Focus of spending must be balanced

The OECD's key recommendation is for countries to spend more on younger children and disadvantaged older children. It actually singles out the UK for boosting investment in the early years.

But investment doesn't necessarily equate to impact. A select committee inquiry is to examine the effectiveness of the Sure Start programme (see p9) as doubts persist that not enough deprived families are being reached. With funding for children's centres no longer ringfenced from next year, the concern is that investment won't be sustained.

The OECD argues that weighting children's spending towards the early years will reap bigger returns, saving on social costs including crime. It rightly says there is no "magic bullet" intervention and, in true economist-speak, urges governments to operate an "early intervention portfolio" - be that parenting programmes, early childhood education or home visiting - and to sustain spending on the most disadvantaged throughout their childhood. Just how much the young brothers found guilty of the vicious attack near Doncaster might have benefited from such interventions from birth, we will never know.