Giving children a good start has lasting benefits. Photo: Phil Carrick
Giving children a good start has lasting benefits.THERE is a famous maxim, attributed to the Jesuits, that says: ''Give me a child for the first seven years, and you may do what you like with him afterwards.'' While it's usually taken to refer to the lasting effects of moral and religious instruction on the very young, an increasing body of evidence suggests that it applies equally well to their academic and social development.
Those words, in fact, introduce a 1994 study into early education, a study that went on to conclude that what happens to a child before he or she reaches primary school plays a major role in their life. ''Good preschool education,'' it found, ''leads to immediate and lasting social and educational benefits for all children, especially those from disadvantaged backgrounds.'' In the US, for instance, poorer children who attended preschool were twice as likely to grow up to hold full-time jobs as those who did not.
Those findings were reinforced recently by the EPPE report, Europe's largest longitudinal study of preschoolers, which also found that not all early education was equal, and that benefits were derived most in high-quality environments. Among the hallmarks of such environments were the presence of well-trained staff, and activities that could traditionally be described as ''teaching''.

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