during his time in government “worked” for white working-class pupils, citing national data showing that just 36 per cent achieve a grade 4 in English and maths at GCSE.

Lord Gove claimed that the reforms were “beginning” to work, and that the gap between children from poorer and wealthier backgrounds in state schools was “narrowing”, but that this progress “tailed off” before the Covid pandemic.

He said: “Covid exacerbated it - so we were just at the point before Covid, where I think we needed to look to see, while we’d added value in closing the gap, what more was required?”

Lord Gove added: “And so there’s a question mark there - I don’t think you can say that the reforms didn’t work but...they didn’t do enough.”

The final report into the rising numbers of Neet young people in the UK is expected in the autumn, but Mr Milburn could not provide a publication date.