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Over the long run, Sure Start’s financial benefits could be twice as high as its costs

Research published yesterday concludes that Sure Start – one of England’s biggest early years programmes – generated widespread and long-lasting benefits for children. It improved educational outcomes and health, and reduced school absences and less severe special educational needs and disabilities (SEND). Sure Start was not a silver bullet, though: it had few impacts on intensive specialist services such as Education, Health and Care plans (EHCPs) and children’s social care contacts, and increased police cautions at some ages.

While Sure Start is no longer a major part of England’s early years landscape, these findings are essential reading for a government whose Opportunity Mission seeks to boost children’s life chances. Lessons from this evaluation should shape the development of current early years policies such as the Family Hubs and Start for Life programme. 

Rolled out during the 2000s, Sure Start centres brought together education, childcare, parental support and employment services in ‘one-stop shops’ for families with young children. A 10-year programme of work at the Institute for Fiscal Studies, funded by the Nuffield Foundation, has for the first time evaluated the impact of having greater access to Sure Start early in life on children’s development until age 16. A final report, published yesterday, draws together research on Sure Start’s impact on health, education, crime, SEND and children’s social care. It provides a detailed cost–benefit analysis of the programme.

Long-term financial costs and benefits

In our central estimate, our cost–benefit analysis concludes that Sure Start’s total long-run financial benefits could end up twice as large as its up-front costs. Specifically:   

• At its peak, Sure Start cost around £2.7 billion a year (in 2023–24 prices). 
• For a cohort of children experiencing Sure Start at its peak, our central estimate is that the programme generated around £2.4 billion in long-run benefits for the public purse. This captures both savings across health, SEND and children’s social care (£0.6 billion) and projected higher revenue from income tax and National Insurance contributions (£1.9 billion). 
• In addition, we estimate that the programme generated around £3.1 billion in higher lifetime post-tax earnings for each cohort of children and families who used the centres – or a £7,800 boost to lifetime post-tax earnings for the average person using Sure Start. This is based on the projected lifetime earnings impacts of performing better at GCSEs. 
• Taking both government and individual benefits into account, we estimate that every £1 of up-front spending on Sure Start generated £2.05 in total benefits over the long run.
• This analysis does not include many non-financial benefits– for example, the value of better health as an end in and of itself. 

Benefits for children across a range of outcomes – though no silver bullet

The research also presents evidence on Sure Start’s impacts on a wide range of outcomes, finding that:

• Sure Start improved children’s education. Children who lived within 2.5km of a Sure Start centre early in life were around 1 percentage point more likely to achieve five good GCSEs at age 16 (compared with a baseline of 55% meeting this benchmark in 2010). 
• Sure Start improved children’s health and prevented injuries. At its peak, Sure Start led to around 6,700 more hospitalisations of 1-year-olds each year, driven by more infections and illnesses. But hospitalisations fell in the long run: Sure Start prevented around 13,150 hospital admissions of 11- to 15-year-olds each year.
• Sure Start’s effects on social, emotional and behavioural development are less clear-cut. Early access to Sure Start improved mental health and reduced absences from school, with a 15% drop in unauthorised absences at age 15. But it also increased the share of young people receiving a police caution by age 16 by 1 percentage point (from a baseline of 9% of young people). 
• Sure Start had few effects on the most severe needs. While access to Sure Start reduced the share of children with SEN Support plans at age 16 by 0.7 percentage points (from a baseline of 22%), it had no impact on the more severe needs met through EHCPs. Sure Start also had no impact on the number of children looked after by the social care system.
• The benefits of Sure Start were widespread – and it reduced inequalities in some outcomes. Sure Start’s benefits for children’s health were strongest in the most disadvantaged neighbourhoods and for boys, though children from all backgrounds experienced improvements. The educational benefits of Sure Start were stronger for children from ethnic minority backgrounds, but these non-White children also saw larger increases in youth cautions from police.

Nick Ridpath, Research Economist at IFS and an author of the report, said: 

‘Sure Start’s superpower was bringing together a range of different services in the early years, which shaped children’s health, education, emotional development, and more. These benefits are not only important in their own right – they also generate savings to the public purse and boost lifetime earnings. Sure Start did not quite pay for itself from the government’s perspective. But taking benefits for lifetime earnings into account, in the long run it will generate around twice as much value as it cost.’

Sarah Cattan, Research Fellow at IFS and an author of the report, said:

‘If this government wants to increase opportunities and boost children’s life chances, it should take a serious look at integrated early years services. Programmes such as Family Hubs and Start for Life and a wide range of local initiatives are a step in the right direction. But with total spending of less than £600 million last year, the scale of resources is nowhere close to the £2.7 billion spent on Sure Start at its peak. Our work shows that integrated early years services, done well, are cheaper than they initially seem once their benefits are taken into account.’

Ruth Maisey, Education Programme Head at the Nuffield Foundation, said: 

‘This comprehensive evaluation of Sure Start's wide-ranging impacts provides compelling evidence for the benefits of investing in joined-up services for under-fives, showing they can not only support children’s early development and outcomes but also deliver long-term value for taxpayers.’

The short- and medium-term effects of Sure Start on children’s outcomes