Fostering Effective Early Learning

Given my job title is director of evidence it will probably come as little surprise to readers that I take a keen interest in research and spend a fair chunk of my week reading the latest findings on the factors that impact on typical development and what we know about what works to improve the chances for children at risk of poor life outcomes.

Some reports live longer in the memory than others. I don’t think there is any hard and fast rule for which studies I tend to recall with clarity. Sometimes it comes down to the sheer joy of the experiment, such as the 2018 study which found that four- and six-year-olds were better able to engage with repetitive tasks when dressed as a superhero. In other cases it’s about the further questions that the research raises, such as the 2015 experiment which showed large differences in the ability to delay gratification of German and Italian-speaking children living in the same northern Italian town. But sometimes studies stay with me because they raise serious implications for how we design and deliver policy – which is an essential if we are going to use evidence to improve the lives of children at risk of poor outcomes.